U.s. Relations And End The Cold War

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President Obama 's efforts to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations and end the Cold War in our hemisphere have captured scores of headlines worldwide--and for good reason. It was an ineffective policy that was even losing power as a partisan tactic. But the success in Cuba begs the question of why the U.S. government still refuses to end World War II on the island of Guam, a U.S. territory for over a century.

The little known story of Guam 's experience before and after World War II illuminates what is wrong with American policy toward the U.S. territories. This is a policy that bluntly states that unincorporated territories like Guam legally "belong to, but are not part" of the United States and its citizens cannot vote for the president
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Subsequently, from 1899 to 1941, the president of the United States appointed Navy officers to serve as governors and oversea the construction of naval facilities.

Although clearly undemocratic, the Navy justified military government by asserting that while the native people of Guam, the Chamorros, were "becoming more like Dad (Uncle Sam) every day," they were not mature enough to become American citizens and were therefore safest under U.S. martial rule. In the words of former Navy secretary Claude A. Swanson: "these simple people have not yet reached a state of development commensurate with the personal independence, obligations and responsibilities of United States citizenship." To become citizens, concluded Swanson, "would be most harmful to the native people."

Ironically, when the time came to defend Guam from imminent Japanese attack, the U.S. evacuated the wives and children of their (white) military dependents but left Chamorro families to fend off for themselves. Not lost on Chamorros, Guam--the only occupied U.S. territory in the Pacific--was the first island to be invaded by the Japanese and the last to be liberated by the United States. If the American forces had arrived only a few days later, the Japanese claim that "they would find only flies," may have come to pass. By the time that the U.S. military landed on July 21, 1944, the Imperial Army had killed nearly 10% of Guam 's population via
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