Guam

In 1946 we went to Guam (if you look on a globe you can see that Guam, one of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean, is closer to Southeast Asia and the Philippines than it is to the United States, in other words it's really, really far away from this country). My father had flown there already on a military plane, and Nani, my older sisters May and Mia, and I took a train across the country, from Virginia to Long Beach, California, and then we sailed on a Navy ship across the Pacific Ocean to Guam, which my father called "the paradise of the Pacific." All I know about New Canaan and Quantico is what I have been told, but I can remember living on Guam, and I can feel its breezes to this day when I go to any place tropical.

When we arrived there, the war against the Japanese had only been over for about a year and a half, and there were still some Japanese soldiers who didn't know it was over hiding up in the hills. Once one of them came down from his cave, went into the admiral's garden next door to us to find something to eat, and the Marines came and took him away. I wasn't afraid, because the soldier was really thin and didn't look very dangerous, but my sisters and parents made a pretty big deal about it. (Plus, I haven't been afraid of anything much in my life, really. I have always felt safe, and strong enough to handle most situations. When I was little, there was the problem of my sisters: I wasn't afraid of them, but I learned to avoid them whenever possible -- they didn't seem to like me and made things tough for me whenever we had to spend time together. On the other hand, I knew that my mother and father loved me, so it all worked out in the end.)

While on Guam, I remember a very big typhoon (the Japanese word for hurricane), during which I was escorted -- pushed, really -- very quickly by the wind at my back, across our yard and into the safety of our house, while next door Admiral Pownall's roof was blown off. There were dozens of jungle rats all over the house when the typhoon was over; they had come up from the flooded jungle just below the cliff our house sat on, and they were everywhere -- in our closets, under the duck-board in my shower, even in our clothes drawers. My father and mother took care of them somehow -- I've never wanted to know more than that -- and not surprisingly I've had an issue with mice and rats all of my life. Don't like snakes either, by the way, but there's weren't any snakes on Guam.

In spite of all this, I loved being there -- I loved the constant fragrance of flowers everywhere we went. I liked being able to swim in a lagoon or in the ocean whenever I wanted. (I was never taught to swim, I just did it naturally and I loved it.) I had a lot of my father's attention -- I didn't know him very well because he'd been away at the war almost all of my life, but he tried very hard to make me his friend, and I was pleased by that. I remember his driving me in his Jeep down to the beach one day; he put me on his lap and let me steer the Jeep for as long as I wanted. We went really fast and I drove us in big loops, up and down the sand, into the water, then back up the beach. When we left to go home, Daddy said not to tell my mother about it, or we'd both be in trouble.

I didn't have very many toys, but I had my first best friend, Ada Shepard, right next door, and I had a swing set. My family was pretty happy there; I have seen some old family movies of that time, and we all looked happy. My parents and sisters were CERTAINLY happy that the war was over, and that Daddy had lived through it to come home to us. We were only there for a year and a half, but it was a good experience for us all for recovering from a terrible war.