Mr. DE LUGO. Thank you very much for those words, Mr. Blaz, on behalf of the people of Guam.

I want to call to the witness table now a great leader in the movement for Commonwealth and a great friend of this committee, Governor Joseph Ada. Governor Ada is appearing not only as the Governor of Guam but Chairman of the Commission on Guam SelfDetermination.

It is a pleasure to have you before this subcommittee. I want to thank you again for your hospitality that you have extended so many times to us as we have visited with you in Guam. It has been a pleasure always, and again, thank you for the thoughtfulness and the help you have extended to my people during hurricane Hugo. Welcome, and without objection your statement will be made a part of the record. You may proceed as you wish on behalf of the people of Guam.

STATEMENT OF GOV. JOSEPH F. ADA, CHAIRMAN, GUAM
COMMISSION ON SELF-DETERMINATION

Governor ADA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Congressman Ben Blaz, Congressman Fuster, Congressman Faleomavaega, Congressman Akaka, Congresswoman Saiki, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, the people of Guam, young and old, come today as friends. And as friends, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for giving the people of Guam this chance to speak before your distinguished committee on the historic occasion. This committee contains many friends of Guam, and has often championed the causes of our people. We are confident you will continue to champion our dreams in the future.

Today we are here taking the first step to change the un-American relationship the Federal Government maintains with what are called "unincorporated territories," but what are in fact colonies of the United States. And may I say the time has come to end this illusion.

Guam is called an unincorporated territory only to save the Federal Government the embarrassment of calling it what it truly is. Unincorporated territory is a meaningless word, a PR creation.

By any definition of the word, Guam is a colony. In the late 1600s, it was a Spanish colony. In 1898, it became an American colony. It is a colony today. But it must be a colony no longer.

We have always had an abiding affection for the American people, and the promise of what America represents.

Our emotional and sentimental ties are strong. For the sake of those ties, Guam has always been a faithful supporter and friend of the American government.

In World War I and World War II, our men died fighting under the American flag, preserving democracy throughout the world. While back home, the Guamanian people were ruled by a U.S. naval officer, without even the pretense of democracy.

In the Korean War and in Vietnam, we fought and died alongside you to give people the opportunity for self-determination, an opportunity that our own people had not been given, and for that matter, still have not been given.

What greater proof of our friendship can be made than to shed so much blood with you, side by side and willingly, against common enemies. When the chips were down for America, Guam has always been there, ready to pitch in and do more than its share to the last full measure.

During the Vietnam conflict, while other communities provided protesters, we provided soldiers. The American military has taken one-third of our very small island.

If there is anything left to be done to show how much affection we have for America in spite of the uneven treatment of 100 years, then we cannot imagine what it could be.

We were among the first people to fall under America as a prize of war in our part of the world. But in the last 20 years, we have seen almost all of our Pacific brothers and sisters realize their dreams of self-determination.

The island colonies of the British have received independence. The island dependencies administered by Australia and New Zealand have achieved political status goals.

In some cases, they are freely associated states, while retaining citizenship with the larger country, as in the case of the Cook Islands, which are freely associated and self-governing, while their people retain New Zealand citizenship.

Even islands administered by the United States have achieved status goals. The Marshalls have achieved their political status goals, as have our cousins in Micronesia. Even our fellow Chamorros in the Northern Marianas have achieved a new political status. We, the people of Guam, we who were first are last.

It is painful to see this. It hurts to know that the reward for so many years of devotion and friendship is to be overlooked, to be ignored, to be taken for granted. It hurts to know that the blood of our sons, and the tears of their mothers, cried in grief and anguish, have been incapable of winning for us the liberty they fought to gain for others.

How could this be? Why have those dependent areas that the United States calls unincorporated territories, islands like Guam and American Samoa and the Virgin Islands, why have they been given so many material things by the United States over the years but denied the expression of that gift so great it can only be given by God Almighty, the right to self-rule? Is there any reason to fear giving your most steadfast and true friends in the western Pacific self-government?

Because that, ladies and gentlemen, is all that Commonwealth for Guam is about, self-government for the people of Guam for the first time in more than 350 years.

Political status is for us an attempt to resolve the unresolved question, to right a wrong that has yet to be righted, a wrong that occurred more than 350 years ago. This is nothing less than a quest to restore self-dignity and self-rule for our people, who for 350 years have been ruled by governments they do not elect, governments they do not choose.

First, you must know that our people have lived in the island of Guam for thousands of years. Before there was a Roman Empire, our people were one with Guam. Before the flowering of the Golden Age of Greece, our people were there, for 1,000 years before

Christ was born. We have a history and traditions far older than the Constitution, the Magna Carta, older than what Americans call the Old World.

Our people lost their self-government in the late 1600's, when the Spanish established their first permanent settlement in Guam. In the beginning, the people of Guam accepted the newcomers in a friendly manner, but as the invaders' demands grew unbearable, our people resisted. For almost 40 years, our people resisted.

In 1720, the last of our warriors fell on the island of Managaha. Self-government died for us on that day. It has never been restored. In the 40 years of struggle, a struggle for liberty against a conqueror, our people died by the thousands, from disease, by iron and steel, by the deadly weapons the Spanish used against our men, our women and our children.

When the Spanish first came, 100,000 of our people lived in peace, according to their ancient laws and traditions. In less than 40 years, 95 percent of us were destroyed, our people reduced to about 4000 survivors.

Like any struggle for freedom, the Spanish-Chamorro wars produced heroes. One such man was Hurao, a chief among our people in the year 1670, at the beginnings of the struggle. His words to his warriors, prior to battle, were committed to posterity by a Jesuit priest.

Among other things, Chief Hurao said: "The Spanish reproach us because of our poverty, ignorance and lack of industry. But if we are poor, as they tell us, then what do they search for here?

If they didn't have need of us, they would not expose themselves to so many perils and make such great efforts to establish themselves in our midst. For what purpose do they teach us except to make us adopt their customs, to subject us to their laws, and to remove the precious liberty left to us by our ancestors?"

Hurao said that the Europeans called our people wretched and ignorant, but he also posed the question: "Do we have to believe them? Have we not the same rights?"

A simple islander of 370 years ago, Chief Hurao knew that even benign conquest is conquest nevertheless. Even the most beneficial occupying power is still ruling by force. All who take it upon themselves to rule others still do a great harm to people.

Because no matter how benign their intent or effect, they keep the myth alive that certain peoples are unable to govern themselves, either due to race or wealth, or other circumstance. They cause people, after the passage of decades, sometimes to believe that about themselves. They rob people of that which is most precious of all, self-respect, dignity and liberty.

Thanks to American education, and our exposure to the principles of democracy embodied in the American dream, we know now that this is wrong. We know that every people, regardless of race, culture or circumstance, is given by God the right to rule themselves.

In 1898, America went to war with Spain. Most American historians will tell you that the Spanish-American War was essentially America's great imperialist war, fought at a time when every western power was hungry for empire, and forces in the United States,

forces rallying under the cry of "manifest destiny" and the "white man's burden," these forces felt America should have its share.

Manifest Destiny and the White Man's burden became the policy of the Federal Government. And though anti-imperialist forces, especially in Congress, fought courageously against what they perceived as an emerging "imperial" attitude, those who favored an expansion of empire overseas, as an expression of the Nation's historical westward drive and the obligation to bring civilization to those supposedly less fortunate, even at gunpoint, people like Henry Cabot Lodge, President William McKinley and then Theodore Roosevelt. These people for a time dictated the course of Federal policy.

Although the supposed purpose of the war was to aid the Cubans in their fight for self-determination, there was a strong and visible movement in the U.S. Government for the annexation of Cuba after Spain was defeated. The Teller Amendment prevented the annexation of Cuba in the end. But the Teller Amendment did not prevent the Federal Government from occupying and conquering the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam.

The people of the Philippines, who had been fighting their own war for self-determination with Spain, actively resisted the occupation of their country by the United States. Led by Filipino patriots like Aguinaldo, this "war of insurrection," as it has been called in American history, had to be put down by U.S. forces.

Indeed, more American troops died fighting in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War than during the entire SpanishAmerican War in all theaters. Many Filipinos who had risked their lives to free their country from the Spanish were now killed by U.S. troops. Filipino patriots, such as the paralytic Apolinario Mabini, were captured by the U.S. and imprisoned-in Guam.

I believe that the modern America looks back on the SpanishAmerican War in a sense of shame. It was a war of conquest. And precisely because America is such a great nation, founded on principles of liberty, freedom and self-determination, it did not sit well with America. Wars of conquest are not the American way.

At that moment in history, in 1899 when Guam was finally occupied, a great injustice was perpetrated upon our people.

By every precedent in American history, by the very principles of the great founders of the American Republic, men like Jefferson, Adams and Franklin, Guam should have been offered-been offered-two options.

Guam should have been set free, as was Cuba, or if America was interested in establishing a relationship, as it apparently was, incorporated into the United States, with the people of Guam being made full citizens of the United States, with the full protection of the Constitution. Eventually, Guam would be a State of the Union. Indeed, had this happened in 1898, Guam would probably be a State today with a full voting Member of the House of Representatives and two Senators. This was what the Territorial Clause of the Constitution allowed. This was the way the United States had addressed every other territorial acquisition up to that point in time, from the Northwest Territory, to the Louisiana Purchase, to the territories captured in the Mexican War.

It was good enough for Illinois and Indiana, for California and Oregon. But the Federal Government decided it was too good for the simple people of Guam.

It is very clear today, that in 1898, the United States Government had no intention of incorporating Guam or the Philippines into the Union. There was never any Federal intention to see a State of the Philippines, or a State of Guam join the stars in the Stars and Stripes. Nor was it inclined to set us free as it had Cuba. The Federal Government wanted to possess the island of Guam and use it for military purposes, and rule the people of Guam, but not give them any rights whatsoever. The Federal Government wanted to make Guam a colony.

Many distinguished Americans argued against American colonial possession of these lands as being decidedly un-American. They felt that it was wrong for the American flag to fly over a foreign land unless full constitutional rights were granted to the inhabitants, unless indeed these lands were on their way to Statehood and full participation in the democratic institutions of the American government. If not, they should be set free.

A former President of the United States, Benjamin Harrison took this very American view. President McKinley himself, then the U.S. Chief Executive, stated that America had no imperialist aims in the new possessions and that American principles did not change under a tropical sun.

But, alas, they did. In the midst of imperial fever, the Supreme Court very narrowly ruled, in 1901, in Downs v. Bidwell, in a fiveto-four decision, that it was indeed very possible under the Constitution of the United States for foreign territory and foreign people to be occupied and ruled without the protection of the Constitution or the consent of the people.

In this narrow decision, the Supreme Court said it was possible for American power to be exercised over people indefinitely without any regard for the rights of those people. The Court did say that their "essential" rights had to be protected, but not their "procedural" rights. But what is essential and what is procedural? That was for Congress to determine.

To say that the procedural rights of Guamanians need not be protected was to say we had no right to trial by jury. We had no due process rights at all. We could be imprisoned without due process. We had no right to elect our leaders, to establish our own law, no right to govern ourselves in the slightest.

We had essential rights. But what did that mean?

It meant that Guamanians, for all practical intents and purposes, had no rights. Period. They were different. They were not like people in Ohio or Kansas. Those people had rights. All we could hope for were benefits, the generosity of a ruler. I wonder if the people of Ohio or Kansas would have tolerated that, even for a minute.

The American government, which at least officially fought the war with Spain to help the Cuban people achieve self-determination, as a result of that war, denied self-determination and self-government to the people of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam.

What right did the Federal Government have to deny self-determination and self-government to the people of Guam? They had no