‘At the Tip of the Spear’: Guam Residents on U.S.-North Korea Tensions<br />We’re patriotic Americans and love our military, and we’re happy to be home to U.S. military bases — much like other American cities with U.S. bases —<br />but we’re mainly just regular Americans like Americans who live in Phoenix or Albuquerque.<br />"Never gave it a thought that a small island, that most people don’t even know where it is, would be caught in the middle of something like this — now we are."<br />Leiana S. A. Naholowa’a, 41, is a university instructor who studies Chamorro, the Spanish-influenced language of Guam’s native people, and its literature.<br />Judith Mosley, 61, a small-business owner in Barrigada, Guam, said<br />that she was praying that the worst would not come to pass, but pointed out that it was the people of South Korea who were at the gravest risk: "Never has there been a situation of two mentally unstable leaders, with fragile egos bringing the world to the brink of a third world war.<br />But our spirits feel brighter and more alert, people simultaneously distracted and considerate, and no American nonveteran will really know this feeling unless they’ve lived in a war zone<br />that any day could be bombed." Harry B. Blalock, 56, is from Michigan but has lived on Saipan, one of the Northern Mariana Islands, for 21 years.<br />Michael A. Pangelinan, 47, a lawyer who lives in Dededo, in the north of the island, was one of many<br />Guamanians who expressed frustration about how little their home was understood by Americans.
