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Siguenza, Peter_Z27_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_public.mp3

Siguenza, Peter_Z27_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_transcript.pdf. Peter C. Siguenza was born in Guam and grew up in Agana until he left for high school. He remembers it being a peaceful, slow lifestyle. He and his friends were altar boys and choir boys and would often play on the Plaza de Espana early before mass, and the Marine Century [sp?] from the Governor’s Palace would tell them to keep down the noise or leave. At that time, under the naval government, they were forbidden from whistling and from taking and doing many things in Agana. On balance he thinks the administration of the navy was beneficial because it stressed sanitation and provided schools, medical and dental care, and the police department. When he returned to the island as a marine, he recalls seeing the destruction of the island, including his own home. Many people were given housing in villages and moved away from Agana.

Siguenza was with the 3rd Marine Division during World War II. When he was a sophomore at San Diego State College in April 1942 he enlisted in the Marine Corps in San Diego, California. The division trained in New Zealand for Pacific jungle operations. Their first operation was the invasion of Bougainville on November 1, 1943. The next operation was Guam. They were in a convoy on transport on the USS Dupage when at Asan, outside of Guam, orders came through for Siguenza to return to the United States because he had been selected to go to officer’s candidate school. He wanted to continue to Guam but his commanding general would not let him. He was transferred to a destroyer and made his way back to Virginia. When he was commissioned he was flown out to Guam to rejoin the 3rd Marine Division after the island was already secured and his buddies had returned home.

Siguenza joined another outfit that was training in Guam for the invasion of Japan. During that time there were some problems on the island, and his battalion was sent out to secure the area and flush out some Japanese stragglers. The stragglers were strongly motivated not to surrender, but it seemed the Americans succeeded in flushing them out because there was no further harassment fire.

Siguenza had relatives or friends in the villages; one time he had lunch with a man in his home, and another time he surprised a woman by understanding her statement in Chamorro, “no wonder the marines can’t catch Japanese because they are looking for women.”

On September 2, 1945, the message came in that the Japanese had surrendered, and there was much joy among the troops. Siguenza had to stay in Guam because he was regular Marine Corps and he was assigned to island command, which had responsibility for the predecessor of the government of Guam. He returned to San Diego in mid-1946.

Siguenza attended events on Guam commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Japanese invasion on December 8, 1941. He met ten Japanese veterans and reflected on how, during the war, it was his mission to kill them. He told them that he has forgiven. He thinks there is much more to be gained in the world by peace than by war.

Siguenza, Peter_Z27_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_transcript.pdf