Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Guam: A Strategic War Island, a Twin Shipwreck, and a Pesky Snake with Adrienne Rolon

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

In today’s episode, Sharon tells the story of Guam’s history as a U.S. Territory to Adrienne Rolon, the owner of Hearts Content Events & Design. Adrienne’s six year old son, James, is a big fan of history, facts, and Sharon. Learn along with Adrienne and James as Sharon relays the significant history of Guam’s involvement in both the Spanish-American War and World War II. Sharon also shares plenty of brain-tingling facts about Guam’s long and varied history and the indigenous Chamorro people (who really love SPAM). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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sharing our love for milk, there's love in every glass. Dairy Farmers of Ontario, from our families to your table, everybody milk. Visit milk.org to learn more. table. Everybody milk. Visit milk.org to learn more. Hello, friends. Welcome. Today, I have my friend Adrienne Rowland on and we're going to talk about the US territory of Guam. And there is definitely going to be some stuff in this episode that you are like that. Number one, that's fascinating. Number two, I do not like that fact. So brace yourselves for a couple of facts that you're not going to approve of, but you will definitely learn something new. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Oh, my goodness. I could not be more excited to share this conversation with my friend,

Adrienne. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I am so very pumped. My son, James, is a huge fan of yours. So I'm super duper excited to be here. He thinks I'm the coolest mom ever. Oh, how old is James? He is six right now, but probably by the time this airs, he'll be seven years old. So yeah, I love that. I love that. He's just like such a gifted tiny human. And I love that he is a fan of the podcast and that he likes whales and that he loves to share facts.

He reminds me very much of me when I was a little girl. If he can grow up to be you, I would be honestly the most proud mom ever. He is going to be an amazing version of himself and do things that I could never do. So thank you for that. Thank you so much. Tell people what you do, Adrienne, and where you're from. Yes. So I am located in coastal Virginia and I am a wedding planner and designer and floral artist. I am the owner of Hearts Content Events and Design. We are a team of wedding planners and floral artists who really plan this luxury, beautiful experience for big hearted couples, allowing for the heart of marriage to just really consume the entire wedding

planning process and providing the white space that they need so that they're able to prepare and have a solid foundation for their marriage later on. And then I'm also the founder of a brand new virtual wedding planning experience and community called The Bridal Tea. And that's going to be launching really soon. I'm super duper excited about that. And yeah, we provide all the resources and the community and guidance that they need in order to plan a really intentional, beautiful wedding without all the overwhelm that is associated with wedding planning. Your work, your wedding planning work is so beautiful and you have so many unique touches that just are really customized to the couples. And I love seeing how you pull out couples' interests and things that pertain to them and incorporate them in a really

elegant, beautiful way into their celebrations. It's so fun to watch you. Oh my gosh. That means so much. Thank celebrations. It's so fun to watch you. Oh my gosh. That means so much. Thank you so much. You know, that I used to be in the wedding industry. I used to be a wedding photographer. So I know what you're talking about. This is not just me being like, oh, that's a pretty dress. You know what I mean? I have been to a number of weddings. You know what you're talking about? You have the expertise. Yes, that's right. And I think you just do such a fantastic job. I love the idea of doing something virtual that helps wedding planning couples still get some of your expertise without having to live next door to

you. Yes, yes. And we love that too. We love just the idea because, you know, we do provide a luxury experience. However, we do still believe that like wedding planning should be accessible to everybody. And so the bridal tea is really going to help people with that. And we're very excited about just being an essential part in so many couples days for sure. I love that. Well, I have a really interesting story to share with you today. So excited. I hope James will love this episode.

He's going to be thrilled. I bet I'm going to drop some facts that James doesn't already know. That's my goal. Every episode would, does James already know this? Well, then I better step it up. So hello to James. Got to get my little hello in there so he can hear me say that. Hello. He's going to be so mind blown. I think you are just a remarkable human, James, and I want you to grow up to be everything you are meant to be. Today we're going to talk about Guam. Guam, which is a United States territory.

Yes. And not a state, but so many people, you know, they've heard of Guam certainly. But if I said, tell me more about Guam, they'd be like, that is what I know. You know what I mean? We as mainland Americans don't tend to know very much about our territories. That's very true. Have you been to Guam? I have not been to Guam. I have been to another United States territory. My husband is actually half African-American, half Puerto Rican. And so we've been to Puerto Rico to like visit some of his family. We went for part of our honeymoon and things like that. So we know a bit about that,

but we don't know about Guam though. So I'm really interested. Okay, good. So Guam, it is where the American day begins. And the reason they say that is because it's really the first place that the sun rises on U S soil. It's right by the international date line. So this is something James might be interested in. That means that Guam is 14 hours ahead of the East coast of the United States. Oh my gosh. So when the sun sets in Guam, it hasn't even begun to rise on most of mainland United States. So 14 hours ahead of where you are, which is so interesting to think about. So the territory of Guam has been in U.S. control for over a century, but that of course is not the beginning of Guamanian history. There are actually

archaeological evidence of indigenous cultures in Guam for over 4,000 years. So this is a region of the world that people have been living in for thousands and thousands of years, developed their own cultures, their own societies. The Chamorro culture that was present in Guam many thousands of years ago was matrilineal, which also makes it very interesting. Not many cultures in the world do have that matrilineal format, which is where descendancy is passed through the female bloodline and the male bloodline. And so that is not as present on Guam today because of European colonialism, but that is how it used to be a long, long time ago. So most people know about Guam in the context of United States military bases. We actually have two military bases on Guam. It is strategically placed in the Pacific

Ocean. And so that island and a number of other islands near it were important strategically to the United States, both from the perspective of the Spanish-American War at the turn of the century, and also in terms of World War II. By the way, the size of Guam is roughly the size of Chicago. The city of Chicago is the entire island of Guam. And yes, it's not, we're not talking about an island the size of Australia. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. So people arriving in the, in the islands in that region, thousands of years ago, we're most likely from Taiwan. That is the most likely migration route. And you could sail West to East from the Philippines to the Mariana Island

chain just by following the sun. So that is likely how that area became settled many thousands of years ago. And they built things called latte houses, which are one-story houses that are set along two large stone columns. James can Google a picture of a latte house. Oh my goodness. Yes. There's archeological evidence of things like rice cultivation and pottery making and an actually very complex class-based society before any contact with Europeans. So Spain actually ruled Guam for centuries, for over 300 years. And it was Spanish Catholic missionaries that initially began to settle the area in the 1600s. And Guam to this day remains on a United Nations list of 17 non-self-governing territories, which actually just means colony. And so the United Nations has asked Guam on a number of occasions, would you like to become

independent? Now, does the United Nations have the ability to come in and be like, okay, America, you've got to give it up. They don't really have the ability to enforce that, but they could potentially, if Guam wanted to, encourage it or put pressure on the United States to relinquish control of Guam. When the United Nations has asked Guam, are you interested in that? The people who currently live there have said no. And it doesn't mean that the European colonization was not without a significant amount of trauma, without a significant amount of issues, but you have to understand that there is something to be said for, this is what we know now. This is their lived experience. And to become independent from the United States would mean a significant shift in

their way of life. Right. And so sometimes there's that hesitancy to like, would we actually be better off? What would we do instead? This is a very small nation. Visa and OpenTable are dishing up something new. Get access to primetime dining reservations by adding your Visa Infinite Privilege Card to your OpenTable account. From there, you'll unlock first comecome, first-served spots at select top restaurants when booking through OpenTable. Learn more at OpenTable.ca forward slash Visa Dining. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends, and together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs.

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Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. One thing that I think James will think is interesting is that even though Guam is a essentially a tropical island. It does not have any sand. We tend to think of tropical islands as like sandy beaches. Guam is actually a coral island. And so a lot of tropical islands are volcanic islands. And those volcanic rocks then over the centuries wear down to become sand. But coral island does not have that same ability to do that because coral is a living creature. Eventually, you know,

dies and kind of becomes rock-like in some ways, but it doesn't have the same molecular structure as volcanic rock, which can be reduced to sand. James is going to be so excited about that because he just learned about coral like this week. So fun. Yes. Okay, good. Guam, no sand, James. It's a coral island. So for a period of time, Spain, as I mentioned, ruled over Guam and the United States became involved in the Spanish-American war and eventually decided when we were negotiating the end of that, there was actually a mistake that was made. The negotiators sort of failed to ask about Spanish ownership of of a number of other nearby islands. And so Guam became part of America where other nearby islands were quickly sold by Spain to Germany and sold off in other ways. So even though Guam is very

close to other islands that the United States would have liked, a negotiating mistake during the negotiation of Treaty of Paris in the 1800s made it so that there was sort of this fracture between Guam and the other Northern Mariana Islands that are not far from there, like Saipan, et cetera. This is kind of an interesting story. The United States sent a ship to Guam because we're fighting the Spanish during the Spanish-American War. And of course, the United States wants Guam for we're fighting the Spanish during the Spanish-American War. And of course, the United States wants Guam for itself, right? Most nations that become imperialistic, like Britain, like the United States, don't go out into the world being like, what territories can we give up today? Right? It's about what can we acquire for ourselves? day. Right. It's about what can we acquire for ourselves? So the United States in the spring of 1898 sent a ship to Guam called the USS Charleston. And the goal was they were going to try to capture

Guam from Spain. So the Charleston sails near Guam. They send up a bunch of warning signals of like, we are here to attack you. Like this is war. We're here to attack you. And the Spanish did not even respond. And the people on board the Charleston were like, they aren't doing anything. They didn't do anything back, you guys. So the Americans were confused. Like, why aren't you responding to our declaration of attack and so a few hours later a boat of spanish authorities sailed over to the charleston to be like what's up and americans were like we're here to attack you. And they're like, oh, I'm sorry. I misunderstood. I thought you were saying hi. And they're like, no, no, no, no surrender. We're here to, this is a war. And they were like, oh, and because Guam is so far away and because in the 1890s, there was no

fast method of communication. Guam didn't even realize that there was a war. They were unaware that the Spanish-American war was even going on. And so when the Americans arrived and they're like, oh, oh, there's, okay. Well, that was unexpected and so americans were literally like we were at war and they'd been at war for two months and people on guam didn't know so they finally agree okay um we're enemies you're my enemy and i'm your enemy and first of all it is really interesting to think about the idea that we need to have a conversation to establish our enemy ship, right? Right. Like, hello, I'm your enemy.

Oh, okay. That sounds good. The American crewman sent a letter back to the Spanish governor of Guam and they were like, okay, well, now that we've established your, we're enemies, you have 30 minutes to surrender. And they were like, okay, we surrender. And within 30 minutes, they were like, well, okay. That was how the United States conquered Guam. So then now that the United States was like, this is ours. And the United States won Spanish American war. And it

decided to make Guam unofficial territory. So then at the turn of the century, there was a Supreme Court case about essentially what to do with U.S. territories. And do the people who live in U.S. territories have fundamental constitutional protections? And that was something that the Supreme Court decided sort of a little bit. You can be a U.S. citizen, but you are not going to be able to vote because you're not a state. You're going to have some protections, but you're not actually able to participate fully. And what to do about that is one of the big questions, because the constitution says that only states can have voting representation in Congress. And so two things could happen. Our territories could be made states, highly unlikely, probably will never happen. Or the constitution could be amended to give voting rights in Congress to our territories would require a change in Article One to the constitution. Also, that's more probable, but I still wouldn't say it's extremely probable. So let's zoom ahead in time a little bit to World War II. And after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the islands in the area of Guam and the other Mariana Islands

became very, very strategically important to the United States in its fight against Japan, in part because Guam is only about 1,500 miles from the Philippines. It's actually much closer to the Philippines than it is to Hawaii. And so in the 1940s, Japan actually gained control of Guam and occupied Guam for a little less than three years. And the United States was very tied up in trying to fight a multi-front war. We're trying to fight a war in Northern Africa, in Europe, in Japan, in the South Pacific. And so obviously we couldn't turn our attention towards saying, like, get off of this island. But in July of 1944, the United States returned to Guam, fought the Japanese for over three weeks. And it was actually a very, very significant effort to fight Japan and get,

kick them off of Guam. Eventually the United States won. There were a number of holdouts, Japanese holdouts who either didn't believe that the United States had won or they didn't want to go back to Japan. One of them actually secretly lived in the jungles of Guam for 28 years. Oh my gosh. Until the 1970s. And he lived on food that he found in the jungle. He ate rats. He ate shrimp. He ate mangoes. He ate wild nuts. He ate frogs for 28 years, lived alone in the jungle because he knew that if he was found, he looked different than the people that were there. And it would be obvious that he was Japanese and that the people would not be friendly to him. And can you imagine living alone in the jungle for 28 years? No, no, absolutely not. No. eventually he came out of hiding so of course the war ended in 1945 and he said he finally realized in 1952 that the war was actually over and of course i would

imagine his perception of time might be a little challenged if you're alone in the jungle so i don't know how accurate the year 1952 is, but that's what he said. He'd known the war was over, but he said, it is with much embarrassment that I return. When he realized I've been living alone for all of these years, not realizing exactly what had happened to the rest of the world. After World War II, the United States Congress passed something called the Guam Organic Act. That is what formally established Guam as an unincorporated territory of the United States and what gives Guamanians the current structure of its government, where it has some element of self-rule. It has some element of local government. But again, they only have what is referred to as a delegate in Congress. And I bet James knows what a delegate is to Congress. He does, for sure.

Not the same as a representative. A delegate gets to sit on a committee and they can vote in a committee, but they cannot vote for whether or not a bill will actually pass. So they're there in an advisory capacity. And is anybody actually obligated to listen to them? No. For years now, Guam has been asking the United States government to please protect them from North Korea. Because North Korea, a number of times as recently as like 2017, North Korea has been making threats against Guam and saying that North Korea may launch a nuclear attack on Guam. North Korea has even come out with specific plans saying, we will complete a plan for the historic enveloping fire at Guam, trying to take over Guam. And Guam in and of itself has no ability to fight a nuclear power. They're so small.

Right. No ability to fight North Korea. And of course we do have military bases there, but they are rightfully concerned that North Korea is interested in them for some reason. So in the more recent years, North Korea has sort of walked back some of its aggressive threats, but that's still one of the like simmering, like you better be ready to protect us over here. Right. Don't forget about us. Also very recently, there was a Supreme court case involving the United States Navy and the territory of Guam. I don't know if you remember hearing about this, but it was within the last two years where the United States Navy created this massive waste dump in the middle of Guam, um, just dumping all of its military trash in the middle of the Island, which again is the size of Chicago. Yes. And so then it

was being used as a trash dump and it was used by Guamanians as a trash dump. And then it was found that there were a lot of bad chemicals that were just dumped into this dump. And those bad chemicals were leaching into a river on Guam, which was a big source of people's drinking water. And the United States government was like, well, clean it up. Clean it up, Guam. Your dump is ruining your drinking water. And that violates United States law. And Guam was like, excuse me?

Say what now? The U.S. Supreme Court actually ruled in favor of Guam and against the U.S. Navy and was like, you guys put it here. Clean it up. Stop contaminating the drinking water. Like number one, yes, it does need to be cleaned up because you're violating U S environmental laws. But number two, they didn't put military waste there. That was you guys that is still ongoing. Wow. You know, like the abatement of the chemicals that are leaching into the drinking water. That is still, that's not going to be like an overnight, you know, we fixed it kind of

scenario, but they have abandoned that dump. They're no longer using it and are working on figuring out how to contain the chemicals that are damaging other things in it. So a couple of other fun facts about Guam so that James has something to share with people at the grocery store. Most people on Guam speak Chamorro. Most of them also speak English, but Chamorro is similar to Spanish, but it is actually an Austronesian language. So that means it was brought by indigenous people who settled the region. And so Chamorro is still one of the more primary languages of Guam. Most of Guam is Roman Catholic. Like 85% of Guam is Catholic in

part because of the hundreds of years of Spanish rule, Spanish missionaries wanted to convert Guamanians to Catholicism. And so the Catholic dominance in Guam is still very, very, very present. Absolutely. And they celebrate a lot of, you know, all of the Christian holidays, in addition to a number of other specific Spanish holidays, because of Spain's influence on Guam for so many years. A quarter of Guam is owned by the United States military now for both our naval and air force bases. So if you take something the size of Chicago, cut off a quarter of it, give that to the military, and now take another chunk of it out for this dump that isn't there anymore. That you're dealing with a smaller and smaller amount of available lands. It's not a lot.

It's not a lot of the lands. It's already so small as it was. That's right. But Guam is very, very popular with scuba divers. Because Guam has one of the things that makes scuba diving so popular there is that there are a number of a very interesting shipwrecks off of the coast of Guam that are not far offshore and in relatively shallow water. So there are sites they're great for a variety of levels of scuba divers. And there actually is a German ship that sunk

there in world war one and then stacked on top of it, not perfectly stacked, but like landed kind of like this. We'll put a link to this in the show notes. Um, stacked on top of it is a Japanese ship that was sunk by a U S submarine. submarine in World War II. So you have these two military ships that are, of course, very interesting to divers, literally laying on top of each other on the bottom of the ocean in pretty shallow waters off the coast of Guam. What a coincidence that both of them are just like right on top of each other. What a coincidence that both of them are just like right on top of each other. Seriously, seriously, given the vastness of the ocean and currents and all of that kind of stuff.

What's the likelihood that literally 30 plus years later, another ship would land right on top of that? Right. Right. So super, super unique dive site that James might be interested in looking up pictures of. Yes. The names of the wrecks are the Cormoran is the World War I wreck, and the Tokai Maru is the Japanese ship in World War II. And you can easily see pictures of them because again, it's relatively clear, shallow water. So the pictures are very good. I have one more fact to share with you that you're not going to like, Adrienne.

Uh-oh. Sometime in World War II, a brown tree snake snuck onto somebody's boat. Oh, no. Without people knowing. And when that boat landed, the tree snake, at least one of them, there may be more, got off the boat and got on to Guam. Oh no. And the tree snake brown tree snakes on Guam. Okay. So for context, Adrienne, that is 13,000 snakes per square mile.

Oh my gosh. No, I do not approve of that fact. I do not approve. I give zero out of 10 approves. Zero out of 10. Zero likes. Yeah. Zero likes. So the snakes then eat eggs and small animals. And so by the 1980s, 10 out of the 12 native Guamanian bird species had vanished because the snakes were eating all of their eggs, including a type of a Kingfisher that could not be found anywhere else in the world. So this invasive species has created extinctions and endangerments because of this invasive species that snuck aboard a ship. The other thing that is also true is that because there are so many snakes, they often get into things like electrical boxes because they're warm. And the damage snakes have done to the electrical system in the last 10 years on Guam, they have caused over $4 million of damage to the electrical system. Just imagine being in your house and being like, oh, the power went out. It must be snakes.

Yeah, exactly. It's the snakes today. There's snakes in the electrical box again. Yeah, exactly. It's there's snakes in the electrical box again. Nope. And the other problem that, um, this invasive species has created in addition to eating all of the eggs, of course, birds are a significant scatterer of seeds. They eat fruits and then they scatter the seeds throughout all of the different jungle areas. What is happening now is that there is not enough bird species to continue the proliferation of the plants that need to live there. And so fewer than 10% of the seeds are making it beyond the immediate vicinity of the

parent tree. And it really needs to be more like 60 plus percent and so then the question is what do we do what do we do about the snakes there's so many of them how do we get rid of two million snakes that's too many that's too many maybe james will be the person to come up with a solution for what do we do about invasive species on quam? Okay. One other little fun fact for James before we sign off, which is about spam. Has James ever eaten spam before? So he has not eaten spam. I have had spam before. Yes. So spam, if y'all are not familiar, is a tinned ham-ish product. is a tinned ham ish product, a meat product type of meat that is in a, like a rectangular tin. And you like pull back the lid of the tin and you could just slice it up and you just fry it up like a ham, but it's shelf stable. Right. So that's like one of the beauties of spam is that

it allows you to have meat protein without necessarily having to have meat that is fresh. So spam really increased in popularity on Guam during world war II. That was when spam was sort of at the height of its popularity and more than 100 million cans of spam were shipped overseas to soldiers during world war II. I believe that. Yes. And so when the Marines who came to fight the Japanese on Guam, first of all, the Japanese occupation of Guam, they absolutely terrorized. I won't, because I know kids are listening to this. I won't even go into all the details, but whatever you can think of, they probably did that. They found people were starving. And so they gave them a lot of their cans of spam. And so for actually a couple of years,

Guam had issues with being cut off from fresh food that was being imported and they ate a lot of spam. And so spam is still extremely popular on Guam. I know James likes to absorb random fun facts. Oh, did you know the six McDonald's on Guam go through 400 cases of spam each month? That there you go, James. I just fed that to you on a silver platter. Yes. Memorize it and disseminate that widely, James. That's the, that is the biggest example of a useless trivia, right? It's completely useless to know that. And yet it's still interesting. Yes. Uh, is it what an interesting place we did not even, you know, scratch the surface of all of the interesting history on this Island. But I wanted to give people just a little bit of an overview of how it became part of the United States and

why we still have it. And a little bit about some challenges that Guam is currently facing, but isn't that so interesting that it is 14 hours ahead of the East coast. That's so amazing. That is so cool. I do not approve of the tree snake facts though. I don't approve of those. No snakes, no offense to snake people, but just no snakes. That's too bad. Even if you're a snake person, you can agree that that's too many snakes. Uh, well, Adrian, tell everybody where to find you so they can see all of your beautiful floral designs and all of your beautiful wedding planning and find out more about the bridal tea. Where can they find you?

Yes. So we primarily serve the DC, Virginia, Maryland areas, the East coast and abroad as well. And so if you want to work with us, we would absolutely love to have you. You can find me online at www.heartscontentevents.com or you can follow our fun shenanigans of like creating beautiful wedding days and just also two cute little humans, James and Nora, who just love the wonder of the world. And my incredible husband, Josh, who is also my project manager and my business as well at the at symbol hearts content events. So come join us. Come hang out. Yes. You're just a delight. And I'm so happy to have you here today. I'm so happy to be friends

with you. I really appreciate your time, Adrienne. I'm so happy to be friends with you too, Sharon. Thank you for all you do. It's just thank you for creating this space. Thank you for having me as well. Oh, absolutely a pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories

or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.