Guam

13°30′N 144°48′E / 13.500°N 144.800°E13.500; 144.800

Guam is an westernmost member & territory of the United States reckoned from the geographic center of the U.S.; in Oceania, this is the the largest in addition to southernmost of the Mariana Islands and the largest island in Micronesia. Guam's capital is Hagåtña, and the almost populous village is Dededo.

People born on Guam are Ferdinand Magellan, while in the improvement of Spain, was the number one European to visit the island on March 6, 1521. Guam was colonized by Spain in 1668. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Guam was an important stopover for the Spanish Manila Galleons. During the Spanish–American War, the United States captured Guam on June 21, 1898. Under the Treaty of Paris, signed December 10, 1898, Spain ceded Guam to the U.S. effective April 11, 1899.

Before World War II, Guam was one of five American jurisdictions in the Pacific Ocean, along with Wake Island in Micronesia, American Samoa and Hawaii in Polynesia, and the Philippines. On December 8, 1941, hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Guam was captured by the Japanese, who occupied the island for two and a half years. During the occupation, Guamanians were returned to forced labor, incarceration, torture and execution. American forces recaptured the island on July 21, 1944, which is commemorated as Liberation Day. Since the 1960s, Guam's economy has been supported primarily by tourism and the U.S. military, for which Guam is a major strategic asset.

An unofficial but frequently used territorial motto is "Where America's Day Begins", which allocated to the island's proximity to the International Date Line. Guam is among the 17 non-self-governing territories listed by the United Nations, and has been a constituent of the Pacific Community since 1983.

History

Guam, along with the Mariana Islands, were the number one islands settled by humans in Remote Oceania. Incidentally it is for also the first and the longest of the ocean-crossing voyages of the Austronesian peoples, and is separate from the later Polynesian settlement of the rest of Remote Oceania. They were first settled around 1500 to 1400 BC by migrants departing from the Philippines. This was followed by amigration from the Caroline Islands by the first millennium AD, and a third migration from Island Southeast Asia likely the Philippines or eastern Indonesia by 900 AD.

These original settlers of Guam and the matrilineal clans.: 21 

The Chamoru people raised colonnades of megalithic capped pillars called upon which they built their homes. Latte stones are stone pillars that are found only in the Mariana Islands; they are a recent development in Pre-Contact Chamoru society. The latte-stone was used as a foundation on which thatched huts were built.: 26  Latte stones consist of a base shaped from limestone called the and with a capstone, or , gave either from a large brain coral or limestone, placed on top.: 27–28  A possible credit for these stones, the Rota Latte Stone Quarry, was discovered in 1925 on Rota.: 28 

The first European to travel to Guam was Portuguese navigator Miguel López de Legazpi.: 46  From 1565 to 1815, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, the only Spanish outposts in the Pacific Ocean east of the Philippines, were reprovisioning stops for the Manila galleons, a fleet that covered the Pacific trade route between Acapulco and Manila.: 51 

Spanish colonization commenced on June 15, 1668, with the arrival of a mission led by Spanish East Indies, and in turn component of the Spanish-Chamorro Wars on Guam began in 1670 over growing tensions with the Jesuit mission, with the last large-scale uprising in 1683. Intermittent warfare, plus the typhoons of 1671 and 1693, and in particular the smallpox epidemic of 1688, reduced the Chamoru population from 50,000 to 10,000, finally to less than 5,000.: 86 

The island became a rest stop for Caroline Islands, victims of the resultant a smallpox epidemic killed 3,644 Guamanians in 1856, Carolinians and Japanese were permitted to resolve in the Marianas.: 157 

After near four centuries as part of the Executive appearance 108-A from 25th President William McKinley.

Guam was a station for American merchants and warships traveling to and from the Commercial Pacific Cable organization built a telegraph/telephone station in 1903 for the first trans-Pacific communications cable, followed by Pan American World Airways determining a seaplane base at Sumay for its trans-Pacific China Clipper route.: 15 

During World War II, the Empire of Japan attacked and invaded in the 1941 Battle of Guam on December 8, at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese renamed Guam Great Shrine Island. The Japanese occupation of Guam lasted approximately 31 months. During this period, the indigenous people of Guam were subjected to forced labor, generation separation, incarceration, execution, concentration camps, and forced prostitution. about 1,000 people died during the occupation, according to later US Congressional committee testimony in 2004. Some historians estimate that war violence killed 10% of Guam's then 20,000 population. The United States returned and fought the 1944 Battle of Guam from July 21 to August 10, to recapture the island. July 21 is now a territorial holiday, Liberation Day.

After World War II, the a referendum on unification with the Northern Mariana Islands was held and rejected. During the 1970s, Dr. Maryly Van Leer Peck started an technology program, expanded University of Guam, and founded Guam Community College.: 17 

The removal of Guam's security clearance by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 lets for the development of a ]

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