Fanhasso i Taotao Sumay: displacement, dispossession and survival in Guam

Abstract

This thesis explores experiences of displacement, dispossession, and survival as told by the people of Sumay - a pre-World War II village in southern Guam that was destroyed during the Japanese invasion of the island and seized by the U.S. military in its recapture of Guam to begin construction of the present-day Naval Base Guam. Prior to the war, Sumay had grown significantly between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries becoming the commercial, employment, travel, and communications hub of Guam. Nonetheless, the history of Sumay and its people has been nearly forgotten in written accounts and overshadowed by more popular wartime histories. Issues of Chamorro agency, transforming social identities, and history and memory are explored to shed light on the eviction of the Sumay people from their home village and their eventual exile to a newly developed site known today as Santa Rita village. Similar histories throughout Micronesia are considered putting Sumay and Guam into broader regional, historical, and thematic contexts.