‘At the Tip of the Spear’: Guam Residents on U.S.-North Korea Tensions
We’re patriotic Americans and love our military, and we’re happy to be home to U.S. military bases — much like other American cities with U.S. bases —
but we’re mainly just regular Americans like Americans who live in Phoenix or Albuquerque.
"Never gave it a thought that a small island, that most people don’t even know where it is, would be caught in the middle of something like this — now we are."
Leiana S. A. Naholowa’a, 41, is a university instructor who studies Chamorro, the Spanish-influenced language of Guam’s native people, and its literature.
Judith Mosley, 61, a small-business owner in Barrigada, Guam, said
that she was praying that the worst would not come to pass, but pointed out that it was the people of South Korea who were at the gravest risk: "Never has there been a situation of two mentally unstable leaders, with fragile egos bringing the world to the brink of a third world war.
But our spirits feel brighter and more alert, people simultaneously distracted and considerate, and no American nonveteran will really know this feeling unless they’ve lived in a war zone
that any day could be bombed." Harry B. Blalock, 56, is from Michigan but has lived on Saipan, one of the Northern Mariana Islands, for 21 years.
Michael A. Pangelinan, 47, a lawyer who lives in Dededo, in the north of the island, was one of many
Guamanians who expressed frustration about how little their home was understood by Americans.
