Guam: The America that Americans forget
The usual lies and distortions that we expect from the <i>Times</i>. Just some examples:<p>&gt;In 1893, Americans overthrew the monarchy in Hawaii, then later annexed the island.<p>A committee of native-born Hawaii citizens, Americans, and Europeans overthrew the monarchy, not the US government. The US didn&#x27;t annex Hawaii until the Spanish War in 1898 demonstrated the islands&#x27; importance to the US.<p>&gt;a series of Supreme Court rulings called the Insular Cases that began in 1901, five years after the court allowed “separate but equal” segregation&quot;<p>The Insular Cases had absolutely nothing to do with <i>Plessy v. Ferguson</i>. The latter is no longer the law of the land; the former still are.<p>&gt;Though some CHamoru tried to fight the Japanese, the overwhelming narrative holds that American soldiers were the saviors of Guam. Every year on July 21, the island shuts down for the Liberation Day Parade, a grand military procession down Marine Corps Drive to mark the anniversary of Uncle Sam’s return.<p>This and the following paragraph makes it sound like Guam&#x27;s residents have been brainwashed into thinking that American soldiers were not, in fact, the saviors of Guam.<p>&gt;The country wasn’t colloquially referred to as “America” until 1898.<p>This is so, so, so wrong that I can&#x27;t even sputter about it.<p>Small islands are either part of bigger countries, or are protected by them. There is no alternative. One does not have to like it to accept it as the only realistic outcome. If Guam were not American, it would today be a Chinese possession with the entirety of its surface area garrisoned. Without the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in the Pacific War, the Japanese rapes of native Guamian women would have continued forever.