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226 Cha­ mor­ ro Politics, American Acculturation The election of Carlos Camacho in 1970 was the first occasion in Guam’s postcontact history wherein the people of the island chose their own chief executive of government. Guam was thus internally self-governing to a large degree but still fell short of United Nations criteria of full self-government. Because the people of the island did not vote on either the 1950 Organic Act or the 1968 Elective Governor Act, Guam remained a colony (or a neo-colony, according to some commentators) of the United States. Much of what remained of the customs of the traditional Cha­ mor­ ro culture—such as the language, marriages, family ties, and retention of land, all known as kustumbren Chamoru—were being altered by Americanization, by development, and by tourism. The use of pattera midwives decreased dramatically after World War II, as did the tradition of informal adoption of children by godparents and other family members (called poksai in Cha­mor­ro) as more and more families lived in separate houses after marriage. A cultural watershed was passed when by the 1970s English replaced Cha­ mor­ ro as the main language in a majority of island homes. The American presence permeated the island with music, words, and images. Protestant denominations , including Episcopalians, Seventh-Day Adventists , Lutherans, and Mormons, established churches and schools on Guam in the postwar decades, reducing Catholicism’s predominance somewhat. Large-scale shortwave radio transmitters erected in the south of Guam broadcast multilingual Protestant missionary messages to the Asian mainland. In 1970, KGTF, a member of the Public Broadcast System, joined KUAM as Guam’s second local television station. With several radio and television stations broadcasting daily, the American cultural embrace of Guam tightened. It was in the early 1970s that a surrealistic last event of World War II took place on Guam when Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi, the final Japanese straggler , was found in January 1972 in the jungle inland from Talofofo. He had lived in a concealed, deep and roomy hole he had dug and had survived largely on boiled federico nuts and on fish and shrimp that he trapped in streams. He made his own clothes and traps from palm fibers. Yokoi returned to Japan a celebrity. He wrote a book, married, and revisited Guam several times as a man respected for his incredible fortitude. While this final footnote to World War II was taking place on Guam, in Washington, D.C., Won Pat (called “Pat” there but “Tony” on Guam) had become a close associate of Congressman Phillip Burton , an energetic California Democrat on the powerful House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee CHAPTER 14 Ocean Chrysalis 1970–1980 Ocean Chrysalis 1970–1980 227 who became chair of the Interior Subcommittee on Trusts and Territories. Republicans called him the “Godfather of the Pacific.” He pushed through P.L. 92-271 in April 1972—over Interior Department objections—which established official delegates for Guam and the Virgin Islands in the Congress with two-year terms. Won Pat won the November 1972 elections for the official position and took his seat in the House of Representatives in January 1973. Although sweet for the islanders, this victory for the two territories in gaining official representation did not significantly alter the neo-colonial political status of the islands since neither of the new insular delegates had voting rights on the floor. They could, however, vote in committees, a power the delegates used to the hilt to help their constituents in the years ahead as they built up seniority in the Congress. Won Pat was reelected every two years, often without challengers, until 1984. On Guam in the meantime, the Camacho-Moylan administration was focusing on the new scope of local political and economic authority opened up by Guamanian control of the island’s executive branch after 1970. The island was still dependent on the navy for electric power. The problem was that power generation was barely adequate to meet both the military demand and the needs of the ever-growing private sector. To assure its own supply of electricity , the navy held on to the old power plant at Piti and to its new plant at Tanguisson (constructed by the navy in the 1960s) as well as its emergency generators . To manage civilian power needs, Camacho and the Ninth Guam Legislature created the GPA (Guam Power Authority) in 1968. Electricity nonetheless remained inadequate, and a power crisis occurred in 1970–1971. Frustrated, Governor Camacho...

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