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Geographical Introduction

to Guam

SURFACE AND CONTOUR

Seen from a distance at sea, looking much as Magellan must have found it in 1521, the island of Guam appears fairly even and elevated, a verdant, sprawling land mass some thirty miles long and from four and a half to nine miles wide. On closer marine view, the foaming lines of reefs appear to encircle it, and approaching from the southern leeward shore, the northern reaches ascend to a level plateau several hundred feet high, marked by low hills and woodlands and scrubby savannahs rolling softly along the tilted profile of its tableland.

Toward the south-central area of the island (the narrow "waist") and its approximate middle, there rises a low rounded hill which long ago received the vernacular name of Tiyan, or belly, given it by the aboriginal Chamorros, Guam's indigenous people. From this point south the island widens, deepens into dense, jungled valleys of streams and ferns and savage thickets. These valleys hold the virgin pattern of Guam's flora almost intact. Bats infest the cave-honeycombed walls of these mountain pockets and the southern massif climbs to its highest point at Mount Lamlam in the extreme south, some 1334 feet above sea level, close to the southern coast.

Guam's shape is loose and might resemble different forms to different people as seen from the sea; but from the air it most closely resembles a giant human right footprint pressed down hurriedly on the blue wash of the Pacific, the green heel lying north-northeast and the toe south-southwest.

The northern plateau is not horizontal; it dips down from its vertical coastal cliffs in the north in steppes to the central waist—or arch of the foot. The eastern coast of the southern half is penetrated by a few small and graceful bays—Talofofo, Ylig, Pago, Pauliluc, and Agfayan. These glittering, semi-reef-bound inlets are studded with submerged coral barriers and incapable of receiving safely all but the smallest craft.

On the west coast of Guam's southern half, below the spur of Facpi Point, lie a string of handsome sandy beaches ringed with coconut groves and separated from one another by rocky fingers of coast, thus creating idyllic elbows of placid strand ideal for private picnics and swimming parties. The shallow lagoons are well protected by strong reefs from the open sea, and it is here that Guam's coast is least accessible, yet most calm and attractive.

In contrast, the rugged eastern shores are constantly beaten by a heavy sea, less strenuous during the annual lull of the trade winds and the advent of the humid monsoons, but still prevalent during the greater part of the year. The ocean's floor here is sharp and deep, dropping off outside the immediate area of the extreme southern Marianas from a moderate shelf to a depth of approximately six miles. Vessels have never found safe anchorage along the coast here. In fact, except for San Luis de Apra Harbor, anchorage has often been suicidal, particularly in hurricane season, due to an enormous swell surging around the mass of the island. And even since the American occupation of Guam, ships have been swept out to sea from their moorings and occasionally have been lost during violent storms.

On the southern shore near the extreme lower tip of Guam lies the tiny village of Umatac on Umatac Bay, at the foot of Mount Lamlam. From Magellan's day, this was a favorite anchorage on the run between the Orient and the Americas. A good supply of fresh water was easily obtained in the vicinity, and for mariners the "roadstead of Umatac" in tranquil weather was a pleasant one while awaiting the lightering of supplies from shore. Natural foods were abundant, and hillside springs furnished all the fresh water voyagers could carry.

Later, as Guam became a way point on the frequently harrowing voyage from Acapulco northwest to Manila, the natural basin of San Luis de Apra Harbor was used as the transit port, since it was much closer to the capital of Agaña than remote Umatac and a far safer berth in uncertain weather. However, its full use as a modern port did not come until its extensive dredging and reshaping after World War II. Then it was fully protected by the sturdy and impressive bulk of Glass Breakwater on the northern side of its channel entrance and naturally defended on the southern side by the precipitous Orote Peninsula. With these protections, San Luis de Apra has become a thriving, bulkheaded inner port and outer anchorage, an installation which rivals Pearl Harbor in size and complexity and classes Guam with Samoa as an important Pacific outpost.

The only other harbor of any consequence at Guam is the Agaña Boat Basin—in reality a dredged, bulkheaded enclosing quay, inadequate for berthing anything larger than small private schooners and local fishing craft. This basin lies behind a protecting arm of filled earthen breakwater within a natural reef barrier. At present the port has little commercial value in the absence of an active commercial fishing industry in the Marianas and probably will not be developed until Agaña itself grows again.

Scientist Alexander Agassiz, one of the great modern scientific authorities on the Pacific islands, wrote a description of Guam as he first studied it at the turn of the century, from the decks of the Albatross, an American survey ship. Sighting Guam from the eastern-shore promontory of Point Hanom, Agassiz noted coralliferous limestone terraces in the yellow cliff facing north from Pago Bay which mark the position of the ancient sea and indicate periods of rest during the eon-long phases of the island's evolution. The cliffs of the northern plateau vary from three hundred to five hundred feet in height. Their hurricane-scarred, sea-pocked faces are riddled with crevasses above the shore line, and at a higher level with caverns (some the last refuges of Japanese occupying forces during the siege of 1944), showing where the sea paused at some time to eat away at the island.

North of Point Anao some of the sharp limestone cliffs are even striated with layers of mineral deposit, early evidence of great natural volcanic disturbances and of the entire northern half of the island's being a great raised coral and limestone platform with fillings of eruptive substance: probably a peak—as are the other Marianas—of some great prehistoric submarine mountain range.

Talago "Lookout" Bay, located at the angled and flattened northern tip of the island, is a narrow cliffside beach of sparkling beige sand backgrounded by a strip of lush ferns and flowers set against the cliff itself. Rising out of the comparatively broad reef platform that guards its surf from the swirling deeps offshore are fantastic gnarled horseheads of coral, squatting like primitive idols in the clear surf. These heads extend along the shore line around the entire northern tip of the island and cease only where the southern upper coast begins to taper into a few promontory fingers and small sandy beaches below Ritidian Point. It was from the heights of this superb prominence above the beach that the ancient Chamorros first looked out for vessels coming from the northern islands, and later, from Manila or Acapulco.

To the south of upcurved, four-mile Orote Peninsula (the southern lip of Apra Harbor and a raised, cliff-lined plateau forming an excellent natural lower bulwark for the harbor), a narrow flat reef juts out from the southwest coast at various places into extended spurs of the abrupt volcanic slopes tumbling into the sea. At Merizo Bay—the extreme southern point of Guam—a broad reef projects out into the deep ocean, then turns and reaches eastward around the hook of Aga Point, almost past Agfayan Bay. On an outcropping of this reef, but separated from the main projection by a deep coral-studded channel, lies Cocos Island, about a mile and a half from shore. On this low and sprawling mile-long strip of land is a small Coast Guard station, a stand of coconut palms, and a vivid shore line. Cocos is the largest of the eight tiny islands off the shores of Guam and, with the exception of Cabras Island, is the only one inhabited. In 1949's violent typhoon, waves cut directly across the island, inundating it entirely at one time and leaving a wide swath of destruction across its center.

Small reefs border the shore line north of Agfayan, and an outlet reef encircles the lip of Talofofo Bay, while a long and narrow reef edges the coast line north to upper Pago Bay (where the land has already risen into the beginnings of the northern plateau). The shore line is characterized by the chalky striated cliffs, first described by Agassiz, which rise slowly as they run further north into the awesome limestone masses at Point Anao. From lates to Anao the reef flat runs in close against the shore.

Geologically, the southern half of Guam consists of what Agassiz observed from the Albatross as "a volcanic massif which has burst through the coralliferous limestone," and which at Mount Tenjo, a foliaged prominence just behind Apra Harbor, rises to a precipitous height of more than a thousand feet, and constitutes the furthest western mountainous projection on the island. The volcanic range to which Mount Tenjo and Mount Lamlam belong bursts through again near Agaña and extends southward, parallel to the west coast, at a distance of about a mile inland.

The island's highest point is Mount Lamlam, as mentioned earlier; it was called Humuyong-manglo by the aborigines, or "source of the wind." A rare viewpoint offering an unimpaired vista of the entire island, it lifts its cool green mass and summit above the white-ringed aquamarine crescent of Umatac Bay. Erosion, infertility, and the constant play of trade winds across the mountain's exposed flanks—have led to denudation of forests and left them subject to the ravages of weeds, the ubiquitous tangantangan, and sparse low-growing ironwood trees. The limestone masses which once encased Guam's mountains have to a great degree disappeared through disintegration. The soft material now covering their slopes is held in place only by the overgrowth of short, densely-matted shrubs and small trees; still, there is in a constant process of washing away into the rain-fed streams of the interior valleys, streams that find their way to both coasts.

CLIMATE AND SEASONS

Lying in the heart of the true tropics, Guam is also in the path of the trade winds blowing from northeast and east, down and across the island in the general direction of China. Guam is more humid in climate than Hawaii, more benign than the Philippines. Sparse rains fall in the winter months—from December through March (invierno)—and heavy precipitation occurs in the summer months (verano). Thus the year may be roughly divided into a rainy and a dry season, though this division does not necessarily complement the temperature, for the period of Guam's maximum heat precedes the period of its maximum rainfall.

The winter trade winds are Guam's blessing. In June the blessing is gone, the wind veers away, and by September what is generally known as the "southwest monsoon" clamps down on the island. From September until the winter holidays is frequently a time of heavy and oppressive weather, though the rest of the year is pleasant enough to be termed practically perfect.

Guam's temperature is surprisingly steady, rarely dropping below 70°F., seldom rising above 90°F. However, the relative humidity is often quite high, and if it were not for the sustained freshening effect of the trade winds, the density would be excessive. Seasons will not seem marked to a visitor on Guam, although indigenous inhabitants will point out that certain wasps, which in the summer months make their nests in the open fields, in the winter invade the country and city houses, hibernating under eaves, under bookshelves, in closets and empty boxes, sometimes even in rolled newspapers and open light sockets.

Hurricanes have a season too, although they have been known to visit the island in every season. According to available records however, they appear to have been most frequent during the opposite months of April and November, because mid-ocean low-pressure areas that spawn them occur most often during these months. In April 1949, a high destructive wind of typhoon force swept the island, its tranquil eye lying only a few hundred miles off the western shore. In November 1949, a major typhoon hit the island head-on, with gusts estimated at more than 135 miles per hour. Recording instruments were blown away at this point, and the wind may well have exceeded this speed. The typhoon did several millions of dollars' worth of damage, but no lives were lost, and only two people were injured during the storm.

It is interesting to contrast the above record with that of the first typhoon noted in island archives, occurring on September 8, 1671, in the midst of a small war between the Spaniards and the Chamorros. Described as a "baguio" (high wind) by the natives, it was the most furious ever remembered as striking the island. The eye passed directly over the island, and the wind blew from many different directions in a short time, causing serious damage to Guam's agriculture, which was extremely important to the island in those days. The wind blew down most of the palm-thatched homes in Agaña as well as homes in the other towns of the island, including the houses of the chief insurgents against the Spanish. A great many people were killed by falling debris and inadequate shelter. The storm tore up precious breadfruit trees, coconut palms, and many other food plants, thus not only causing immediate food shortages but assuring them for some time to come. Destroyed also was the hard-built stone church of the industrious Jesuit colonists who were making valiant attempts to Christianize the Marianas. This did little for the prestige of the Jesuits in the eyes of one native makahna (medicine man) who declared that the spirit of the "baguio" was "more peaceful than the God of the Spaniards," since the hurricane swept away their substantial church but did not even touch his flimsy palm hut.

Typhoons, according to reports from 1671 to 1962, have usually been accompanied by heavy rainfall and fluctuating winds—that is, a steady blow with occasional and rhythmic stepped-up gusts. Breadfruit, coconuts, cacao, and tropical fruits are stripped from trees; bananas and plantains have their delicate fronds torn to shreds; shade trees are snapped off or uprooted and often go soaring out to sea on the wind's strength; houses are dislodged and sections fly in all directions. Generally, the windward shore of the island between Pago Bay and Umatac receives the brunt of a typhoon, since these storms usually approach the island from that direction.

In the hurricane of 1949 the windward slopes suffered general denudation, except for deeply crevassed valleys and some protected stands of coconut palms which appeared to be turned inside out. The wind's force blew heavy structures apart with the power of high explosives and tore a heavy steel bridge spanning the mouth of the Ylig River from its anchored cement moorings, carrying it as a unit many yards upstream and leaving it in a still upright position touching both shores of the stream.

Today, with typhoon construction the dominant concern in modern concrete and steel buildings, and with the efficient method of hurricane-hunting devised by the conscientious Air Force command stationed on the island's northern plateau, ample warning is given to the whole Marianas area long before the actual arrival of a typhoon. With proper safety measures taken in advance through the aid of the warning system, damage may be held to a minimum and loss of life eliminated. The fact that the island no longer depends on its small farms and food plants for sustenance has also considerably lessened the danger of the "baguios." In former times wind would so damage the forming coconut flower that no tree on the island would bear until the following year, thus wiping out a possible copra crop and a staple food source for the natives in a few terrifying hours, as well as often ruining whole "livelihood" groves of the trees forever.

Statistics vary on Guam's rainfall, although most opinions agree that there is seldom less than 70 inches of rain a year and in most recorded areas there is often as much as 100 inches or more. Taking the long view, from 90 to 100 inches is about average.

The hilly character of Guam's terrain does not allow rain to collect in any great quantity, even though a particularly harsh storm might bring down several inches of rain in a matter of two or three hours, leaving the lowlands temporarily inundated. By the time the storm has passed on, the sun is steaming the mists away from the coastal shores and most of the sudden rainfall has been swept into the sea, leaving only long red and yellow tendrils of mud reaching from the mouths of the streams into the cobalt sea as a reminder of its visit.

Rainy season covers the spring through autumn months, and generally the December to March period is relatively dry and windlessly oppressive. Good supplies of fresh water, however, have always been plentiful on Guam, and even today, with the population of nearly 70,000, by development of the Fena River Dam Project in the southern mountains, the piping of water to the dry northern savannahs too porous to hold water for themselves, and the miraculous continuance of underground rivers and springs, the supply for a demand greatly increased since aboriginal times is still sustained. The peculiar aspect of the highly porous northern plateau is that it absorbs water as readily as it falls. This makes for light vegetation except in shallow soil pockets where sediment has collected.

Interestingly enough, the northern plateau is a geological oddity—a raised coral platform penetrated in several places by low volcanic outcroppings seen as hills by Agassiz. No metal-yielding deposits of any consequence except layers of iron ore have been found there. There have been some small-scale findings of lignite and flint nodules, though nothing of importance.

In 1902 an earthquake in series raised the general level of the entire island, and although there have been many slight disturbances in the intervening years, none of these have been strong enough to raise the very extensive reef flats of the western coast another foot or two and add them as dry land to the shore line itself, as part of them now are when uncovered by low tides.

Guam's first appointed United States Naval chief, Governor Schroeder, gave the following account of the September 22, 1902 quake:

"The earthquake which occurred at 11:24 a.m. is the severest of which there is any record. From the government house terrace, during its continuance, there could be seen clouds of dust rising suddenly from the different quarters of Agaña as the masonry houses would fall. . . . The earth opened here and there in small places from which water would spout and subside . . . and innumerable fine cracks were observable everywhere. A dull grinding roar preceded and accompanied the shaking of the earth; sure-footed bulls were tripped up and fell to their knees . . . and [church] bells were rung by the vibration. In other parts of the island fissures 1 to 2 feet wide were made, those of Piti emitting strong sulphurous fumes."

Guam, of course, does not stand alone in the Western Pacific. It is the southernmost and largest of a group of fifteen small islands originally named the Ladrones by Magellan, and the largest island in the entire area between Hawaii and the Philippines and New Guinea to Japan. From Guam to the last northern island of the chain the distance is approximately 400 miles, and the combined land area total of all the other Marianas equals the area of Guam itself.

Though remote indeed in the day of Magellan from the rest of the world, today Guam is linked by air, ship, radio, and cable to the outside areas in perpetual contact. At the beginning of the century the island was designated as a way station on the route of the trans-Pacific cable, which is still maintained for communication here. Radio has further secured its inclusion in the world's news front, and even its physical separation from the mid-Pacific islands is no longer important. It lies 5,200 miles from San Francisco, some 3,000 miles from Honolulu, only 1,500 miles from Manila, and 1,300 from Tokyo. These distances mean little today in times of peace.

Most of the Marianas group, named in honor of Maria Anna of Austria, widow of King Philip IV of Spain, who endowed a Jesuit mission school at Agaña in the late 17th century, are habitable islands. Saipan, Rota, Tinian, and Agrihan are handsome emerald paradises, more Oriental than Western, since only Guam among the group was held by the United States previous to the close of World War II. From Guam north to the furthest island called Maug, the scenery is varied and absorbing—from the tableland of 1,600-foot-high Rota with its great horn-skinned iguanas to circular three-mile wide Agrihan with its astonishing central cone rising three thousand feet above the sea. Tinian, only 600 feet high, covers only 32 square miles; its central ridge of billowing hills runs the full length of the island and gives it two distinct climates. Saipan, about 180 square miles, rises 1,500 feet and was the seat of the Japanese government for the mandated islands before World War II. Now it rests in placid agricultural development after its grim service as the Americans' Tokyo B-29 bombing base during the late years of the war.

However, none of the Marianas has either the history of Guam, its booming frontier present, or its bright future. The newest territory of the United States, Guam is also its most distant outpost and, though topographically quite a contrast to the celebrated Hawaiian Islands' exotic commercial opulence, is possessed of an untamed, ageless character completely its own. Gently pressed by the trade winds. with a healthy holiday climate most of the year, and occasionally ravaged by furious typhoons, it nonetheless has all the essential elements of a tropical haven. These elements are its intrinsic interest and the quality which has withstood the hand of many conquerors and the lash of nature.