Japan captured Guam within days of Pearl Harbor and administered it for two and a half years, requiring CHamoru civilians to work on airfields and fortifications and punishing those suspected of loyalty to the United States, including those who sheltered the American radioman George Tweed. As US forces approached in July 1944 the occupation authorities ordered the population out of the coastal villages and into the interior; nearly the whole civilian population walked, in many cases for days, to camps at Manenggon and other sites, where about 18,000 people lived without shelter, latrines, food or medicine until American troops reached them at the end of July. In the same weeks Japanese troops killed groups of CHamoru at Fena, Chagui'an, Tinta and Faha. Estimates of CHamoru deaths under the occupation are usually put between 1,000 and 2,000, though no systematic count was made. The United States compensated Guam's war survivors only partially and belatedly: a congressionally mandated Guam War Claims Review Commission reported in 2004, and legislation providing payments to survivors and their heirs followed in 2016.
Japanese forces occupied Guam, conscripted CHamoru labour and in July 1944 marched nearly the whole civilian population into inland camps
The 1940 US census counted 22,290 people on Guam, about 20,000 of them CHamoru. In July 1944, ahead of the American landings, Japanese forces marched most of the civilian population inland to concentration camps at Manenggon and elsewhere; between 1,000 and 2,000 CHamoru died during the occupation, from forced labour, massacres and the marches.
The range is the one used in Guam war-claims documentation and local histories for CHamoru deaths during the whole occupation, including the massacres of July 1944, forced labour and deaths on the marches and in the camps. Guampedia states explicitly that no record exists of how many died at or on the way to Manenggon.
Survivor testimony collected by Guampedia and the US Guam War Claims Review Commission documented the forced marches, camp conditions, forced labour and the 1944 massacres.
Guam