Saber-rattling leaves Guam natives nervous
Bay Area residents worry with tiny island in crosshairs
Growing up on an island where destroyers were common sightings and Air Force demonstrations casual entertainment, Ken Villo knew how strategically important Guam was to the U.S. military’s presence in the Pacific. He also knew that this reality put it straight in the crosshairs of North Korea’s aggression.
But the escalating threats and rhetoric this week between President Trump and Pyongyang felt markedly different to the 40-yearold Milpitas bakery owner. He and others in the Bay Area with ties to Guam, an American territory, say they are calling home frequently, finding themselves more often getting than giving reassurances. And they say that in between fielding questions from Bay Area locals on what and where, exactly, Guam is, they are making it a point to pray for their home island.
“My mom (in Guam) was lecturing me about how I shouldn’t be worried,” said Villo, who with his sister owns Elite Bakery, which expanded from the Philippines and Guam to Union City. “My mom said, ‘What else can we do but trust in God and pray war
doesn’t come out of this?’ ”
Tiny though the island may be — it’s about four times the size of San Francisco — former residents have built a strong presence in the Bay Area, especially in Catholic spheres. Doris Ogo of Fairfield, who left Guam in 1981 to seek medical help for her disabled son in the United States, said she thinks she knows more Chamorro people — natives of Guam — in California than back home.
When she saw a headline Wednesday with the words “North Korea,” “Guam” and “missiles,” Ogo said, her hands started shaking. She calmed down enough to talk via FaceTime with one of her sisters living in Guam, who told her not to worry because the military would protect them.
“I said, ‘What if a missile comes through and wasn’t detected?’ And she said, ‘Don’t worry, sis, I’ll run into a cave and hide,’ ” Ogo said. The joke was a reference to a key piece of family history, when their mother and uncle used island caves to escape the detection of invading Japanese soldiers in 1941 — a story suddenly more relevant than it had been in years, Ogo said.
Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, released a detailed plan Thursday that calls for the launching of four intermediate-range ballistic missiles near Guam, which is about 2,000 miles south of Pyongyang and about 1,500 miles east of Manila. Trump, in turn, told reporters that his threat earlier this week to rain down “fire and fury” on the adversary perhaps “wasn’t tough enough.”
Experts, though, said the promises of violence and destruction were more attempts at signaling to each other and to China than actual escalation.
“It’s saying to the other side, ‘We’re willing to take a higher level of risk for this nightmare scenario,’ with the goal of making the other side back down,” said UC Berkeley Professor Steven Weber, who studies international relations and political science.
“I don’t think the world is that much more of a dangerous place today than it was 72 hours ago,” he added.
Thomas Fingar, former deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and now a fellow at the Stanford’s Asia-Pacific Research Center, said nothing has changed except the rhetoric. He said it’s unlikely that North Korea would carry out its plan against Guam, but if the regime did and U.S. missile defense systems successfully shot down the munitions, that would undercut much of the value of North Korea’s weapons programs.
“Everybody’s in panic mode. But we try to change the subject and ask about the family and grandkids.” Diana Lizama Contreras, Bay Area resident and Guam native
“Having the capability of doing something and having the intention of doing something are entirely different,” Fingar said. “The hype has changed, not the reality.”
But for Californians whose relatives live in Guam, the tough talk is enough to make them worry.
Diana Lizama Contreras, a testing technician at De Anza College in Cupertino who left Guam about 30 years ago, said she’s been talking to her relatives on the island up to five times a day.
“Everybody’s in panic mode,” she said. “But we try to change the subject and ask about the family and grandkids.”
Contreras said one of her cousins who lives in Seattle even canceled a planned trip to Guam next week because of the rising international tension.
This round of threats feels different to some because it’s accompanied by nuclear technology out of North Korea that’s advancing all the time, said Evelyn Collaco, a retired San Ramon bank executive whose extended family lives in Guam.
“The anxiety and the fear is different than previous wars,” Collaco said. “You’re talking about nuclear. One hit and that island is going to be blown into the ocean.”
The escalation has had at least one positive consequence: Guam natives Shawn Camacho and Shawn Naputi, who run the Mission District restaurant Prubechu, which serves cuisine of Guam, said heightened attention to the American island has noticeably increased business this week.
“There’s not much we can do,” said Camacho, who’s also made calls home but isn’t panicking yet. “We just leave it up to the military.”