Saturday, July 21, 2012

BECAUSE OF THE LIBERATION

My family moved from their original home in San Ignacio district in Hagåtña, to Sinajaña.


The house would have been to the left of this photo of Pedro's Plaza, or what is now the Attorney General's Office building.  That would put it on the street, hardly ever used, that runs in between Pedro's Plaza and the Agaña Precinct of GPD.  Before the war, our house was on Zaragoza Street.  It was a two-storey, concrete house.  But the American bombardment of Guam in July 1944 destroyed this house.  Even property lines were in a state of confusion when new streets were laid out that did not conform to the pre-war property lines.



Sinajaña
After the war

My family moved to Sinajaña and lived in a temporary house of thatched roofing until a wooden and tin-roof house was built.  That lasted till the early 1970s when, thanks to Urban Renewal, my grandmother moved to our present location and built a concrete house, next to my parents who lived in a two-storey home my grandmother had built.

Because of the American Liberation, the bombing that took place in order to achieve it, and the post-war re-settlement patterns, Hagåtña people became Sinajaña people, in my case. 

But every time I pass that street in between the Agaña Precinct and Pedro's Plaza, I glance at what once was Zaragoza Street and my ancestor's home.

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