CHAMORRON YAP : AQUININGOC

Headstone at Tinian's Catholic Cemetery

Ignacio Arceo and Manuel San Nicolas Aquiningoc were Chamorros who moved to Yap sometime around or before 1920.

The Japanese were running all of Micronesia by then, except for Guam.

Ignacio was born in Agat, Guam, the son of Joaquin and Vicenta Arceo Aquiningoc. He first married a Welsh-Chamorro woman with the last name Lewis. She was the daughter of Evan Lewis, a Welshman from England, who went from island to island doing a variety of work, till he settled in Yap and married a Chamorro woman with the last name Cruz.

Ignacio had a good number of children, born in Yap. Living for twenty or more years in Yap, I am sure that Ignacio, as head of the household, was able to speak some Japanese and maybe even some Yapese. Manuela, minding more domestic duties, probably had less interaction with the Japanese and Yapese but could still have learned something of those languages.

The children, especially the older ones, would have had more exposure to the Japanese and Yapese languages. The couple continued to have children right into the war. Those younger ones would have been still very young when the family, as well as all the Yap Chamorros, were forcibly moved off of Yap by the U.S. government at the request of the Yapese.

Like most of the Yap Chamorros, the Aquiningocs moved to Tinian after the war, where there was plenty of good land and no native population to cultivate it.