What happens
This episode of The Pacific Story, broadcast on the National Broadcasting Company on April 16, 1944, traces the history of Guam, a small American island in the western Pacific. It follows the debates in the United States Congress over fortifying the island, which were repeatedly dropped or limited for fear of offending Japan. Naval strategists such as Admiral Mahan viewed Guam as a strategic base. Captain Richard Leary arrives as the first American governor in 1899 and confronts a native population reduced by disease. The story moves through the American development of roads, schools and communications, the demilitarization of the island after World War I, and the tension of the late 1930s, including a typhoon and the approach of Japanese warships. The story ends with the island's position in late 1941 as American families are evacuated.
Guam, a small American island in the western Pacific, from the late nineteenth century through 1941, with scenes in the United States Congress and aboard the USS Yosemite
Characters: Captain Richard P. Leary, Admiral Mahan, Rear Admiral Arthur J. Hepburn, Captain James T. Alexander
Listen for: The shifting debates in Congress over fortifying Guam, the 1899 arrival of Captain Leary and the early American efforts to improve the island's health, and the typhoon and Japanese warship incidents of the late 1930s
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.