Vanessa and Amy wearing Carolinian "mwaars "on Saipan

Chamorro girls at Umatac's Discovery Day reenactment

Newly-opened Beach at Guam's Ritidian Point

Apra Harbor interpretive sign at War in the Pacific Memorial Park on Guam

Amy interviews Lino Olopai at the Saipan McDonald's

Amy, CNMI Gov. Juan Babauta, Vanessa, & CNMI Congresswoman Gloria Cabrera

Carmen Gaskins and garment worker at Hanae Co. factory

Hafa Adai to all!

April 4, 2002

We returned last week from a whirlwind, experience-packed, incredibly successful month-long research trip to the Mariana Islands in Micronesia (specifically Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands). Due to the generosity of Vanessa's dear friend Bob Kendrick, we received a seed grant through WLIW in Long Island, NY which enabled us to take this first trip, as well as a research trip to Hawai'i for 7-10 days, which we hope to make in late April. We have been chosen as semi-finalists for a Film Arts Foundation Development Grant, and we are waiting to hear from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as several private foundations. We have applied for these grants to cover the costs of a similar research trip to American Samoa in late summer/early fall, as well as our production trips over the winter. We're still not sure how we're going to get this project funded, but we are more convinced than ever that get it done we will!

In fact, over the past month, no matter how tired we were, no matter how overwhelmed by the cultural and political intricacies of a new environment, no matter how desperate for an afternoon off to go snorkel in the turquoise waters we kept seeing from our rental car window, neither of us ever had a doubt that we were doing the right thing. The positive experiences we had in the Marianas were only possible because of the support, help, and encouragement we received from the people we met along the way - Chamorro, Carolinian, Filipino, haole (not really a derogatory term in this context - more of a mere descriptor), or from elsewhere, everyone (EVERYone) was helpful. These communities want this project to get done; they are tired of not receiving attention or respect from the mainland U.S. population and government, and enthusiastic about the possibility of seeing their stories on public TV. So, for them, we will make it happen.

We arrived on Guam late in the night on February 25th. We had a hotel reservation by the airport, a few contacts made already, and a few appointments set up, but we really were not sure what we were getting ourselves into. In fact, we were a bit incredulous that we had made it happen at all, standing on the airport curb at 1 am, in 80 degree air during a tropical rain. We had not even brought umbrellas!

We quickly became immersed in our work, however, after a productive trip to the Guam Visitor's Bureau (which landed us a home-stay arrangement with Herta Laguana, a German woman who married a Chamorro military man in the 1950s, one of whose daughters is now the GVB marketing rep), and a fortuitous run-in with Keith Camacho, a Chamorro Ph.D. student from the University of Hawai'i who is writing his dissertation on war memories on Guam (right up our alley and a sweet guy to boot!). From there things took off - we met with Chamorro rights activists, University of Guam professors and students, the curator of the War in the Pacific National Historic Park, Herta Laguana's family members (who are trying to regain their family lands which were taken by the U.S. military in the wake of WWII), cultural performers (at a reenactment of Magellan's discovery of Guam, which is really a celebration of Chamorro survival and village hospitality), traditional sea navigators, the Historic Preservation Officer and his staff, the director of Guam's public television station, the Guam Humanities Council's program officer, and... the list goes on.

Guam is a disconcerting and vibrant mix of the military, the commercial, the global, and the fiercely local. It is a high-class haven for Japanese tourists, a bastion of U.S. military power, a diverse, well-traveled and educated global society, an indigenous culture heavily influenced by the traditions of Spanish Catholicism, home of the "world's biggest K-mart," and an island that has been outright occupied for hundreds of years. Since the start of the naval administration after the Spanish-American War in 1899, the U.S. military and U.S. Congress have consistently denied Chamorros on Guam the right to self-determination. Our last interview, with Robert Underwood - Guam's non-voting representative to the U.S. Congress - made this point abundantly clear. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it - if Congress were to grant Guam the right to self-determination, it would open an unwelcome can of worms concerning all of America's overseas "possessions," not to mention the U.S. military and its overweening power. So Guam remains in limbo, one of the few remaining colonies left on earth, with no sign of things changing in the foreseeable future.

Guam is an enigma in many ways - incredibly unique, disturbing, and comfortingly familiar at the same time. It has come to be known as the (military) "supermarket of the pacific," the "stripmall" or the "New York City" of Micronesia. As Americans we are used to 6-lane roads and fast food joints, but on a 215 square mile island in the middle of the Pacific?! The landscape of Guam is haunted by uprooted indigenous ancestors, by world war devastation (bomb-shattered, bulldozed glass is still washing up on its shores), by the shadows of what might have been in the absence of military dependence. But it remains a proud, generous, and resilient place, and we cannot wait to go back.

After these two incredible weeks on Guam (during which we shot 7 hours of footage), we got on an airplane to Saipan, in the CNMI. Our good friend Lela Getzler has been clerking for one of the CNMI's Supreme Court Justices for the past year, so we had a comfortable, hospitable place to stay.

The CNMI truly defies verbal description -- its complexity, quite frankly, makes Guam pale in comparison. As on Guam, Spanish missionaries and soldiers arrived in the Northern Mariana Islands - Rota,Tinian, Saipan, and the far northern islands - in the late 1600s. Unlike Guam, the northern islands were cleared of their indigenous population soon thereafter. Except for a handful of families on Rota, the few Chamorros who managed to survive war and European diseases were transplanted to Guam in the early years of the 1700s. Then, in the 1810s, Saipan was settled by Carolinian Islanders escaping an earthquake in their home island in southern Micronesia, laying the basis for a thriving Carolinian community in the CNMI. Starting in the late-nineteenth century, Chamorros were permitted to return, and shortly thereafter, the islands were sold to Germany. Fifteen years after that, they were taken by the Japanese, and in World War II they were captured by the Americans. So today in the CNMI there are several different islands, two indigenous groups, the legacies of four colonial powers (Spain, Germany, Japan, and the United States), three United States periods to contend with (the naval administration period (1945-1950), the strategic Trust Territory Period (1945-1976), and the Commonwealth period (1976 to the present)), a clique of haole expats, experts, and lawyers - some more integrated into the community than others -- over 50,000 Micronesian, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Vietnamese (etc). non-resident foreign workers, and an incredibly unique and vulnerable political and economic situation. You probably get the point.

Saipan, in particular, has been the focus of much recent international and Congressional attention. Its garment industry was designed to take advantage of the unique relationship between the CNMI and the U.S., but in the last few years the industry's labor practices have wrought the ire of human rights groups and caught the attention of the US Congress. In order to encourage the development of viable industries and to raise the standard of living for the indigenous population, the CNMI was allowed to set its own wage and immigration laws. This system led to abuses on the part of (foreign-controlled) employers and factory managers in the late 80s and 90s. Several "exposé" documentary pieces have been produced about the situation, by 20/20, 60 Minutes, the BBC, and Oprah's Oxygen Media Network. Unfortunately, none of those pieces critically examined the historical, political, and economic context in which these events could occur, assessed the reforms implemented as a result of the controversy, or bothered to talk to locals about the situation (none of whom would fail to admit, at this point, that there were and still are abuses). We hope to remedy this treatment in our series, and in the process to examine the bizarre and troublesome position of the CNMI's relationship with the U.S. federal government, and what the future might hold for the Commonwealth's fragile economy.

In addition to conducting historical research and "scouting" at the CNMI Museum of History and Culture, the Northern Marianas College archives, the Historic Preservation Office, and the Office of Ageing (otherwise known as the Man'amko Center), we also talked with the new Governor of the CNMI, the head of the Carolinian Affairs office, the Chamorro "resident manager" for one of Saipan's factories (as well as two of her workers, from China and Sri Lanka - not enough, but a start), a number of individuals who either negotiated the terms of, or took an active part in campaigning and education surrounding, the "Covenant" - the 1976 CNMI/US agreement. We also talked with a CNMI Congresswoman, a hearing officer for the Department of Labor & Immigration (who is a documentary filmmaker as well), the first female member of the CNMI Legislature (who is also a women's and Carolinian rights activist), a notable local businessman/engineer, and numerous "lay people" (including a little league baseball team) -- all with their own thoughts, feelings, and hopes for the CNMI's future.

We also traveled to the smaller islands of Rota and Tinian, whose leaders are struggling in other creative ways to develop economically viable possibilities for their future. In one of the more surreal and extraordinary turns of events while we were "on island," the Mayor of Rota met with officials from the "Global Country of World Peace," in the hopes of establishing a "University of Peace" on the island. Intriguing, to say the least - but that's the CNMI, and that's Rota - so stay tuned and we will try to fill in the wacky, ever-astounding details! On Tinian, we met with an American ex-pat historian, the island's Mayor, and the heads of the local Gaming Commission. When the U.S. reneged on its negotiated promise to build a military base on Tinian (but still refused to give up its long-term lease of 2/3 of the island), the people turned to casinos. The island is now home to the Tinian Dynasty Hotel & Casino, where we stayed courtesy of both the hotel and the mayor. Tame by Las Vegas standards, the Dynasty may be owned by some people in Hong Kong, may be owned by the People's Republic of China - we still have to do some digging on that! The point is that, whatever your opinion of gambling, Tinian really is trying to make the best of a not-so-great situation. Both the mayor and the Gaming Commission were ardent activists against the Covenant agreement - neither wanted to give up so much of their island (to which the U.S. had resettled them in 1946 -- but that is another story!). And while we were on Tinian, so were 1000 Marines who had dropped in for training, prohibiting access to the entire undeveloped northern portion of the island. Luckily we pulled some strings and got ourselves on the temporary "base" to take footage of WWII and Japanese-era relics -- occasionally turning a corner to find handfuls of Marines testing out their equipment, roaming around in tanks, or engaging in playful hand-to-hand combat -- on land that to most Tinianese is off-limits. And this despite the fact that Tinian has some of the richest agricultural land in the Western Pacific, which could be a huge boon for CNMI sustainability.

In the end we shot 15 hours of footage, took 1200 digital photos (stay tuned - we'll have some of them up here soon!), brought home hours of archival film and video material, amassed about 20 new books (many of them generously donated by Scott Russell), and, most importantly, we made lots of new friends. Needless to say there are umpteen stories on these small islands which we could follow and develop - all of which are worthy of documentary treatment and a place on national public TV. Yet we also found on our trip that the issues we had been researching were in fact issues crucial to the people who call these islands home. The people of the Marianas are U.S. citizens about whom most Americans know nothing. We haven't even begun to describe what they went through during and after WWII - the stories are more powerful, more sorrowful than you can imagine. Suffice for now to say that their lives were devastated, their homes destroyed and lost, their futures suddenly to be determined by the most powerful nation in the world. But they have struggled, and they have survived, and it is about time we started to notice. For that reason, and for these people - who were generous beyond imagination, welcoming beyond our hopes - we have to finish this series. So on to American Samoa (where everything will surely be different), and umpteen new stories and many new friends!!

Si Yu'us Ma'ase (thank you), and please wish us luck!

Amy and Vanessa