The US military is sending personnel and equipment to make Guam a rapid response platform in the western Pacific.
(BLAINE HARDEN/WASHINGTON POST)
HAGATNA, Guam - People on this faraway island - a US territory 7,824 miles west of Los Angeles - delight in calling Guam the "tip of the spear" for its role defending US interests in the Far East.
Although the island is typhoon-plagued and earthquake-prone, cursed with bad traffic, unable to cope with its own garbage, and overrun with invasive tree snakes that have eaten nearly all the birds, the Guamanians aren't just blowing smoke.
The Pentagon has chosen Guam, a quirkily American place that marries the beauty of Bali with the banality of Kmart, as the prime location in the western Pacific for projecting US military muscle.
Guam has served as an important US military outpost since World War II. But now the sultry tropical island, about three times the size of the District of Columbia and with a population of 173,000, is set to become a rapid-response platform for problems ranging from pirates to terrorists to tsunamis, as well as a highly visible reminder to China that the United States is nearby and watching.
US Marines by the thousands and US tax dollars by the billions ($13 billion at last count) are to be dispatched to Guam over the next six years, along with Trident submarines, a ballistic missile task force, Navy Special Operations forces, and Air Force F-22 fighter jets. Nuclear-powered attack submarines and B-2 stealth bombers have already arrived, and preparations are being made to accommodate aircraft carriers.
The peacetime invasion, scheduled to continue into 2014, will balloon the island's population by about 40,000 service personnel, contract workers, and dependents, an increase of almost 25 percent. Real estate prices have jumped, and investors are descending on the island. A Chamber of Commerce poll found widespread support for the move.
"We can't help but boom," said Jeff Pleadwell, who owns Jeff's Pirates Cove, a beach hamburger joint, and expects his business to prosper. "But the island is going to change radically. Everyone is scared - of how the Marines will behave. We also worry that life inside the base will be first-world, while outside the fence, it is going to be third-world."
The Marine move is giving many Guamanians - a patriotic people who fight and die in US wars at rates much higher than on the mainland - a serious case of the jitters.
"We are proud to be the tip of the spear, but the federal government needs to assist us to make sure that the quality of life outside the military fence line is better, not worse, after the Marines come," said Michael Cruz, lieutenant governor of Guam. Cruz is a colonel in the Guam Army National Guard who has served in Iraq and is a point man in local planning for the Marine move.
Whether or not that assistance materializes, the plan is proceeding. The Marines are moving here from Okinawa, Japan, where their six-decade presence has sometimes outraged the local people. The Japanese government, as part of a unique joint security deal with the United States, is footing $6.1 billion of the cost for housing the Marines on Guam.
The US government already owns about a third of the island, and military planners here say they may buy or lease still more so Marines can train with rifles, mortars, and heavy machine guns.
The newcomers will be mostly young, mostly single men trained as warriors - and periodically looking for a big night out on a small island where most hotels and restaurants cater to the sushi-and-kimchi predilections of upper-middle-class Japanese and South Korean tourists.
"The military wants to have a pool party, but they are telling us to build the pool," said James Espaldon, a Guam senator who oversees the island's infrastructure.
Even before the Marines were coming, the debt-ridden government here struggled - and in many cases failed - to maintain roads, water lines, schools, and a balanced budget. The island's landfill is bursting with garbage and is in violation of federal environmental laws.
It doesn't help that the island sits in an area of the Pacific known as Typhoon Alley and is pummeled by storms. Guam is also near a major geologic fault and has been hit by major earthquakes, most recently in 2001.
The newcomers could bring on an infrastructure breakdown unless the federal government comes up with "significant funding," the US Government Accountability Office said in a study published in September. Guam's government says it needs $2 billion to $3 billion in federal funds to cover outside-the-fence costs of the military move. The Pentagon can be fairly sure it will get its $13 billion for the inside-the-fence part of the buildup, but the Guam government is assured of nothing.
The Defense Department is neither authorized nor obligated to compensate Guam for the whole of the long-term impact of the Marines' presence on the island, according to retired Marine Major General David Bice, executive director of the Joint Guam Program Office, which is managing the Pentagon's move.
Bice said, however, that the Pentagon recognizes that Guam's needs are real and extensive: "This has to be a move that is good for the people of Guam." Several federal agencies have created a Guam task force and are seeking money for the island.
"No jurisdiction in the States would tolerate such a big buildup in such a short time," said Cruz. "This growth has to be balanced - inside the fence and outside."
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
