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Jun 277 min read

Protecting Guåhan: DOD Increasingly Harms the Furthest U.S. Colony

Håfa adai,


In this email, I share some issues that are deeply personal to me as a CHamoru woman, born and raised on Guåhan (Guam), a U.S. colony. I’ve included calls to action towards the end. Saina ma’åse’ in advance.


I spent most of my childhood within 3 miles of the Anderson Air Force Base. I had always known our island was a strategic military location—a strange phrase for a child to know by heart. But the military is omnipresent—in the boom of jets flying overhead, drowning out the excited stories of children on the sand or waves crashing onto the reef, armed personnel guarding gates erected around familial lands, and flocks of short-timers flooding beaches and their beer cans left behind. Guåhan (Guam) is “the tip of the spear,” meaning we are the closest and most vulnerable to U.S. adversaries like China and North Korea. Our location has long been of utmost importance to military strategizing and posturing, but our people and our land’s well-being have not.


Right now, the military is moving thousands of marines from Okinawa to Guåhan. In response to Okinawan demands to push the marines and their physical, sexual, and environmental violence off their lands, Japan and the U.S. agreed to move them and their harms to our island. The brand-new marine base sits directly over the aquifer that provides nearly 90% of our island’s fresh water. Millions of lead bullets will be fired over the aquifer annually, leaving chemical agents in the soil and threatening our groundwater systems and surrounding ocean areas. But the harm does not end with water destruction and extends beyond our island. In every instance of the military’s adverse impacts on water, the consequences leak into community health, access to cultural resources, food sovereignty, struggles for decolonization, and the very survival of Indigenous peoples, lifeways, and homelands. In our latest post we dive into some of the ways the United States’ continued colonization and growing militarization actively harms our homeland.


Government historic land grabs and government physical violence pushed CHamoru families off their lands, many of whom still await their return. The U.S. now occupies a third of the island as military lands and federal nature reserves. Still, colonial policies further push our people off the island by increasing the cost of living and preventing the return of CHamoru lands, all to the benefit of the military-industrial complex. Federal laws like the ones mentioned here limit our ability to continue to live in our homeland.


A non-exhaustive list of examples:

  • Environmental Justice. Past and present military activities have poisoned our lands and waters with toxic chemicals, including Agent Orange and jet fuel.

  • Self-Determination. The Ninth Circuit prevented the Government of Guam (GovGuam) from holding a non-binding survey, asking if the respondent preferred that Guam pursue Independence, Statehood, or Free Association with the U.S. GovGuam restricted the survey to residents who lived on the island before Congress granted Guåhan’s residents U.S. citizenship through enacting the Organic Act of Guam—a federal statute that may be amended or repealed at any time—and their descendants. Arnold Davis—a white settler backed by a right-wing, anti-equity firm masking as civil rights defenders, the Center for Individual Rights)—sued GovGuam, alleging the restrictive registration violated his right to vote and racially discriminated against him. The Court agreed.

  • Self-Governance. Residents of U.S. colonies (territories), including Guåhan, cannot vote for president, have no senators, and have only non-voting delegates in the House.

  • Housing Justice. Servicemembers stationed on Guåhan receive at least $3,700 monthly for rent and utilities. DOD bases these rates on surveys of personnel stationed on the island. Traditionally, this afforded them luxurious, beachfront lifestyles, feeding into the myth that servicemembers need these exorbitant allowances and steadily increasing the amounts. Market rates and what locals pay or can afford to spend on rent do not factor into the calculations. If the federal government considered Guam a “domestic” base (like in the states), the housing allowance would factor in market rates to avoid disturbing the local housing market. With the stark increase in military personnel moving onto the island, they are saturating the housing market, pricing locals out, including Section 8 voucher-holders, making it even more difficult to live where we always have.

  • Land Back. In ending the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded Guåhan and all its “Crown Land” to the U.S. in 1898. The U.S. immediately instituted military rule over the island. On the same day as the Attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japan also attacked Guåhan. Knowing the forthcoming simultaneous attacks, the U.S. deserted Guåhan, redirecting its military forces to Hawai‘i. The following 3 years of Japanese occupation was arguably the most gruesome period in our island’s history. The U.S. returned, defeated Japan’s military, and reoccupied the island in 1944. At this time of (1) an unfettered military dictatorship and no civil protections on the island and (2) an atmosphere of fear, gratitude, and devastation, the U.S. engaged in the most extensive series of land grabs on the island to date, physically removing or taking advantage of our traumatized and war-torn people, justified in the name of national security. Now, the military occupies and restricts entry into a third of our island and areas of the surrounding ocean. CHamoru families still advocate for the return of their lands, but federal law and policies restrict access and land returns. The Organic Act Amendments, Pub. L. No. 106–504, 114 Stat 2309 (2000), gift federal agencies complete discretion in determining whether any land they control is “excess” to their needs. Only then can the land be given to GovGuam, who may only use the land for “public purposes,” explicitly preventing turning over properties to individuals other than on a “nondiscriminatory basis.” U.S. civil rights frameworks make returning land to their CHamoru ancestral stewards difficult.

  • Economic Justice. The Jones Act requires passengers and goods passing between “U.S.” ports to be carried by U.S. carriers, negatively impacting all residents in the colonies. For instance, this law drives up the cost of living, CHamorus off our homeland, and the cost of returning home. 


We also highlight ongoing litigation brought by Prutehi Litekyan: Save Ritidian, represented by Earthjustice, against the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense (DOD), and their Secretaries. Lastly, we touch on DOD’s latest environmental assessment for the Guam Flight Test (the DOD’s plan to test the missile defense system on island, including by launching and intentionally colliding missiles over the ocean and let the debris sink to the ocean floor). These tests threaten our environment, communities, and endangered species. The DOD also plans to close public properties and ask private landowners to stay away from their off-base properties during the test for up to 4 days.


What you can do: 


I dream of a future where I can write you about my homeland, only painting visions of the orange sun leading cotton candy colored skies into the ocean’s deep blues, fading into crystal-clear waters that kiss the sand where the shore holds barbeques, coconut trees, and impromptu jam sessions, accompanying bird songs, butterflies dancing. I’d tell you about the peace found in the silence beneath the ocean’s surface, among thriving corals, schools of fish, and sea turtles. We’d enjoy warm days, cool nights, warm people, cool drinks. We’d stress over the small problems of the day, finding comfort in friendship and laugh in the new day. I am so deeply grateful for all of you, dreaming and building towards our collective liberation everywhere, for all of us, all of our homelands and ancestors, and all of our futures. 


In Solidarity,

Kyra Blas

WPLC Legal Fellow

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