McKenna arrived at his first foreign port of call, Kobe, Japan, on Thursday, 17 August. The ship moored to a buoy, and Japanese stevedores began unloading the copra from Guam. The postmaster from Guam came on board for transportation, as did an army lieutenant and his wife and daughter bound for the city of Manila, in the Philippine Islands. When Richard went ashore, he received a number of cards and pamphlets for establishments offering all types of services. A Capt. J. Natsume gave him a card stating he was in charge of seamen’s services “for gentlemen’s diseases, etc.” at the Miyako Pharmacy.13
Gold Star departed Kobe on 22 August; stopped briefly at Nagasaki, Japan, and Shanghai, China; and arrived at Manila on Saturday, 9 September. The ship’s trips to Manila were typically short. Periodically, however, Gold Star needed to enter the Navy yard in nearby Cavite or the Dewey Floating Dry Dock at Olongapo for overhaul work. Yard stays meant extended time in the Philippines.
Given the inadequacy of Gold Star’s library, McKenna began a search for used-book stores in every port he visited. At first, McKenna had a practical reason for perusing the shelves of used books: he had little money left over after his allotment for his mother. The browsing of used-book stores became one of the more enjoyable ways he spent his time ashore during his career, and he continued haunting the establishments after his retirement.
McKenna recalled that the best library for sailors he ever saw in the Far East was in the Cavite Navy Yard, where the books were housed in a cool, quiet old stone building built at least a hundred years in the past. The library contained “quite a few books,” but Richard seldom saw anyone use the facility. He enjoyed watching the geckoes that made nests among the unread books, “running around the ceiling eating flies and mosquitoes and making musical chirps.”14
On Wednesday, 13 September, with all cargo stowed on board, Gold Star departed for Guam, arriving at a mooring buoy in Apra Harbor on Tuesday, 19 September. Years later, McKenna recalled his ship fondly. He did not remember some of his shipmates running afoul of Navy regulations. During this short underway time, for example, one sailor was placed in solitary confinement with bread and water “for 30 days, with full ration every 3rd day,” and had to forfeit fifteen dollars of his pay for six months for two cases of being absent without leave (AWOL) and “under the influence of intoxicating liquor.” Another sailor received a bad conduct discharge (BCD) for being AWOL, but the sentence would be remitted if he kept a good record for six months.15
While in Mountain Home, McKenna had answered to the nickname Richie. By the time he began settling into the routine of Gold Star, he responded to “Mac”—a nickname he’d take up for the rest of his career.
Two of the reasons McKenna joined the Navy were travel and experiences with interesting people and cultures. In just thirty-nine days on board Gold Star, McKenna had seen two ports in Japan, plus Shanghai in China and Manila in the Philippine Islands. Added to all this was Guam itself. What must a young man raised among the lava rocks and sagebrush-covered high desert of southwestern Idaho have thought of an island with lush jungles, unknown to most Americans of the time? Guam had everything an impressionable person could want: an unusual landscape, an ancient native culture, and the consequences of many years of Western domination. Mac made the most of this assignment. Although he honed his observing and researching skills during Gold Star’s voyages, he did not neglect learning about Guam.
Guam is the largest island, in both size and population, in the chain of fifteen islands that make up the Marianas. The Marianas are high-volcanic islands that stretch some five hundred miles in a north–south direction; Guam is located at the southern end of the chain. The Marianas are approximately fifteen hundred miles east of the Philippine Islands. Guam has two seasons: the dry season, from January to June, and the wet season, when the island can for the rest of the year receive up to a hundred inches of rain. The wet season can also bring typhoons—called hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean—slamming into Guam.
In the vast Pacific Ocean, Guam lies in the ethnographic area known as Micronesia, the other two areas being Polynesia and Melanesia. These three ethnographic areas make up what is now labeled Oceania. Europeans first called Oceania the South Seas or the South Pacific.
Guam lies astride the principal routes from Hawaii to the Philippine Islands and from Japan to New Guinea. It holds the distinction of being not only the largest island but also the only island with both enough elevation for a protected harbor and enough land for airports. Furthermore, Guam makes up 20 percent of the land area of the 1,045 square miles of Micronesia. It sits astride the northeast trade winds and the north equatorial ocean current, which traverses the Pacific Ocean. This makes it an important area for ships wishing to cross the Pacific from east to west above the equator. These geographical features of Oceania affected the first people of Guam, the Chamorros.16
The first people on Guam came to the island around 2000 BC from Southeast Asia. Interesting artifacts of an ancient culture are the latte stones, said to have been introduced between AD 800 and AD 900, when newcomers arrived in Guam. The stones consist of two parts: the halagi, which is upright and narrows near the top, and the talsa, a hemispheric capstone with the flat side facing upward. The stones are arranged in two straight parallel rows of four to ten stones. Debate continues as to what these stones represent, but many researchers believe they held up wooden houses. Below the structure and within the stones, gravesites were found. These graves were thought to strengthen “the bond between the ancestors of village families, the living people and their homes.” The last of the structures was built in the sixteenth century and perhaps stood into the eighteenth century.17
Guam’s geographical location eventually proved fatal for its ancient society. The society’s downfall began when Charles I of Spain sent the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan on a voyage in search of the Spice Islands. Magellan and his three ships departed Spain on 10 August 1519, and by 1520 they had entered the Pacific. Theirs was the first known voyage from the Atlantic into the Pacific. On 6 March 1521 the vessels approached Guam, which became the first inhabited island in the Pacific seen by those of the West. It was not until 1559 that Philip II of Spain ordered Miguel Lopez de Legazpi to take possession and colonize the Marianas. The next major event in the Western intrusion into Guam was on 15 June 1668, when the galleon San Diego arrived at the island. It brought Jesuit missionaries, led by Padre Diego Luis de San Vitores, to introduce Christianity and develop trade. The Spanish taught the Chamorros to cultivate maize, raise cattle, and tan hides and introduced them to Spanish dress, language, and culture. After the establishment of Christianity, the church became the focus of every village. Guam soon became the port of call for the important Spanish galleon route that crossed the Pacific Ocean from Mexico to the Philippines.18
Chief Quipuha, the leader in the area where San Diego put the Jesuits ashore, welcomed the newcomers. He allowed himself to be baptized and granted the land on which the first Catholic church, the Dulce Nombre de Maria (Sweet Name of Mary), was erected in 1669. Not all on Guam proceeded smoothly, however. When Father San Vitores arrived on the island, the Chamorro population stood at an estimated 12,000. Twenty-two years later, the Chamorro population numbered only 2,000. In 1671 a series of engagements began the Spanish-Chamorro Wars. Professor Robert F. Rogers of Guam noted that the drastic reduction of the native population came from a combination of “war, deprivation, diseases, disease-induced infertility, societal demoralization, and, finally, epidemics, all caused by the Spanish invasion.” The Spanish losses numbered between 118 and 128 men, among them Father San Vitores in 1672.19
Spanish rule continued until 21 June 1898. On that date U.S. troops captured Guam in a bloodless landing during the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Treaty of Paris ended the brief conflict and ceded to the United States the island of Guam. Not long after the American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan and others
