Octogenarian Arthur Anthony Jackson Sr. recalls walking barefoot in the jungle as a 3 1/2-year-old, marching with his family to the Manengon concentration camp. “Growing up in Guam, right after the war, the military was such a prominent presence in our lives and I definitely wanted the military lifestyle, to be in uniform,” Jackson said. He made that desire come true, eventually retiring after 20 years in 1999 as full bird colonel.
The 45-year-old former Hagåtña resident left Guam with her mother and brother at age 13 for the San Francisco Bay Area. Denise Carbullido Pangelinan is now a project engineer for a billion dollar company, who has worked on projects for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Stanford Hospital, she attributes her work ethic to her early days, working at her uncle’s Mobil gas station and helping raise pigs, chickens and cows at her grandparents’ lancho.
“What I plant are memories of home,” said former Mangilao resident Matt Pangelinan, who now owns a landscaping and plant nursery business in San Francisco. The former seminarian, sous chef and medicinal cannabis grower is the subject of Manny Crisostomo’s latest “Manaotao Sanlagu,” an ongoing visual documentary of CHamoru diaspora.
A conversation with the spirit of her late mother sparked major life changes forLita Salas Baylon, including a divorce, a marriage, and a move from Guam to Texas.
Felix Sablan has been hustling all his life. That insatiable drive to succeed was evident back in high school when he played on Southern High School’s championship basketball and volleyball teams, and is evident today as the San Diego resident advocates for stateside CHamorus as part of his job and his life’s work.
A fter launching “Manaotao Sanlagu: Chamorus from the Marianas” four months ago, Pulitzer-winning multimedia journalist Manny Crisostomo continues to hear from diaspora around the country about the project’s impact. “It gives all of us a bigger picture of how we are all connected and for me it feels like we’re so more included,” Lyn Aflague Arroyo said.
“It really isn’t until you’re gone for a long time that you realize that that island is such a part of you,” said Melissa Leon Guerrero Do, who left Guam in 1998 as a newlywed to start raise a family in Fremont, California.
Shane Quidachay had been asked multiple times to try out for NBC’s “The Voice” before he finally agreed to go on the nationally televised singing competition. “Deep down I had a little nerves but this is what I love to do,’’ said Quidachay, who comes from a family of self-taught singers and musicians, including the popular local band The Sapphires from back in the day.
Alaina Aflague Arroyo, a University of San Francisco graduate student who grew up in Bay Area, traces her activist roots to the stories told to her by her great-grandmother, Brigida Duenas Manibusan.
Brothers Jeremy and Jay Castro, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, have been connecting with their Guam roots personally and professionally over the years. The brothers are the latest to be featured in Manny Crisostomo’s ongoing visual documentary “Manaotao Sanlagu:CHamorus from the Marianas.”
As director of the Pacific Is- land Ethnic Art Museum in California, Fran Nede- dog Lujan helps CHamoru dias- pora artists channel their identity struggles.
“It is my journey to help, help them to find that truth, in the best way that I can, which is through the way of the arts.”
Lujan is the subject of Manny Crisostomo’s latest “Manaotao Sanlagu: CHamorus from the Marianas,” translated as “our peo- ple, the CHamorus, overseas.”
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.”
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.”