The wet season can also bring typhoons—called hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean—slamming into Guam.
In the vast Pacific Ocean, Guam lies in the ethnographic area known as Micronesia, the other two areas being Polynesia and Melanesia. These three ethnographic areas make up what is now labeled Oceania. Europeans first called Oceania the South Seas or the South Pacific.
Guam lies astride the principal routes from Hawaii to the Philippine Islands and from Japan to New Guinea. It holds the distinction of being not only the largest island but also the only island with both enough elevation for a protected harbor and enough land for airports. Furthermore, Guam makes up 20 percent of the land area of the 1,045 square miles of Micronesia. It sits astride the northeast trade winds and the north equatorial ocean current, which traverses the Pacific Ocean. This makes it an important area for ships wishing to cross the Pacific from east to west above the equator. These geographical features of Oceania affected the first people of Guam, the Chamorros.16
The first people on Guam came to the island around 2000 BC from Southeast Asia. Interesting artifacts of an ancient culture are the latte stones, said to have been introduced between AD 800 and AD 900, when newcomers arrived in Guam. The stones consist of two parts: the halagi, which is upright and narrows near the top, and the talsa, a hemispheric capstone with the flat side facing upward. The stones are arranged in two straight parallel rows of four to ten stones. Debate continues as to what these stones represent, but many researchers believe they held up wooden houses. Below the structure and within the stones, gravesites were found. These graves were thought to strengthen “the bond between the ancestors of village families, the living people and their homes.” The last of the structures was built in the sixteenth century and perhaps stood into the eighteenth century.17
Guam’s geographical location eventually proved fatal for its ancient society. The society’s downfall began when Charles I of Spain sent the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan on a voyage in search of the Spice Islands. Magellan and his three ships departed Spain on 10 August 1519, and by 1520 they had entered the Pacific. Theirs was the first known voyage from the Atlantic into the Pacific. On 6 March 1521 the vessels approached Guam, which became the first inhabited island in the Pacific seen by those of the West. It was not until 1559 that Philip II of Spain ordered Miguel Lopez de Legazpi to take possession and colonize the Marianas. The next major event in the Western intrusion into Guam was on 15 June 1668, when the galleon San Diego arrived at the island. It brought Jesuit missionaries, led by Padre Diego Luis de San Vitores, to introduce Christianity and develop trade. The Spanish taught the Chamorros to cultivate maize, raise cattle, and tan hides and introduced them to Spanish dress, language, and culture. After the establishment of Christianity, the church became the focus of every village. Guam soon became the port of call for the important Spanish galleon route that crossed the Pacific Ocean from Mexico to the Philippines.18
Chief Quipuha, the leader in the area where San Diego put the Jesuits ashore, welcomed the newcomers. He allowed himself to be baptized and granted the land on which the first Catholic church, the Dulce Nombre de Maria (Sweet Name of Mary), was erected in 1669. Not all on Guam proceeded smoothly, however. When Father San Vitores arrived on the island, the Chamorro population stood at an estimated 12,000. Twenty-two years later, the Chamorro population numbered only 2,000. In 1671 a series of engagements began the Spanish-Chamorro Wars. Professor Robert F. Rogers of Guam noted that the drastic reduction of the native population came from a combination of “war, deprivation, diseases, disease-induced infertility, societal demoralization, and, finally, epidemics, all caused by the Spanish invasion.” The Spanish losses numbered between 118 and 128 men, among them Father San Vitores in 1672.19
Spanish rule continued until 21 June 1898. On that date U.S. troops captured Guam in a bloodless landing during the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Treaty of Paris ended the brief conflict and ceded to the United States the island of Guam. Not long after the American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan and others looked on Guam as the United States’ “Gibraltar” in the Pacific. The island became an important part of America’s War Plan Orange, a pre–World War II plan devised in case of war against Japan. Despite its strategic location, Congress failed to fortify the island.20
By the time McKenna reported to Gold Star in 1933, the Navy had governed Guam for more than three decades. Because the governor himself was a Navy man, “no navy man could come into Agana out of uniform, and [Capt. George A.] Alexander even ordered the natives to wear a coat and tie in Agana. . . . [H]e finally compromised on Sundays only.” Mac observed “older natives would get off the road and stand at attention, hat in hand, when a naval officer passed. . . . It was something they had learned under the Spaniards and they insisted on doing it.”21
From 1933 to 1937 McKenna found “only a couple of hundred Americans” on the island, “including Marines.” A “few narrow roads” could handle “only a dozen or so cars and trucks.”22
One of the traditions of naval service for a young sailor beginning an apprenticeship in enlisted engineering was being assigned the dirty and least desirable tasks. Higher-rated firemen and petty officers used this system to help them evaluate the work of the new firemen. One of the more unpleasant of these unenviable tasks involved the ship’s boilers. So that Gold Star’s Scotch boilers performed at peak efficiency, their insides required periodic chipping and cleaning of the carbon. Known as “cleaning firesides,” this task required firemen to enter through a narrow access hole and work at chipping and scraping in a dark claustrophobic environment. McKenna’s unfinished autobiographical novel, The Sons of Martha, contains a long section about cleaning firesides, a sure indication Mac performed the task at least once while serving as a fireman 3rd class in Gold Star, probably after he had returned from his first trip in 1933.23
McKenna learned from a senior fireman that he would start cleaning firesides the following day. The fireman told Mac to report for duty wearing his oldest white uniform and white hat, as they would be useless after he had finished with his assignment. McKenna asked if it was a dirty job.
“Hah! You got no idea! But it’s more than the dirt and it’s more than the work. It gets you another way the first time.” The fireman wanted to warn Mac, thinking it might be easier for him if he understood the work. “It gets inside you and underneath of you someway,” said the fireman. “The first time I cleaned firesides I thought I was gonna die in there.”
The senior fireman had not exaggerated. After the boiler’s tubes had been cleaned, McKenna had to enter his assigned section of the furnace (the furnace itself, of course, was turned off) through a small access hole into the combustion chamber. Mac found soot piled thigh deep in the chamber. For illumination he carried a small electric light that was pitifully inadequate. His work stirred up the soot, which covered him in blackness and made it almost impossible to see anything. The senior fireman had not softened the work’s effects on the sailor. The darkness, closeness, and soot seemed to penetrate Mac. He wanted to run. Instead he retched. Gaining control of himself, the new fireman began bagging the soot and sending it out the access way so that it could be moved away from the ship.
McKenna next turned to wire brushing the tubes. This was the most difficult task, as it required both chipping and scraping, much like removing paint. The sailor broke down the work into small squares. He fantasized that the squares were a new land, and he the explorer. In his mind the square patches of corrosion became a homestead. As each bit of the square of corrosion peeled away, the homestead was cleared of trees, the land was plowed, and crops were planted. Again, McKenna moved the scraper across the square. He now had built a fantasy log house and rail fences.
Finally finished with his labors, McKenna found himself “absolutely black.” His knees and elbows were rubbed raw, the “raw flesh . . . more black than red.”24
During his first year in Guam, Mac found some diversion ashore on the island. His scrapbook has a notice about an enlisted men’s dance on 24 October 1933 at the recreation hall of the Marine barracks in Guam. As there has always been friction between Marines and sailors, Mac