The Legislature on Wednesday recognized the men who defended Guam during the Japanese invasion in 1941 and those who hunted for enemy soldiers after the island’s liberation in 1944.
Speaker Frank F. Blas, who introduced legislation designating Dec. 10 as Insular Force Guard and Guam Combat Patrol Memorial Day, acknowledged the descendants of the volunteers who protected the island more than 80 years ago.
Blas said he and Sen. Chris Barnett, along with other senators, worked together “as our part of our continuing effort to ensure that our greatest generation will never be forgotten, and we will continue to remember, and the history will remember, everything that our people had gone through.”
On Dec. 10, 1941, members of the Insular Guard Force took up positions in the Plaza de Espana and fought the Japanese military in a brief but intense battle before the island was surrendered.
Barnett, whose grandfather was a member of the Guam Combat Patrol, explained that the observance is “about lifting up the stories that shaped our people and teaching the next generation what real courage looks like. It's about celebrating the strength of our people and remembering the moments that have defined our island.”
Eva Cruz, a descendant of Insular Force Guard member Pedro Guerrero Cruz, said about 100 CHamoru men with inadequate weapons defended the island’s capital against thousands of soldiers from one of the world’s most powerful armies.
“These were our CHamoru men, the Indigenous people of this land. They were willing to risk their lives to defend our families and our homeland, our only homeland,” she said. “Surely they knew. They knew that they were going to be outnumbered, that they would be overwhelmed. They knew there would be no reinforcements, yet they were willing to become casualties of a conflict not of their making, because they knew that the fate of our home was in their hands.”
The Guam Combat Patrol was formed in November 1944. The 30 CHamoru men volunteered to hunt enemy soldiers who were hiding in the jungle after the island was secured.
One of those volunteers was Felix C. Wusstig.
His son Ernest Sablan Wusstig spoke at the ceremony Wednesday, describing the animosity his father had for Japanese soldiers who tortured him during the occupation.
At one point, the elder Wusstig escaped from the Japanese prison, and soldiers put up flyers in Yigo “saying that if he does not return himself in, they're going to start killing his brothers and sisters. From the youngest one up, every day. And he turned himself in.”
“He really, really loved this island, my dad did, and we all did,” Wusstig said. “And thank you for honoring this day, Insular Guard and the Guam Combat Patrol.”
