PREGNANT YET KILLED

 

ROSALÍA'S GRAVE

with sister Carmen

Pedro Guevara Dumanal, better-known-as Pedro'n Tagålo, was a wanted man by the Japanese in 1943.

Dumanal had always been on the list of people to watch out for by the Japanese. Being an ex-US Navy man, he was considered pro-American and dangerous. He was rumored to have a large cache of weapons hidden somewhere, and to have spoken to some Chamorro men to organize some resistance to the Japanese.

So Dumanal went into hiding.

So the Japanese questioned a lot of people whether they had seen Dumanal or not.

One of them was Dumanal's wife, Rosalía Reyes Quintanilla Dumanal. Not only was she questioned; she and a daughter were taken to the Sumay Cemetery and tortured.

According to the lore told by older people in Santa Rita, Rosalía was pregnant at the time. She had just given birth in 1942 to her youngest born, a daughter named Enriqueta.

She was asked by the Japanese, "Where is your husband?"

"I don't know," she repeatedly replied.

But Rosalía was pregnant, and probably showed.

"How can that be when you are pregnant? You must know where he is!" the Japanese said. 

And so Rosalía was beheaded. It was April 25, 1944.

The sad fact was that Pedro, her husband, was already dead and the Japanese knew it.  On February 23, two months before, Pedro had met up with a Saipanese interpreter on the road, and was killed by the interpreter, who claimed self-defense. Why then were the Japanese asking information on a man they knew was already dead?

Now both mother and father were dead. Their two oldest daughters got married soon after the war and became guardians of the younger children, Enriqueta being the youngest born. But a sibling died along with Rosalía in her womb.

Rosalía was the daughter of Vicente Cruz Quintanilla (familian Orong) and Gertrudes Taitano Reyes.

Rest in peace. U såga gi minahgong.