Even when Rod Taitano
was working as director of
Salesforce’s western region data
center operations in San Francisco, the former Yigo resident
would make an annual February pilgrimage to Guam for his
family’s fiesta for “emotional
refueling.”

Mary Therese Perez Hattori embodies fuetsa pålao’an, the power of women of Guam and the rest of the Pacific. This modern-day Renaissance woman wields an array of professional credentials and expertise across multiple disciplines. This daughter of familian Titang, now working as interim director of the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East West Center in Hawaii.

Pacific Daily News Dr. Ric Perez has led the nationally prominent kidney transplant program at the University of California, Davis Medical Center for the last three decades, performing up to 400 transplants a year with his team. Perez’s journey to leading the No. 7 program in the country has been filled with twists and turns, as Manny Crisostomo recounts in his latest “Manaotao Sanlagu: CHamorus from the Marianas”.

Heidi Chargualaf-Quenga is a “fa’fa’någue,” or certified CHamoru instructor, who works tirelessly to teach the CHamoru dance to students young and old living stateside through the Kutturan Chamoru Foundation in Long Beach, California. She was photographed at Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum in Long Beach, and she is part of Manny Crisostomo’s ongoing visual documentary “Manaotao Sanlagu: CHamorus from the Marianas,” translated as “our people, the CHamorus, overseas,” featured weekly in the Pacific Daily News.

We feature the Blas family - retired Army Sgt. 1st Class Ryan Blas, his wife Julie and their daughter Ha’ane Rae. During his deployment to Iraq, “we made CHamoru food in Baghdad,” Ryan Blas said. “I met a classmate out there from Inarajan Middle school, we would barbeque.”

Dancer and choreographer Lisa Tenorio is the subject of Manny Crisostomo's "Manaotao Sanlagu," an ongoing visual documentary of CHamorus from the Marianas living overseas. The project is featured weekly in the PDN.

Former Agat resident Albert Van Meter in his sanlagu låncho on the back end of his quarter-acre lot in the Southern California city of Cypress. The 66-year-old Van Meter has been for the last 25 years sculpting a vision of a supersize garden or a mini plantation filled with Guam specific produce.

Lyn Aflague Arroyo, photographed at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Hayward, California. “There’s something about talking story next to where my grandparents are laid to rest,” she said. “It was a place I often went to as a little girl with my grandma, my brother died as an infant and is buried there.”

Retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Peter “Pete” Gumataotao is now the director of Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. He is the part of Manny Crisostomo’s ongoing visual documentary, “Manaotao Sanlagu: CHamorus from the Marianas,” translated as “our people, the CHamorus, overseas,” featured weekly in the Pacific Daily News.

Columbina Camacho Nelson, 94, talks about life in Guam before she left the island in 1952 at the age of 21, aboard a ship heading for California. She is one of thousands of CHamorus from Guam who uprooted, moved off island and relocated to communities across the United States and around the world. 

 

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, Manny Crisostomo, has undertaken a new visual documentary: “Manaotao Sanlagu: CHamorus from the Marianas” — translated as “our people, the CHamorus, overseas.” The project, which is ongoing, will appear weekly in the PDN’s Lifestyle section. Through this photojournalism feature, Crisostomo has been connecting with other CHamorus who have been living away from home — and in the process, his longing for Guam has been transformed into a sense of belonging within a larger island community.