Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Guam no stranger to threats, just not this
U.S., North Korea nuclear tensions put island on edge
ASAN, Guam — Residents on this tiny Western Pacific island, a U.S. territory that is home to strategically important American armed forces, have grown accustomed to occasional threats.
There are the super typhoons and the occasional earthquakes and tsunamis — all of which have caused real anxiety here in recent decades.
But now there’s an immediate concern: North Korea, which has threatened to direct an “encircling strike” into the waters around the island as a testing ground for its ballistic missiles.
The threat, and the rhetorical war it’s spawned with President Donald Trump in recent days, has prompted residents here to lose some of their island cool.
“Do not look at the flash or fireball — it can blind you,” Guam’s homeland security agency said in a fact sheet shared with residents Friday.
Even before the alarming message, there was growing concern across the island — home to 160,000 residents on a speck of earth about the size of Columbus, Ohio.
Take a Friday morning news headline: “14 MINUTES” — the time a presumed missile or missiles might fly from North Korea before impact.
“Why is such a small island, Guam, now under threat?” asked Jenntte Jain, 22, a local who works at a beachside market. “Why did Guam just pop up — like North Korea is going to be bombing? What?”
Like Jain, residents have expressed a mix of worry and bemusement about being caught in the middle of North Korea’s threats, which come amid escalating tensions between the rogue nation and the international community.
“People are worried,” said R. Gary Hartz, an associate dean of technology and student services at Guam Community College.
Hartz, a Tennessee native who moved to the island 15 years ago, said he has confidence his fellow Guamanians would help one another if the worst were to occur.
“I try just to continue to live my life,” he said. “But I’m aware of this low-level stress that’s there. You know, when you lay down on your pillow at night, and clear thoughts from your mind? There are more thoughts to clear today than there were a month ago.”
North Korea, considered by many security experts and American intelligence officials to be a nuclear state, has in recent months shown significant progress in its effort to build ballistic missiles capable of striking targets outside Asia, including the U.S. mainland.
Two recent intercontinental ballistic missile tests showed the technical ability, in theory, for missiles to reach Alaska or the West Coast of the mainland.
These devices flew high trajectories and landed in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea.
Flatter flight paths could make them more threatening to extended targets, including, it now appears, the area around Guam.
A new round of international sanctions in response to North Korea’s recent tests has provoked renewed threats on both sides.
Trump declared that “fire and fury” would descend on North Korea if it were to continue to threaten the United States, escalating the tension.
North Korea twice said last week that it was examining a plan to test-launch intermediate-range missiles to land near Guam, a first for the government.
No stranger to hyperbolic or threatening language, North Korea used a term widely interpreted as “enveloping fire,” but “encircling strike” is a more accurate translation of what it actually meant — as in striking with a missile.
Guam, with an economy that depends on tourism, largely from Japan and South Korea, both of which also feel threatened by the Pyongyang government, now finds itself in the middle after U.S. bombers staged military exercises from here recently.
The territory’s governor, Eddie Baza Calvo, said in an interview last week that his administration has tried to remain “cool, calm and collected.”
He said his citizens are used to threats from natural disasters — and can handle anything that comes.
The local business community expressed confidence. The nation’s airport last week was filled with foreign tourists.
The confidence projected by leaders could be because the threat of a direct missile strike, and the potentially serious U.S. response it could invite, remains remote.
Yet Trump’s fiery language — and the United States’ robust military presence here since World War II — opens it to threats like those from North Korea, however remote.
“If Kim Jong Un said he was going to hit Seattle or Anchorage, and the president says, ‘Go ahead, and see what happens,’ I think people there would be pretty upset,” said Robert Underwood, president of the University of Guam.