GUAM Experience

Guam -- Tropical Island Living Can Change Your Mindset

View of Tumon Bay from the Southwestern end of the beach looking towards Two-Lover's Leap and the Northeastern part of the bay.

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Folks sometimes ask me what it's like to live on Guam... well, it's tough to describe--you really have to experience it yourself to really understand! Once you have lived there, you'll always have a different view of the world! To get some idea of what it's like, check out all of my other Squidoo lenses... because each lens (almost all of them) has some aspect of Guam--or the aspect of having lived there thus resulting in a "different viewpoint"--illustrated on them. Almost all of the photos I have used in my Squidoos have been from my time on Guam.

It was an adventure to take off from the U.S. mainland and fly almost 7,000 miles to the west to the island of Guam. When my family did this (and I was only 13 at the time), we were flying to the "great unknown".

Of course, for my Dad, it was like "retracing his steps"--because he had been here under different circumstances 25 years before. When my dad had been on Guam the first time, he had come by ship--a ship called an "LST--landing ship transport". The ship was full of sailors and Marines and they were in the process of storming the beaches during World War II.

Dad had travelled all over the Pacific from 1941 through 1945. Names such as Kwajalein, Majuro, Eniwetok, Pohnapei, Truk, Yap, Palau, Guadalcanal, Anguar, Saipan, Tinian, Rota, Iwo JimaChichi Jima, Okinawa, Leyte, Luzon, and of course, Guam, had been hastily mentioned in many of his conversations and stories about his time in the Navy.

Now, our family was taking the plunge and we were all flying there to live. Mom and Dad were public school teachers--English teachers--and they had just signed up with the Government of Guam Department of Education to teach on Guam for a two-year contract.

Guam is a U.S. territory... so after you see some of the major differences, you can almost imagine it like what Hawaii was 20 years earlier. When we arrived on the island, there were no hotels (well, maybe two or three, but they weren't what one would expect to be hotels).

Many of the hotels started popping up on the popular beaches starting in 1969. The first big one along Tumon Bay was the Fujita--a converted apartment complex. Then came the Guam Hilton. Then trailing closely came the Continental, the Dai-Ichi, the Suehiro, the Tumon Sands Plaza, and the Okura. Overlooking much of the north end of the island was the Cliff Hotel.

Guam was becoming more cosmopolitan. Yet, in the southern mountainous area of the island, the traditional Pacific Islander ways were still respected and followed. The jungles (fondly called "boonies") were so thick that a Japanese Straggler Shoichi Yokoi managed to hide there for 28 years after the war. Click on his name to see his amazing story.

My family was on Guam when Yokoi-san came out of the boonies. It was an adventure for us to be living on an island where real-Robinson-Crusoe events were happening.

One of Our First Homes on Guam.... Notice the Bananas in the Backyard .. and a Barbeque Fire Going!

Guam: The Island Life--After Living Overseas, One Will Never Be The Same

Photo: View of Cetti Bay from the roadside overlook.

The island, the culture, the languages, the people. All a fascinating kaleidoscope of experiences and images.

Click here to see some more Glimpses of Guam!

Some of the sights we saw on Guam gave us a lot to think about. Some of our fellow teacher friends and their families lived in a Quonset Hut--this strange-looking building was made of corrugated, galvanized steel and looked like half a culvert laid on its side in the boonies. To prevent typhoons from taking off with the building, cables were strung across the top and bolted to concrete anchors that had been poured into the ground on both sides of the structure. The interior of the Quonset had this soft rounded look that was neat... but you had to be careful standing up if you were near the sides, because you could risk cracking your head on the "low wall/ceiling". With its louvres in the side panels open to allow a tropical breeze to flow through, a Quonset hut viewed at night from the boonie road would put off an inviting glow. (Of course, if it was the season for termites to be flying, this "inviting glow" wasn't something that was really desirable.)

Alas, after my 12 years on the island and a bunch of "super-typhoons", by the time I left the island, most of the Quonset Huts and other non-concrete buildings had "gone with the wind"... and were very rare on the island. I'm sure that even fewer are there now--with each passing typhoon, pieces fly away.

Sunset View of Tumon Bay, West Side of Central Guam

Guam--Views with Music!

I Love Guam!

Terrific sunsets, fantastic people ~ A Summer of Fun in Guam ~

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