War in the Pacific War in the Pacific National Historic Park An Administrative History

Introduction

Establishing a national park requires not only the enabling legislation, it takes staff capable of creating a National Park Service presence within the local community. The social and political context within which War in the Pacific National Historical Park was created presented very unique and unusual challenges. They were met by some very unique and talented individuals. This chapter tells their story.

In August 1978, when Congress passed legislation creating War in the Pacific National Historical Park, the park resources were contained in six separate areas, or units, associated with the American invasion of Guam in 1944, totaling about 870 acres. These included: Both Asan beach and inland units; Agat; Piti; Mt. Alifan; and Mt. Tenjo/Mt. Chachao units. The Fonte Plateau unit was added later, resulting in seven separate units. [220] A large percent of both the Agat and Asan beach units were under water. Not all land in these units belonged to the National Park Service; 610 acres were federal land (including National Park Service-owned land), 21 acres belonged to the Government of Guam, and 239 acres were privately owned. [221]

War in the Pacific: The Resource

In the mid- and late 1970s, each area had a wide array of historical/cultural objects associated with World War II. Artifacts on the surface of the ground ranged from large coastal defense guns, such as those at Piti, to pillboxes and machine gun emplacements, like those at Agat Beach, Mt. Alifan, and Asan units, to foxholes, trenches, bomb craters, caves and tunnels, grenades, shell casings, and shrapnel, ubiquitous in nearly all the park units. A 1979 ground surface cultural resources survey completed by the National Park Service identified a total of nearly eighty cultural resource sites in the seven park units. About one-half of these were associated with Japanese defense during World War II. At some units, particularly the Asan unit (the beach and also inland parts), several cultural features, including concrete slabs and foundations, metal water tanks, pipes, and roads, were of American construction and built after World War II. Additionally, a few areas of the Asan unit, on the Bundschu and Chorrito ridges, had been used as dumps or were so heavily vegetated that the cultural resources could not be seen and surveyed. [222]

Despite the apparent abundance of historic objects on the seven park units, much had disappeared over the previous thirty years. The vast majority of artifacts and landscape features, both large and small, dating from World War II had been carried or eroded away, been bulldozed, or left to decay. At Asan Beach, where the U.S. Third Marine Division had come ashore on July 21, 1944, little remained on the ground dating from World War II other than a gun emplacement, four Japanese pillboxes, the same number of caves, and a submerged American landing craft lying offshore in sixty feet of water. Two shore monuments commemorating a Philippine national hero, a marker commemorating the American landing on invasion of Guam, and Memorial Beach Park, a narrow grass-covered strip of land extending from Marine Drive to the shoreline in Asan village, were relatively recent additions to the Asan Beach park unit. The inland Asan unit with the Asan Ridge battle site, including Chorito Cliff and Bundschu Ridge, had two known concrete pillboxes (atop Chorito Cliff) and evidence of heavy shelling, had become completely covered with impenetrable undergrowth in the mid-1970s.

Despite the loss of historical integrity of cultural and natural features on Asan Beach and Asan Ridge, several areas in the Asan units had been listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 (Memorial Beach on Asan Beach), 1975 (Asan Ridge battle area), and 1978 (Asan invasion beach, enveloping Memorial Beach Park), as well as the Matgue River Valley Battlefield, largely for their commemorative value and not as pristine historic or natural features. The Government of Guam and the U.S. Navy, not the Park Service, owned most of the Asan invasion beach just before its listing on the National Register. The navy had no use for it, reporting it as excess property in 1976. [223]

The other park units had also lost most of their cultural objects and landscape features dating from World War II. In the late 1970s, one fairly intact pillbox and the remains of several others, the remnants of a couple of concrete gun emplacements, concrete and log bunkers, and a reinforced concrete strong point were all that existed on the Agat invasion beach, extending from Apaca Point, in the north, to Gaan Point, and southward to Bangi Point. When the American marines landed on this beach on July 21, 1944, twenty-five pillboxes, two reinforced concrete strongholds with over 110 guns, and two concrete emplacements with 40 guns occupied this same stretch of beach. Other inland park units (Piti, Mt. Tenjo/Mt. Chachao, and Mt. Alifan) were largely overgrown with dense vegetation, including the fast-growing, ubiquitous tangantangan tree, whose seeds were broadcast from airplanes after the Americans had reoccupied Guam to control erosion on the war-ravaged, denuded ridge and hillsides. Like the Asan beach and inland unit, the Agat invasion beach and the Piti coast defense guns had been listed on the National Register in the mid-1970s. [224]

Those cultural and natural features that existed in the newly created park units were incredibly varied in type, physical condition, historical integrity, and location in the park. No roads or trails linked all the separate units. Most were largely inaccessible to the public at the time of the park's creation. Little distinguished the land in the park from surrounding lands. Often boundaries had been made along contour lines on topographic maps and the only way to locate these lines was to refer to the topographic map. Frequently these boundaries made sense only on paper, such as a boundary across the exact middle of the top of a hill, rendering it useless as an observation point. Also, the inland units could not be reached easily if at all due to the absence of trails or roads to them and/or the dense tangle of vegetation around and in them. In reality, there was no visible identifiable War in the Pacific National Historical Park at the time of its creation.

When the first superintendent arrived on Guam in January 1979, "the physical appearance of the Park," wrote Superintendent Stell Newman, "consisted of exotic brush, trash, and weeds except for the recent community effort to upgrade Gaan Point in Agat. "The Service," Newman continued, "inherited numerous inappropriate non-conforming uses and facilities." These he enumerated: buildings occupied by squatters and leaseholds; a collection of Young Adult Conservation Corps (YACC), Government of Guam, and Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA) facilities, mostly in the Asan Beach unit; cyclone fencing and abandoned power poles at Asan Point; and concrete steps at Piti, plus many, many other items and uses. [225] During his first year at the park, Superintendent Newman once gave a friend a bag of soil and twigs from a tangantangan tree, proclaiming with a broad smile that this was the park. [226] For the first several months, War in the National Pacific Historical Park had little recognizable identifiable presence.

The Park's Early Presence: Park Personnel

War in the Pacific's presence during the first years of the park's existence was embodied in its personnel, particularly in the park's greatly respected and much-loved first superintendent, T. Stell Newman. Born in Iredell, Texas, on July 13, 1936, Thomas Stell Newman [227] grew up with his parents and one younger brother, Nick Newman, in Texas, Florida, and South Carolina, before moving to Port Angeles, on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Stell grew up in a family where trading, negotiating, and bartering were common, entertaining practices, according to Nick Newman, Stell's brother, many years later. "We would trade items with our cousins and friends and look for business opportunities, such as the time we captured Horned Toads in Texas for resale to neighborhood kids in Florida. This early training was useful for a brand new underfunded park," Nick Newman observed. "He [Stell] was at his best wheeling and dealing thousands thousands of miles from the boss and at the end of the supply line." [228]

Newman graduated from high school in Port Angeles in 1954. His father, a wildlife biologist, took a job with the National Park Service in Olympic National Park. [229] Skiing and anthropology/archaeology were his early passions. Stell and his brother became avid skiers, indulging in the sport nearly every weekend on Hurricane Ridge and Deer Park ski areas in Olympic National Park. During most summers in both high school and college, Stell worked as a summer seasonal employee in Olympic National Park. [230] Between 1953 and 1958, Newman was a member of the National Ski Patrol. Stell majored in anthropology at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, as an undergraduate, and received his bachelor's degree in 1958. As an undergraduate, Stell enrolled in the Air Force Reserve Officer's Training Corps (ROTC) program. He continued on with graduate studies and his ROTC training at Washington State University and received his Master of Arts degree in anthropology in 1959. [231] By then, he had become ensconced in investigating archaeological sites on the Washington State coast, particularly at Toleak Point, on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula (about forty miles south of Cape Flattery on the Strait of Juan de Fuca). [232]

While in graduate school, Newman met Virginia (Ginger) Biddle, an undergraduate and fellow anthropology student at Washington State University. Born in Oakland, California, in 1938, Ginger Biddle and her family had moved to Mercer Island, Washington, before Ginger attended Washington State University in Pullman. Stell Newman and Ginger Biddle married in June 1960 around the time that Newman completed work on his master's degree and began a new career path. [233]

In 1960, Stell Newman entered the U.S. Air Force as a second lieutenant. After Newman trained in San Antonio, the young Newman couple moved to Mission, Texas, then to Mississippi, then to San Antonio, and, finally to Westover, Air Force Base in Massachusetts (for around four and one-half years). During most of his six-year air force career, Stell Newman flew in the Strategic Air Command, flying air tankers used for refueling airplanes, mostly B-52s. His squadron deployed to Sonderstrom Air Force Base in Greenland on many occasions, as well as to Europe, on ninety-day tours. [234] This he did against a Cold War backdrop of the Bay of Pigs crisis in Cuba and the escalating United States' involvement in Vietnam. Stell Newman's love of anthropology convinced him to leave the air force, as a captain and aircraft commander, and return to college as a Ph.D. student at the University of Hawaii.

To earn extra money, Newman flew twelve-passenger, light twin-engine planes part-time as a guide for a tourist airline; he visited most of the islands in one day. He, Ginger, and the two Newman children also operated a small business packing samples of sand, soil, and lava, for sale to tourists to Hawaii. [235] Immediately after receiving his doctoral degree in 1970, Newman was hired as director of the Hawaii State Historic Preservation Office, where he was responsible for administering the National Register of Historic Places program in Hawaii. [236]

Figure 8-1. Superintendent Stell Newman. Photograph compliments of Tiger Newman.

Stell Newman's National Park Service career as a permanent employee began in 1974 when he took a job as "historian" in the National Park Service's Denver Service Center for one year. In 1975, he was offered a job with the Park Service's regional office in Anchorage, Alaska; where he worked there for four years as an anthropologist, as part of a team of professionals studying, in particular, the newly created Bering Land Bridge National Monument (headquartered in Nome). [237] When Newman left Alaska at the end of 1978, he had a total of over fifty published articles, technical reports, and manuscripts to his credit, most of them written on anthropological/archaeological subjects. [238] More than his education, experience, and credentials, Stell Newman brought to the superintendency an inquisitive and creative mind, respect for and enjoyment of the diverse groups and individuals with whom he came in contact, and a warmth and subtle wit that endeared him forever to the people of Guam. Stell Newman, not the park itself, presented a positive defining presence of the National Park Service on Guam between 1979 and 1983.

Stell Newman arrived on Guam in mid-January 1979, at age forty-two, to begin his first Park Service superintendancy as the park's first superintendent. [239] His daughter Tigger (Nancy) moved with him from Alaska. His wife Ginger came to Guam in June that year, after their son, Tom, had graduated from high school in Anchorage. [240]

Stell Newman spent the first few months figuring out where the park and its boundaries were located. His days were spent "becoming familiar with the Park resources, meeting and establishing working relationships with key people and agencies, and initiating the paperwork necessary to begin making the new park operational." [241] According to Newman, his inexperience as a park superintendent slowed the necessary programming and budgeting during the first few months. It caused "occasional delays in making policy decisions when the Superintendent had to check with higher level officials." [242] As superintendent, Stell Newman orchestrated all aspects of the park's operation: day-to-day operations and resource management; future planning and development; land acquisition; interpretation; research and education; budgeting; personnel; and media relations and public affairs. His full flowing beard, frequently accented with a ready smile, and his dry, intelligent wit, merged with his deep enjoyment of diverse cultures to engender an enduring positive perception of the park and the Park Service that continued long after his physical presence.

In addition to the park on Guam, Newman had two other resource areas to help develop and manage: American Memorial Park on Saipan and Guam National Seashore Study Area. The American Memorial Park (AMME) had been established by Congress in 1978 as an "affiliated area" (a related area of the National Park Service system). Saipan, unlike Guam, was a member of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, a part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Island. Since islands in the Northern Marianas were not United States possessions, involvement of the U.S. government in developing the American Memorial Park on Saipan was accomplished by contractual obligations specified in the covenant creating the Commonwealth or by legislation. At its inception, the American Memorial Park was a Commonwealth park and there was no Park Service involvement. Concern about limited funds for park development, however, resulted in legislation involving the Park Service in the American Memorial Park development. At the urging of Representative Phillip Burton, a section was included in the Territorial Omnibus Act of 1978 that authorized the National Park Service to develop and operate the American Memorial Park (AMME). This section included a proviso stipulating that AMME would be turned over to the Commonwealth upon request. This Omnibus Act included authorization for the expenditure of three million dollars to be used for the development and operation of the park in accordance with a plan for that park's development. The plan had been prepared during negotiations of the Commonwealth Covenant and later amplified in a conceptual site plan prepared by a consultant. The National Park Service assigned Superintendent Newman to oversee development of the American Memorial Park. During his first year on Guam, he spent considerable time trying to sort out the legislative history of AMME and exactly what the Park Service was supposed to do with a park that it didn't own. Also, Newman, along with other Park Service personnel from NPS support offices, made periodic trips to Saipan to discuss park development with the Commonwealth administration as well as residents. In 1979, the NPS regional director authorized the assignment of one permanent ranger to the American Memorial Park to provided everyday operational guidance. As time went by, Superintendent Newman averaged about one trip a month to the American Memorial Park to provide development and management expertise. [243]

Superintendent Stell Newman also shared responsibility, with NPS planner Ron Mortimore and a Government of Guam Department of Parks and Recreation representative, for planning the future of the Guam National Seashore Study Area, a large area on the southwest coast of Guam, stretching from mid-island mountain ridges to coastal beaches and offshore ecosystems from Nimitz Beach (south of Agat Bay) to a coast strip south of Merizo. According to a proposed 1967 Master Plan for the Seashore Study Area, the purpose of the Guam National Seashore would be to protect a portion of Guam's unspoiled coral reefs and lagoon, volcanic uplands, and tropical vegetation, as well as historic and archaeological remains dating from the Spanish period of occupation, for the perpetual recreation, scenic, and scientific us of Americans and visitors to Guam. The Government of Guam had originally requested a study of the area by the National Park Service in the early 1950s, followed in 1966-67 by field studies requested by Guam Governor Manuel F. L. Guerrero. During Newman's first year on Guam, he served on a team (along with NPS planner Ron Mortimore and representatives from the Guam Department of Parks and Recreation) that explored the possibility of creating a National Seashore and met with local residents living on or near the southwest coast of Guam to discuss their views on such a park. (Newman noted general concern among local residents about losing their property if a National Seashore park was created). [244]

All this and more Superintendent Stell Newman did alone when he first came to the park, except for occasional guidance from the NPS offices in Honolulu and in San Francisco. During his first six months on Guam, he had no staff, equipment, or supplies. Out of necessity Newman enlisted the help of numerous non-NPS government agencies and individuals. He relied on the assistance of members of the Young Adult Conservation Corps (YACC) in the enormous task of cleaning up many acres of land at Asan Point and the Agat unit of the park, as well as for completing small construction projects. Newman continued to use the people and equipment of the YACC for routine maintenance in the park until 1982, when President Ronald Reagan discontinued the program. As time went on, Newman also enlisted the enrollees in the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). During 1979, Newman established a close symbiotic working relationship with Guam's Department of Parks and Recreation. The park provided free building space in the Asan Beach unit for the department's maintenance functions; Parks and Recreation, in turn, supported many of the park's operational needs, such as occasional human power and equipment. Individual volunteers played an important role in nearly all aspects of park development and management. In December 1979, Joseph M. Lupola (husband of the park's future administrative clerk, Diane Lupola), the first park volunteer, coordinated the clean up of Asan Beach. [245]

Superintendent Newman solicited and received development assistance during its first years of existence from numerous other government agencies: the U.S. Navy, Marines, Army, and Seabees, as well as Guam's Housing and Urban Renewal Authority, the Office of Territorial Affairs, the Office of the General Service Administration, as well as the majors of Asan, Agat, and Piti. At the end of his first two years as superintendent, Newman observed that: "development to day . . . is of the 'do it yourself' variety. More accurately, it is what locally would be called cumshaw development" (The word "cumshaw," originally derived from the Chinese language, where it meant favor, gratuity, and grateful thanks, was adopted by the U.S. military and used as slang term meaning begged, borrowed, and traded). "Approximately, $600,000 worth of assistance was 'cumshawed' during 1980. At the end of 1980, however, these sources," Newman added, "were drying up and it will be up to the Service to complete the permanent and final development." [246] Even after nearly four years in the park, Superintendent Newman relied on others to put his park together. In June 1982, he organized a volunteer workday at Asan Point, during which about 200 Navy, Seabee, and Marine men and women spent a day working on various projects aimed at getting Asan Point ready to open to the public. They hauled rocks, picked up debris, cut brush, chain-sawed logs, welded equipment, filled holes in the ground, and planted coconut trees. "The work accomplished that day," wrote Newman in a newspaper article of thanks, "was staggering–more than our small park staff could have accomplished in several months of work!!" [247]

Stell Newman received assistance from other somewhat less visible sources as well during his four-year superintendency. From the outset, the staff of the Pacific Daily News, published in Hagatna, and Newman had excellent rapport due, at least in part, to the location of Newman's first office in the Pacific Daily News Building. "The park," Newman wrote in the spring of 1980, "enjoyed bountiful press coverage" throughout 1979; at least once a week, the media reported on park news items. [248] The Pacific Daily News and the Guam Tribune, as well as the local radio station, aided the park tremendously. The newspapers and radio constantly provided free publicity about park events, large and small, that ranged from public meetings to discuss park planning and development to Newman's acquisition of a World War II vintage road grader used by the Seabees. [249]

Stell Newman once joked about making one of Guam's regular radio personalities, Jerry Rogers (also known as J. Q. Fanihi) a junior NPS ranger in training. He presented him with a tangantangan seedling, a virtual weed on the island, and tasked the junior ranger talk-show host with the seedling's care. Unknown to the aspiring junior ranger and his radio audience, the special "fertilizer" provided by Superintendent Newman during his frequent on-the-air visits was a diluted herbicide. All was revealed to the listening audience only after the radio host had suffered an appropriate period of mourning over the brown, dried, and very dead seedling. [250]

Figure 8-2. Dr. Ballendorf, professor, University of Guam. Park friend, supporter and consultant. Photograph by Gail Evans-Hatch, 2003.

Superintendent Newman also fostered a close working relationship with the Micronesian Area Research Center (MARC) at the University of Guam in Mangilao on the east side of the island. This mutually beneficial relationship that he nurtured between the National Park Service and MARC yielded several research studies on various topics related to the War in the Pacific park and the National Seashore Study Area. One of the first Park Service-funded research papers, a study of repositories around the United States that held records on the history of Guam, which was initiated in 1978 before Newman's selection as superintendent, [251] was followed by many more research papers, financed in part or whole by the National Park Service, conducted under the auspices of MARC, and often published as part of MARC's "working papers" series. Superintendent and scholar Stell Newman encouraged this collaboration with MARC. During Newman's superintendency, research papers written under contract with the NPS and published by MARC addressed an array of natural history, cultural resources, and historical topics, including past land and sea uses within the park, land and fresh water organisms in the park and the National Seashore Study Area, marine biological resources, geologic features in the Seashore Study Area, construction of defensive Japanese military structures on Guam, and narratives of the Chamorro experience during World War II, to name just a few. [252] In 1980, the National Park Service awarded MARC a $15,000 grant to collect more than 100 books and other materials that told the story of World War II in the Pacific. An article in the Pacific Daily News, accompanied by a photograph showing Newman and MARC's Emilie Johnston seated behind a library table piled with books, reported that the MARC book collection would make research easier for park historians. "It's really great to get all this in one place," Newman told newspaper reporter Gene Linn. "Our historians have had to run over hell's acre to get materials." [253]

Finally, Stell Newman received willing assistance from his family in exploring resources of the new park. Particularly in the beginning of his superintendency, Newman turned his investigation of park resources into family natural history outings and learning adventures. His daughter Tigger Newman, who often served as the unofficial park photographer, recalled tramping through dense vegetation with her father soon after they arrived on Guam, in search of the park and its boundaries. Later on, Stell Newman and Ginger, and occasionally Tigger, explored some underwater portions of the park on scuba-diving adventures. [254]

For seven months, Superintendent Stell Newman was the only staff at the park. In late August 1979, Diane Lupola became the second permanent employee when Newman hired her as an administrative clerk. Lupola, a Guamanian (and the first female of Chamorro descent to wear the National Park Service uniform on Guam), [255] had been working in Washington State before coming to the park on Guam. The flow of required NPS paperwork and reports, as well as programming and budgeting data, immediately accelerated with the addition of Lupola. Over the next three and one-half years, Superintendent Newman relied increasingly on Diane Lupola to deal with an array of administrative issues, including land acquisition. In the spring of 1981, the administrative clerk's position was revised to include duties as the local liaison with Guam's Division of Lands. In this expanded position, Lupola maintained close contact with the Guam House and Urban Renewal Authority (GHURA), which acted as the Park Service's agent in acquiring park land. Lupola also coordinated the land acquisition activities of title companies and appraisal firms, and NPS's Western Regional Office in San Francisco. [256] Diane Lupola worked with Stell Newman nearly up to the end of his superintendency. About six months before she left the park, a new park employee named Shaw, who became the first locally hired park staff, began working with Lupola and Stell Newman as a clerk typist. [257]

Figure 8-3. Roque Borja, Chief of Maintenance during the Newman Era. Prior to his work with the park, Mr. Borja had served as Superintendent of the Guam Department of Parks and Recreation after a career in the U.S. Air Force. Photograph by Gail Evans-Hatch, 2003.

More than a year after Stell Newman arrived at the park, he hired Roque Borja as a maintenance worker. Borja began work as the chief of maintenance in February 1980. [258] Borja, a Guamanian born in 1933 in Sumay (the location of the U.S. naval station on Orote Peninsula), had joined the U.S. Air Force at age eighteen. While in the air force, Borja worked as a maintenance mechanic on C-45, C-82, C-134, R-70 (C-131), and C-141 airplanes. Following his retirement from the military twenty years later, he began working in the maintenance section of the Guam Department of Parks and Recreation. He became superintendent after six years and worked in that capacity for about two years before Stell Newman selected him for chief of maintenance.

Borja was the first male of Chamorro descent to work at the park. "Mr. Borja is exceptionally well qualified for the job," Superintendent Newman told the local news media, "and our maintenance program is off to a good start." [259] As chief of maintenance Roque Borja assisted Superintendent Newman in budgeting and ordering equipment and supplies for maintenance and overseeing the work of the YACC and YCC. Borja performed numerous day-to-day maintenance tasks (usually identified in a bi-monthly maintenance (schedule). Often Newman joined Borja in completing some maintenance tasks, such as driving the tractor and lawn mower, especially when Borja was new in the position and had no or only limited assistance from others. In April 1981, War in the Pacific National Historical Park hired Ed Mateo, the park's first laborer, to assist Borja with park development and maintenance projects. Borja worked as head of maintenance for nearly twelve years, retiring from the National Park Service in November 1991. [260]

More than a year later, the park's first maintenance crew, comprised of Joey Mantanona, Joaquin Leon Guerrero, and Peter Santos, was hired. [261] Borja, more than any other employee, was responsible for creating a physically recognizable War in the Pacific National Historical Park at the Asan and Agat beach units.

James E. Miculka was the last permanent managerial park staff hired during the Newman era. Miculka arrived on Guam, with his wife Debra, in September 1980 to begin his duties as park ranger, specializing in historical interpretation. A native of Texas born in 1954, Miculka had graduated from Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas, where he majored in history and paleontology. For three years, he worked as a park ranger and historian at For Union Trading Post National Historic Site, Williston, North Dakota. Miculka's initial responsibilities included developing park visitor programs, exhibits, and brochures, as well as educational programs for Guam schools. He also was to give guided tours to organized groups. [262] During his first weeks on Guam, Miculka familiarized himself with the Asan and Agat battlefields, especially as they related to the topography and the few historic artifacts that still existed in these units. He also examined different recollections reported by the Americans, Japanese, and Guamanian survivors had of World War II events on Guam and especially at these two park beach units. During the remaining months of 1980, Miculka also began to lay the groundwork for interpretive planning. [263] In June 1982, William Summers, the park's first locally hired museum technician, joined Miculka in the interpretive activities at the park. [264]

Miculka's responsibilities as park interpretive ranger changed as the park evolved. During his tenure at the Guam park, he filled a variety of positions at the park, including chief ranger and Pacific Area Dive Officer. He also served as acting superintendent for several months in early 1983.

The number of permanent managerial National Park Service personnel assigned to the park during the Newman era remained small. Limited congressional funding for the park severely limited hiring of both permanent and seasonal staff. In the summer of 1982, Ware in the Pacific National Historical Park employed six temporary summer workers, all locally hired; four of the six were Guamanian. (Around this time, David Lotz, locally Guam resident who had recently not been selected for park ranger, charged that Newman had discriminated against local Guam residents in hiring park staff.) [265]

Office space was likewise diminutive, as well as distant from the park units. Until August 1980, Stell Newman occupied a small temporary office in a downtown Hagatna building, the Pacific Daily News Building (also known then as the Chase-Manhattan Building), provided by the local General Services Administration. With the addition of Diana Lupola to the park staff and the arrival of new office furniture that month, administrative offices were moved to a larger adjacent office in the same building. From the outset, Superintendent Newman attempted to persuade NPS authorities to permit moving the park's administrative offices from the fourth floor of the Pacific Daily News Building to an existing unoccupied building at Asan Point inside the park. In mid-1980, a Pacific Daily News editorial even speculated that a park headquarters, along with a visitors center and maintenance facility, would be constructed on Asan Ridge. No such development ever occurred. The park's headquarters in downtown Hagatna, remote from the park, not only greatly hindered all aspects of park management and development but it was almost inaccessible to the public due to limited parking. Stell Newman, no doubt, chuckled about light-hearted charges that his park consisted of no more than fourth-floor offices in the Pacific Daily News Building and that he spent all of his days simply riding around the building on his ranger mobile. However, Newman reported, in his 1979 and 1980 superintendent's annual reports, that the unsatisfactory park office space was a major problem frustrating park development. Despite Newman's persistent efforts to secure park office and interpretive space in or near the park, they were for naught for more than two years. In Newman's words, there had been "a lack of action by the General Services Administration, and a lack of sufficient pressure from the Western Regional Office of NPS to crack things loose." [266] A "furniture freeze" in 1980 compounded problems associated with the park's office space. By the end of 1980, park employees were using borrowed desks and file cabinets to furnish their offices, thus perpetuating the "cumshaw" approach to early park development. [267]

It was not until early 1981 that the park administrative offices moved out of the Pacific Daily News Building to Asan, located in Asan Beach park unit, where the Park Service leased the first floor of a building (Haloda Building), located just a few hundred feet inland from the ocean. This two-story concrete building had been used previously as a vocational trade school. When the NPS staff moved in, it had few interior partisans or walls and a central open atrium extending from the ground floor up to the second-floor ceiling. Superintendent Newman and the other staff occupied one large wide-open space on the first floor of the building. Newman positioned his desk on the southern end of the first floor and had a window overlooking the sea. By the end of Newman's superintendency, part of the ground floor had been separated from the administrative offices with a temporary wall and converted to a visitors center with interpretive exhibits, and museum storage cabinets had been set upon the second floor. [268]

Planning and Management of the Park

Planning the future management of the War in the Pacific National Historical Park was Stell Newman's single most important and time-consuming activity during the first years of his superintendency. Newman spent long hours in 1979 and 1980 coordinating efforts to prepare the General Management Plan (GMP). He gathered a wide assortment of information about the park (largely through survey and research projects conducted on contract with MARC at the University of Guam); communicated regularly with and coordinated the visits of NPS Western Regional Office park planners (especially Ron Mortimore); oversaw the translation into Chamorro, printing, and distribution of the GMP; organized public meetings; and responded to endless comments about the plan. During the park planning process Newman, Mortimore, and others examined fundamental park needs, possible park boundary refinements, ideas about interpretation and development, and the identification of key problems facing park development. [269]

During 1979, work on the park's General Management Plan progressed, especially during several visits made by National Park Service Western Regional Office planner Ron Mortimore. Public input was sought early in the planning process at public meetings held in the villages of Agat, Piti, and Asan–all located near park units. A wide assortment of uses was proposed by many groups and individuals for the various park units. These included:

During 1979, Ron Mortimore, assisted by Stell Newman, led the team planning effort on the Guam National Seashore Study. By the end of the year, Mortimore had produced a draft "Statement of Management." [270]

War in the Pacific planning activities in 1980 again concentrated on development of the General Management Plan. Western Regional Office planner Ron Mortimore made several more trips to Guam to lead the planning process. Many research projects undertaken cooperatively by the National Park Service and MARC were completed in 1980 and contributed valuable information to the park planning process. [271] In late April, Newman made available to the public a summary of the draft GMP. This draft briefly described each park unit, the overall objectives of the park, and the proposed plans for using and managing each park unit. Beginning in June, Superintendent Newman organized more public meetings in Aga, Piti, Asan, and Hagatna to explain and answer questions about the draft General Management Plan. By the end of 1980, the draft final GMP had taken shape. [272]

In 1981, Superintendent Newman addressed several elements of the GMP that departed from customary NPS policies and were judged controversial among NPS professionals. Key among them was the tension between preservation of the historical integrity of certain park features and the use of park areas by local Guamanians as well as visitors. Stell Newman examined these two issues, in light of the legislated park purpose, in a memorandum and accompanying in-depth explanation, to the National Park Service's Pacific Area Office director in early April 1981. Newman's memorandum succinctly summarized his general view of how the park should be developed and managed. "I suspect that much of the controversy over these [GMP] proposals," Newman began,

stems from the idea that the War in the Pacific National Historical Park was established to preserve a historical area related to the battle Guam. This brings with it legitimate concerns for historical integrity, preservation of the historical scene, and protection of historical sites and features. However, reviewers should carefully consider the wording of the enabling legislation, which emphasizes that the primary park purpose is to commemorate the bravery and sacrifice of those who participated in the Pacific theater of World War II. [273]

Newman also urged reviewers of the GMP to consider the obligation to permit the "continuation of traditional cultural use patterns to our areas. This concern and the scarcity of suitable shoreline on Guam led to GMP proposals to integrate low key and simple shoreline recreational facilities into a national historical park." [274] Newman went on to explain in detail the rationale behind and argue in favor of several specific proposals presented in (and, in some cases, already developed) the GMP: the small picnic area at Apaca Point (Agat unit); a small memorial structure at the tip of Asan Point (Asan Beach unit); and the development of a community open space for large functions on one tract of land at Asan Point.

Through 1981 and into 1982, NPS personnel discussed and debated the perceived merits of and problems in the draft General Management Plan. Basic concerns among NPS cultural resource managers and historians focused on the primacy of preserving, protecting, and interpreting, in an authentic and accurate manner, the historic artifacts, sites, strucutures, and cultural landscapes, dating from World War II, that still remained in the [stl units. Tom Mulhern, chief of the Historic Preservation Division of NPS's Western Regional Office, in a memorandum to NPS planner Ron Mortimore, criticized the GMP's emphasis on recreational use of the Agat Beach and Asan Beach units and the commemorative monuments planned for the Asan Point area, as well as the visually intrusive impact of other proposed developments on the historic setting of the park. [275] Six months passed and discussions about the War in the Pacific GMP among National Park Service historians, including Chief Historian Edwin Bearss, and cultural resource specialists continued. By February 1982, Western Regional Office Regional Historian Gordon Chappell, in a February 4, 1982 memorandum to the Western Regional Office director sharply criticized the GMP for the "inadequate [historical] data base" used to develop the GMP. "In three crucial areas," Chappell wrote, "proposed effects on the land, boundary extensions, and recommendations for additional sites to be marked . . ., the inadequate data base has resulted in a plan that can result in damage or destruction of resources, either by affecting or ignoring them." [276] Chappell strongly recommended that a "historical resource study" of the park, prepared by a professionally qualified military historian in the Park Service, be completed before the GMP be finally approved. Acting Associate Director Ross Holland, Jr., of the Cultural Resources Management division of the National Park Service concurred. He also criticized the inadequacies of historical and archaeological studies already written in conjunction with MARC at the University of Guam, and called for the completion of a historical resources study that relied most heavily on "primary historical records," created at or near the time of the historical event being described. [277]

Meanwhile, as debate continued among National Park Service personnel about the adequacy of the "General Management Plan," local politics approval of the GMP, and forward movement of park development. Influential Guam Representative A. B. Won Pat, in a recent congressional oversight hearing said of War in the Pacific National Historical Park: "We have four employees, a rented office, and a lot of rusting war relics, and that's all." [278] Furthermore, Won Pat complained that there were many home owners and business owners in the Asan Beach area, in particular, that knew their property would be purchased by National Park Service, but didn't know when. [279] Pacific Daily News editor Joseph Murphy editorialized that "for too long that much-discussed park has been sitting there trying to survive and become established without funding by the federal government. Expedient progress in developing the park was locally an important priority.

Despite harsh criticisms of the GMP by National Park Service historians, the planning process for War in the Pacific moved forward (at the same time that funding for and eventual initiation of the Historic Resource Study also moved ahead). In June 1982, Superintendent Newman announced to the media that the draft General Management Plan and Environmental Assessment was available for another round of public review and comment. The environmental assessment section of the document presented the economic and environmental impacts of the proposed park developments. [280]

On Guam, the review of the GMP took place at four scheduled meetings, attended by local villagers, during the summer of 1982. Comments and criticisms of the plan were regularly reported by the news media. Some meeting attendees differed in their view about which park unit should receive the primary focus of development and how each unit should be developed. Others, such as Dr. Joe Cruz, a native of Merizo, Guam, expressed concern about the very limited interpretation of the Chamarro suffering and experiences during World War II in the park units. [281] At one meeting, members of the newly formed citizen's organization, Marianas Recreation and Parks Society, many of whom had helped lay the groundwork for the park and its enabling legislation, commented on several elements of the GMP. Peter Melyan, president of the organization, submitted four pages of testimony at the final public meeting in August 1982. Key criticisms of the GMP included: the exclusion of a naval vessel in the park; maintaining the historic scene in park units; and hiring local Guamanians for permanent park positions. Many appendices that elaborated on specific points accompanied the letter submitted by the Marianas Recreation and Parks Society at public testimony for the War in the Pacific GMP. One month later, the National Parks and Conservation Association echoed some of the same sentiments about the GMP. In September, Superintendent Stell Newman assembled all the comments on the General Management Plan and sent them to NPS planner Ron Mortimore and others in San Francisco for a final analysis and preparation of the final draft General Management Plan. [282]

In mid-February 1983, with the General Management Plan and Environmental Assessment completed, a public meeting was held on Guam at the park's Visitor Information Center (Haloda Building) on Marine Drive for a final review of the GMP. The stated purpose of the meeting, according to NPS employee Jim Miculka, was to insure that all public comments had been thoroughly and accurately addressed in the GMP. Representatives from the National Park Service offices in Honolulu and San Francisco attended the meeting to answer questions. For two days after the meeting, National Park Service representatives met with members of the Marianas Recreation Society and with several Guam government agency officials do discuss any final concerns pertaining to the GMP. The last of all public comments on the GMP were accepted at the park headquarters in the Haloda Building by the end of February 1983. The completed final document was approved, printed, and distributed in May 1983. In addition to describing and prescribing development for each unit of the park, the final GMP acknowledged the need for additional data. The list of additional data needed included:

1.additional oral histories;
2.boundary surveys;
3.additional historical and attitudinal data from Japanese historians;
4.survey data of all the park's underwater acreage;
5.additional marine resources data;
6.a historical resources study;
7.archaeological excavations of certain caves in the park;
8.a scope of collections study;
9.more detailed interpretive plan;
10.a feasibility study of acquiring and maintaining a World War II vessel.

The General Management Plan and Environmental Assessment served as the general "blueprint" for and guided all future development at War in the Pacific National Historical Park. [283]

Development and Maintenance

The physical development and maintenance of War in the Pacific National Historical Park was among Superintendent Newman's major priorities. At the end of his first year as superintendent, Newman cited the lack of physical presence on park lands as a major problem. This "causes local people and agencies to doubt that the Park will be developed in the near future," Newman noted. [284] A year later in early 1981, Newman reiterated the Guamanians eagerness to see the park fully open. "Every contact with the public and especially the media results in the question of when the park will be developed and open to the public." [285] In mid-1982, the park was sharply criticized for its slow development. [286] Actual development of the park consumed the greatest amount of Stell Newman's time.

Acquiring land inside the park boundaries owned by the U.S. Navy, the Government of Guam, or by private parties, logically preceded development of the park as a whole. Land acquisition, however, proved to be a slow and frustrating process. Limited appropriations by Congress to fund War in the Pacific during the first two years of its operation delayed the National Park Service's purchase of the approximately 240 acres of privately owned land inside the various park units. Only very slow progress was made toward acquiring private land. The Park Land Acquisition Plan was drafted, translated into Chamorro, printed (200 copies), and circulated for review in 1979. Newman held two public meetings in 1979, where with NPS's Western Regional Office reality specialists were present to answer questions. These meetings continued into 1980. Public comments were incorporated into the final draft, completed in 1980. Also in 1980, the NPS's Western Regional Office and the Guam Housing and Urban Renewal Authority (GHURA) entered an agreement, which laid out the procedures for GHURA to serve as land acquisition agent for the park. By 1982, War in the Pacific National Historic Park finally had money available to begin purchasing private land inside the park units. [287]

Much of the physical development work completed during Stell Newman's superintendency was based on site-specific conceptual development planning done by Art Dreyer of the National Park Service's Western Regional Office. Dreyer made several visits to Guam in 1980. Over several months, Dreyer prepared conceptual plans for the Apaca Point picnic area, Gaan Point, and Bangi Point (all in the Agat unit), Adelup Point and Asan Point (in the Asan Beach unit), the Piti Guns unit, Alifan unit, and Lebugan Natural History Area. The development of Adelup Point (Asan Beach unit) Bangi Point (Agat unit), Piti guns, and Mt. Tenjo units was to focus on preserving and interpreting the historic features to the public. [288]

Actual physical development of the park proceeded slowly at first due to inadequate funding and limited park staff. With no maintenance staff, equipment, or supplies in 1979, development activities focused principally on removing trash and inappropriate objects, moving earth, and planting coconut trees in select park areas. Superintendent Newman directed these efforts, accomplished totally by the Young Adult Conservation Corps. The YACC cleared about forty acres in 1979, mostly at Asan Point. An eight-foot-high cyclone fence around Asan Point was removed, as well as a 40' x 200' steel building (given to the agricultural college at the University of Guam). The YACC also cleared acreage at the Agat Beach unit in preparation for the construction of a picnic area there. Finally, the YACC built wooden sign boards for later painting and installation at park entrances. By the end of the year, Newman had acquired an old pickup truck and a dump truck from Navy salvage yards to help with earth-moving development activities. [289] No park units were open to the public in 1979. [290]

The hiring of Roque Borja in February 1980 as chief of maintenance accelerated the park's development and maintenance work. The removal of buildings that were once part of the U.S. naval base–a two-story hospital, barracks, military club buildings–was accomplished either by Roque alone or, with a small group of seasonal, summer employees. Roque had countless truckloads of asphalt, boulders, and rocks torn up and hauled away. Newman estimated that about 2,000 cubic yards of concrete and asphalt were removed from Asan in 1980, much of which was done by volunteers from the Army Reserve Combat Engineers. Borja, assisted by the YACC, uprooted and cut up power poles and cleared away about 300 cubic yards of general debris–rocks, metal objects, broken glass, and brush. [291] Before the end of 1980, a 1950 John Deere tractor with attachments and a 2040 backhoe front-end loader had been ordered and received to help with the earth-moving activities. [292]

The reconstruction of the Asan Beach unit in 1980 and 1981 began with the filling of building foundations and other depressions at Asan Point with 1,000 cubic yards of dirt from a nearby urban redevelopment project. A 1944 road grader, donated to the park by Black Construction Comapny in early 1980, may have been used to help with this and later earth-moving activities. [293] About 800 coconut trees were also planted around Asan Point in 1980; by 1981, they had grown about four feet high. [294] Around the same time, Newman followed through with a suggestion given to him by Japanese government officials during Newman's visit a year earlier; he had a small memorial area created at Asan Point. [295]

Borja oversaw the unloading of more dirt at Asan, this time to create a large raised earthen berm on the south side of the Asan Beach unit along a long stretch of busy Marine Drive. The angle of the berm was slanted to deflect automobile noise and permit mowing. The berm was completed in 1981. (The berm was later removed, except for a short stretch near the large park entrance sign, when a guardrail was put up along the parking area parallel to Marine Drive.) [296] The berm and broad lawn appeared appropriately commemorative. However, by mid-1982, mowing the expansive park lawn at Asan took all the time of six summer workers, thus diverting time and resources away from continued new developments at the Asan Beach unit. [297]

Also in 1980, Borja, with Newman's assistance, laid out parking areas and walking paths at Asan, and began their construction. Borja described the ingenious method devised for constructing the winding path:

Dr. Newman wanted it [the walking path] zig-zagging. . . . So . . . with the 2040 backhoe and front-end loader, I took an angle iron with two rods . . . loaded [these] two rods to it sharp and mounted it to the front end loader and just drove it down . . . making the markings [for the winding path].. . . . And then we went in and rented the asphalt cutter and then removed everything [outside the marks]. [298]

An additional earth-moving activity at the Asan Beach unit focused on constructing a new sewer line and pump station to serve Asan Point. One year earlier, the effect of this project on the historic qualities of Asan, a National Register of Historic Places property, had been evaluated and determined benign. [299] In May 1980, construction began, including trenching for the sewer line and pump station. Superintendent Newman informed the news media that a $36,000 contract had been awarded to Silo Guam, Inc., to do the work. The new sewer system, when completed, would service the building at Asan Point used by the YACC, and would later serve as a public restroom. [300] By early 1982, the YACC had nearly completed a picnic area at Asan Point. [301] Although a great deal of construction work was accomplished in 1980 and machine mowing had begun of the expansive grounds, the Asan Beach unit was not officially opened to the public until 1981.

By 1980, two areas in the Agat unit (Gaan Point and Apaca Point) were developed enough to open to the public. At Gaan Point exotic brush and debris were cleared away from the historic defense structures to permit public access. An entrance sign was also made and erected at Gaan Point by Roque Borja. Around the same time, three flagpoles were erected at Gaan Point to fly the United States, Japanese, and Guam flags. (For the next eleven years, Maintenance Chief Borja personally raised and lowered these flags every day.) [302] At Apaca Point a small picnic area with two small wooden shelters (designed by Tom Fake in the NPS's Honolulu office) and three picnic tables (built by the park's Maintenance Chief Roque Borja), along with three cooking grills, were built. Superintendent Stell Newman organized formal opening ceremonies at Gaan Point in May 1980 and Apaca Point on month later. At the Apaca Point picnic area ceremonies Governor Paul Calvo praised the Young Adult Conservation Corps for their tremendous contribution cleaning up the area and installing the picnic facilities. [303] After its opening, visitors used the Apaca picnic area to its full but limited capacity, despite the lack of running water and restrooms. Gaan Point, with its defense structures, was visited by about 100 people a month. Restrooms at Gaan and Apaca points were not available for public use until 1982. [304]

Through 1980 and 1981, other areas in or associated with the park continued to be cleared of brush and debris, including: Lebugan Natural History area, Adelup Point (Asan Beach unit), Piti unit, and Finille Creek areas. The YACC accomplished most of this work in the summer of 1980. Limited personnel to maintain these areas, however, meant that the rapid regrowth of vegetation soon reversed all human development efforts. In early 1981, Superintendent Newman reported that the "Piti Guns area had to be allowed to re-vegetate." [305] Despite this perpetual challenge of clearing away ramped vegetation, the two Piti guns were open to the public in 1981, accessed by a set of steps. Future plans called for constructing parking areas near the site and making footpaths around the guns.

In 1982, a major park development project was officially launced and celebrated at Gaan Point in the Agat unit–a "Living Memoral" of trees. Park employees had already planted coconut trees at Asan Point in an effort to help restore areas of War in the Pacific Historical Park to the way they looked before the heavy shelling during the 1944 American landing destroyed most of the trees. The denuded ground quickly became taken over by the weed-like tangantangan trees. Dr. J. Henry Hoffmann, a Guam dentist, conceived of and organized the imaginative "Living Memorial." Patterned somewhat after the tree planting commemorative practice in Israel by American Jews, individuals and organizations on Guam, in Japan, and around the United States were invited to contribute $100 for each tree planted. The U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy provided and transported the trees to park land. The National Park Service took responsibility for specifying the size and location of each tree, planting the trees, and maintaining them. Proceeds would go to the American Cancer Society. Public dedication ceremonies for the "Living Memorial" project took place on May 26, 1982, at Gaan Point. Governor Paul M. Calvo and Bishop Felixberto C. Flores spoke at the dedication. Superintendent Stell Newman presented a brief historical overview of the park. Pacific Daily News editor Joseph Murphy praised the project for its ingenuity, broad inclusiveness, and positive environmental impact. "The appearance of the park is vital, and that is why this living memorial project is so important." [306]

During the Newman era and through most of the 1980s, Roque Borja worked out of a maintenance shop located in the Asan Beach unit near Asan Point. A two—story Butler-type building (similar to a Quonset hut) near the Asan River, close to the Guam Parks and Recreation maintenance building, served as the maintenance building until the late 1980s. This location seemed ideal to Newman since he envisioned a close working relationship, even the sharing of equipment, between the park and the Guam Park and Recreation Department. [307]

Park development during the Newman years, even though limited, occasionally provoked criticism. In 1979, during Stell Newman's first year as superintendent, a controversy exploded over the construction of a small boat harbor at Gaan Point inside the boundaries of the Agat unit. Before Congress created War in the Pacific National Historical Park in 1978, local Guam government authorities had approved the construction of a small boat harbor at Agat by the U.S. Corps of Engineers, over the objection of the Park Service. When the Corps raised the issue of the marina again, after the 1978 formation of the park, Stell Newman and the Park Service again strongly objected. Representatives of the National Park Service, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, and the Department of the Interior's executive offices argued vehemently that the proposed small boat harbor was totally unacceptable because it would severely intrude on the historic scene and damage the integrity of the invasion beach and reef area in the vicinity of Gaan Point. After months of debate, Robert Utley, deputy executive director of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C. and Robert Barrell, Hawaii state director of the National Park Service flew to Guam for a public information meeting and private discussions to review the boat harbor proposal. Months of debate and negotiations passed before the Advisory Council and the National Park Service convinced the Corps to find an alternative location for the small boat harbor. [308]

Finally, National Park Service historians in the Western Regional Office began to question whether Stell Newman had followed all the necessary survey and documentation procedures required by historic preservation law to evaluate and preserve whatever historic features still existed in the park dating from World War II–before he removed buildings and vegetation, moved earth, and replanted trees. They also criticized some of his development decisions, like the small memorial area at Asan Point and the three flag poles at Gaan Point, claiming that they intruded on the authentic historic World War II scene. [309]

Physical development and maintenance of the park became severely threatened near the end of Stell Newman's superintendency. In March 1982, the Young Adult Conservation Corps (YACC) ended abruptly with the beginning of the Ronald Reagan administration. Fifteen YACC employees at Asan were dismissed, creating an enormous vacuum in park maintenance capabilities. Superintendent Stell Newman told the local media that the YACC had been responsible for virtually all maintenance work, cleanup, and some construction activities. No new maintenance workers would start working at the park until the end of April. Until then the rest of the park staff would have to pitch in, Newman told the press. "I'll be mowing the lawn this afternoon. . . . We don't want to see the park left unattended." [310]

Interpretation

During 1979, interpretive efforts were minimal due to a lack of funding, staff, and knowledge of the park's precise boundaries and resources. Interpretive planning progressed as part of the overall master planning effort. Actual interpretive activities were limited to occasional tours for visiting National Park Service staff, important guests and dignitaries, and interested local residents given by Superintendent Newman. He also made numerous informal presentations to local service clubs and government agency heads, and communicated regularly with the local newspapers and radio and television stations about park news. [311] In the late fall of 1979, Superintendent Newman turned serious attention to interpreting the park's history to the public and, thereby, helping create a more concrete presence of the park. Eager to move ahead quickly, Newman first considered the installation of an existing traveling exhibit, entitled "Magnificent West II," to simply familiarize the Guamanian people with the National Park concept. When the logistics of excessive shipping time and money proved problematic, Newman and others explored the possibility of creating interim (fiberglass embedded) wayside exhibits. The estimated cost of planning (around $3,800) and producing of these exhibits ($10,000 to $15,000) very likely ended further discussions of the project. The park had no funding for production of interpretive materials or signs in fiscal 1979 and 1980. [312]

By December 1979, Superintendent Newman began searching for and enlisting volunteer help in pursuing his vision of the park's interpretive program. Around the same time, Stell Newman and Dirk A. Ballendorf, director of the Micronesian Area Research Center (MARC) at the University of Guam, and others began discussing the need to record the experiences of those who took part in events on Guam during World War II–Guamanian residents and all those in the American and Japanese military. Stell Newman began writing letters to several American veterans of the Guam landing and post-war cleanup, asking them to write or tape their recollections of their experiences. These recordings, Newman assured all his correspondents, would be deposited in the MARC archives and would be of great value in the future interpretation of the park and for research by future historians. [313]

Stell Newman also began searching for artifacts of all kinds that might be donated to and used to interpret the war in the Pacific. Throughout the year, Newman was approached by several individuals wishing to donate a wide assortment of both Japanese and American World War II artifacts. [314] In a December 26, 1979 letter to the chief of military history for the army in Washington, D.C., Newman asked about the availability of World War II uniforms and the existence of vintage Japanese vehicles that may have been given to the U.S. Army for museum displays. "I am now trying to locate," Newman explained, "World War II uniforms and other pieces of personal equipment. . . . One of the interpretive concepts that I am almost certain will be used will [have] our Park staff dressed in World War II uniforms to give guided tours and lectures." Newman went on to describe more of his vision of the future park:

We are also planning an outdoor museum for large pieces of military hardware, such as landing craft, tanks, artillery pieces, aircraft, etc. . . . Any assistance that you might give us in locating examples of some of the more important items of military hardware in the Pacific Theatre would be appreciated [315]

At nearly the same time, Joe Murphy of the Pacific Daily News, no doubt at Stell Newman's urging, editorialized about the need for certain military equipment. "There is nothing that the National Park Service would like better than [to] have a restored Japanese Zero fighter plane," Murphy announced in his "Pipe Dreams" column, "both at the Guam War in the Pacific National [Historical] Park, or at the new Arizona Memorial Visitor Center in Hawaii that will be completed next year." After informing readers that he had located a Japanese Zero airplane undergoing restoration by an former Navy chief petty officer Murphy suggested that "maybe we could talk Chief [Steve] Aiken into a trade. We could give him all the leftover bombs on Guam for it." [316] Apparently Stell Newman's approach to building the park by means of "cumshaw" development techniques (borrowing or trading) had infected the nearby offices of the Pacific Daily News.

Stell Newman's quest for interpretive objects of all kinds and his tenacity in asking others for them blossomed in 1980. The local news media eagerly continued to support his efforts by routinely printing articles about the latest artifacts discovered in the park or donated to it. Newman's enthusiasm and resourcefulness in locating and acquiring materials for interpretive exhibits was boundless. He began the new year with a letter to secretary of the of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., asking for large items–tanks, artillery pieces, landing craft, and motor vehicles–that might be displayed in the outdoor museum planned for the park. "One additional concept I would like to explore with you," Newman wrote,

is the possibility of placing the Enola Gay on permanent display here in the Park. . . . I would like to determine if there is any chance to acquire it for the museum here. . . . We would certainly have to provide a protective revetment or building to properly care of the aircraft. An interpretation of the latter phases of World War II and the introduction of atomic weapons into warfare are an important part of our Nation's history and should be interpreted somewhere. I am hoping to establish a cooperative agreement with the Peace Memorial at Hiroshima, Japan, whereby the exhibit is jointly designed and produced [317]

In 1980, Newman sent a barrage of additional letters focusing on park interpretation. He wrote to the headquarters of the U.S. Marine Corps, then the Library of Congress, asking for a copy of the radio recording made by former Marine Corps combat Technical Sergeant Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. during the American landing on Guam on July 21, 1944. [318] In February, Stell Newman wrote to the director of the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, as well as the director of the U.S. Navy Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., asking if they had any "Japanese or American aircraft, ground support equipment, weaponry, or other items that were used in the Pacific Theatre, which might be available to the park, on either permanent loan or by transfer." [319] Newman also expressed interest in historic photos, movies, or stills that might be duplicated. [320] Superintendent Newman asked the commander of the Thirtieth Naval Construction Regiment in San Francisco and the commander of the Naval Construction Battalion Center if the Seabees might have appropriate material or equipment that could be donated for an exhibit about Seabee involvement in World War II. (In the same letter, Newman also asked if the Seabees, through its community action program, might be willing to help with the physical development of the park by scraping and grading overgrown areas, hauling off junk and refuse, contouring the land, removing post-war construction remains, hauling in topsoil, planting fifteen-foot-tall coconut trees, and constructing concrete forms for picnic tables.) [321]

Stell Newman was especially intent on exhibiting large items of military equipment at the Asan and Agat units, probably to help give the park a dramatic visible presence as well as interpret the war in the Pacific. In the spring and summer of 1980, he contacted equipment companies, airplane manufacturers, and the air force asking about the availability of amphibious vehicles, landing craft, airplanes, aerial bombs, and even plans of various World War II artillery and guns for possible donations. [322] "I can foresee great public interest in putting together an exhibit at Asan Point or, perhaps, at Gaan Point in Agat based on the equipment you would be willing to donate," Newman wrote to the head of the Cruz Equipment Company in Agana (Hagatna). [323] In a letter to the president of Failsafe Corporation, Newman observed" "I have noticed your C-46 [airplane] parked at the Guam Airport and would like to find out if your company would be interested in donating it the National Park Service for exhibiting in the park." [324] Newman wrote to the commander of the Third Air Division of the air force in San Francisco asking about replicas of the two atomic bombs used in World War II or other inert vintage bombs. He also asked if any units in that division might be interested in restoring World War II aircraft that Newman hoped to receive for his Asan outdoor exhibits. [325] Newman also wrote to the commander of the naval base on Guam asking for the donation of a Japanese two-man submarine on display at the naval base, as well as assistance in locating a World War II Seabee bulldozer. [326]

From the outset of his superintendency, Stell Newman realized the importance of presenting an accurate and authentic interpretation of the war in the Pacific. Newman anticipated and encouraged park visitation by Japanese tourists, as well as Guamanians and Americans. He was committed to presenting both the Japanese and American viewpoints on the war. Exhibiting and interpreting Japanese items of military equipment was absolutely essential for presenting a balanced approach to an interpretation of the war in the Pacific. Newman located and began reading material about the Japanese culture and military history; he ordered books on these subjects, including first-person accounts of the war written by Japanese soldiers. He also looked for books written in Japanese that might be of interest to Japanese tourists and could be sold at the park. The last two weeks in March 1980, Superintendent Newman went to Japan to talk with Japanese park officials about park development, to tour several Japanese parks, to learn behavior patterns of the Japanese tourist, and to seek "advice on the sensitivities of interpreting WW II parks for Japanese visitors." [327] He also hoped to find military objects available for interpretive displays. While in Japan, Newman asked park officials if they would be interested in helping develop the master plan for the park. "They said 'yes'," Newman reported upon his return to Guam, "and immediately offered to send the planner for a month." [328] Newman received help from a Japanese park planner soon afterwards. Stell Newman's trip to Japan initiated a long and beneficial exchange between Japanese park officials and others and the War in the Pacific National Historical Park. [329]

Superintendent Newman had mixed success in acquiring objects for interpretative exhibits. Japanese officials, although eager to contribute, told Newman there was little military equipment left on Japan after the war; Guam and the United States probably had much more. [330] Certain items Newman requested were not available (such World War II uniforms and personal gear) or, if they existed, high freight and other charges put them beyond his financial reach. Sometimes Newman located desired equipment owned by potential donors who were skeptical of the park's ability to protect and preserve precious items, therefore refused to turn over objects to the park. By the fall of 1980, however, Superintendent Newman had achieved considerable success in acquiring objects of all kinds for interpretation. Black Construction Company made a major donation in late February when it gave the park a 1944 model of a road grader used by the Navy Seebeas in the Pacific Theater. [331] By mid-summer, Newman had been given or promised a wide assortment of items. "I am having good success in getting most of the World War II material remaining on Guam for park exhibits," Newman exuberantly reported.

I have been promised a number of mines, shells, depth charges, and bombs by units at NAVMAG for an exhibit. The Marine Barracks is giving us their four Japanese cannons and two will be installed in original Japanese pillboxes at Gaan Point. The other two will be located at Asan Point and the Marines are going to construct coconut log emplacements for them. Cruz Equipment Company is going to donate several amphibious DUKS used in the Guam invasion and they will also put on exhibit at Gaan Point. I have received interested noises from Black Construction Company on donating the two Japanese Type 10 anti-aircraft/cannons in front of their office on Marine Drive. These will go in emplacements at Asan Point. [332]

"We are now directing major efforts to getting Asan Point and Gaan Point open to the public," Newman added, "to show a beginning for the park." [333] In addition to large objects, Newman had also collected a wide assortment of donated World War II artifacts, ranging from Japanese gas mask canisters, U.S. helmet fragments, and GI canteens to bullets, shrapnel fragments, and battery gun shells. Newman expressed enormous delight when he received copies of black and white photographs taken on Guam by a U.S. Marine during the American landing there in July 1944. [334]

Stell Newman's efforts to establish a real physical presence by creating outdoor exhibits open to the public were finally realized in 1981. Gaan Point, in the Agat Beach unit, opened in the spring of 1981. On display were several military objects, including a Japanese cannon and bunker. A trail connected various objects of interest at Gaan Point. A large wooden sign with painted letters as well as Japanese characters stood at the entrance to the Gaan Point outdoor exhibit. Across the bottom of the sign, equal recognition was given to both the National Park Service and the Young Adult Conservation Corps (YACC) for their contributions to open that park unit to the public. The opening of Gaan Point followed the less dramatic opening of the small Apaca picnic area in the Agat unit. [335] Not long afterward, Newman was offered and for a time considered accepting a World War II combat ship. It presumably would have been anchored off the Asan or Agat beaches. [336]

The arrival of interpretive specialist James Miculka in September 1980 did not halt Stell Newman's many requests for donated items. Miculka's experience with interpretive printed material and indoor exhibits simply allowed the park to broaden its interpretive efforts. By the end of 1980, Miculka had familiarized himself with mountains of material on World War II in the Pacific and had also attended training on curatorial methods at the National Park Service's Harpers Ferry Center. By the beginning of 1981, he began work on a park brochure, the text for outdoor signs, and on indoor exhibits. Around this time, park staff was finally preparing to move the park's administrative offices from the Pacific Daily News Building to the Haloda Building at Asan, which had space for indoor interpretive exhibits on the first floor as well as approval and funding to construct an audio visual room. The Park Service began leasing this first-floor space in the spring of 1981. [337]

War in the Pacific National Historical Park received its first funding for the production of interpretive material, signs, and even a vintage World War II truck (with money from the "vehicle fund") in 1981. [338] In early March, the Pacific Daily News announced that Miculka was in charge of preparing the indoor exhibit to be housed in the Haloda Building, "which will include displays of World War II flags and uniforms of the armed forces of the United States, Japan, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and other nations involved in the war. . . . Small arms, maps and other mementos" would also be exhibited, Miculka reported. [339] By the end of that month, an interpretive folder outlining the Japanese and American occupation of Guam during World War II was nearly ready for printing. [340]

Miculka pushed ahead with plans for indoor interpretive exhibits. Through the summer and fall of 1981, Miculka located and collected photographs, newspaper articles, posters, soldiers' songs, and more that told the story of the Japanese and American soldiers' experiences in the Pacific during World War II. Toshihiko Sakow was hired by the National Park Service as a consultant to design the indoor exhibit. [341] The exhibit in progress received a major boost in early 1981 when Tadao Nakata, a private Japanese collector contacted by Miculka, gave the park Japanese military uniforms, publications, posters, and accouterments. "The gift was the biggest asset the park has for exhibit material," Miculka reported. It enabled the park to present a more balanced picture of the war in the Pacific. Later, Oyama Mamaru of Japan also donated Japanese artifacts to War in the Pacific National Historical Park. [342]

Jim Miculka's year-and-a-half-long efforts to create an indoor exhibit were realized on July 20, 1982 with the opening of the park's visitor information center. Staunch park supporter and politician Antonio Won Pat, Lieutenant Governor Joe Ada and representatives from the navy and air force joined the ribbon-cutting ceremonies at the Haloda Building, along with nearly 100 others. Donor Tadao Nakata traveled from Japan for the opening ceremonies. The new interpretive exhibit, built by the NPS's Harpers Ferry Center, featured a ten-minute slide/sound show in both English and Japanese. Japanese uniforms and printed material, U.S. magazines, newspaper articles, and other objects that had been gathered by the park, donated, and obtained from the Smithsonian Institution, National Archives, and branches of the military. Opening of the visitor center received broad coverage in the press. [343]

Stell Newman's and Jim Miculka's interpretive efforts soon extended beyond the park's dry land to its underwater sites. A total of nearly 1,000 acres of the park, along the Asan and Agat units, were underwater. As early as 1980, a volunteer dive team (that included Tim Rock, Dave Hendricks, Suzanne Hendricks, Richard Fisher, and Pete Peterson) had been formed, demonstrating that a public interest in the submerged sections of the park existed. [344] In February 1982, a visiting marine biologist from the Channel Islands National Park, Gary Davis, had suggested the possibility of an underwater scuba-diving trail. Plans to develop an underwater interpretive trail in the vicinity of Gaan Point in the Agat unit had to be scrapped a month later, when it was discovered that a sewer outfall emptied polluted water nearby. Still, the idea of interpreting the natural history of marine life in the park as well as possible sunken historical objects seemed worth pursuing. [345] The search for a workable underwater trail was resumed in Ocotber 1982, even though Newman confessed to the local press that: "the area you can put in a dive trail is relatively limited." [346] Its time had not yet arrived by the end of 1982.

In late 1982, a major aid to the future interpretation of the park's history–the War in the Pacific Historical Resource Study–was successfully launched. This project was initiated after years of discussions among NPS historians and others about the study's value and content. On the eve of Stell Newman's arrival in the park in January 1979, the acting assistant director of cultural resources in the Washington Office of NPS, Ross Holland, had cautioned against using military histories and secondary published sources in planning for and interpreting the new park. New research is needed, he emphasized. [347] By mid-1981, after the park's completed draft general management plan called for development and interpretation without new historical research–without a historic resource study–National Park Service military historians vehemently objected. In September 1981, Regional Historian Gordon Chappell in NPS's Western Region insisted that funding be sought to complete a historic resource study for the park, written by a military historian. [348] NPS Chief Historian Edwin Bearrs, two months later, summarized a long debate between the NPS park planners and military historians in a letter to Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, director of U.S. Marine Corps History and Museums. "It is mandatory that a historic resource study, to feature a review [of] primary sources, be programmed in the near future. Otherwise the NPS, in its efforts to interpret the area, will be plagued by certain ambiguities in site identification previously noted by Marine Corps historians. . . . Only through use of primary documents generated on the regimental, battalion, and company level can such ambiguities be resolved," Bearss emphatically stated. [349] Another six months passed before funding had been appropriated and a NPS historian, Charles W. Snell, was selected to write a historic resource study. Snell made his first trip to Guam to assess the park's boundaries and historic resources in September 1982. By the end of the year, Snell was immersed in primary research from a wide array of government sources. [350]

Newman Era Ends Abruptly

At the end of 1982, Superintendent Newman and his staff could measure the progress that had been made in developing all aspects of the park over the previous four years. They, no doubt, assumed that Newman's energy and enthusiasm would continue to advance the park further into the future. This was not to happen.

On December 27, 1982, a little before 10 a.m., Stell Newman was heading northeast on Route 1, less than a quarter mile from the visitor center. Suddenly, a Toyota pickup truck with two young men, traveling in the opposite direction, lost control, swerved across the highway's centerline, and slammed into the door of the 1975 AMC sedan driven by Newman. Stell Newman was killed instantly. He was pronounced dead at 10:25 by Dr. P. Boonprankoong. Stell Newman was forty-six years old. [351]

Stell Newman's sudden and untimely death released an outpouring of anguish and sorrow across Guam and elsewhere. For weeks, his friends and family, while grieving his death, memorialized his life in the local newspapers and at gatherings to remember his life and contributions to War in the Pacific National Park. Joseph C. Murphy of the Pacific Daily News who had come to know Stell Newman and championed all his park development activities, wrote that Newman

represented everything that is good in our federal government, and in doing so, wound up with a sensitive love for Guam. . . . He wanted more than anything to make that park into the premier memorial to all those killed in the Pacific battle. . . . It was Newman, more than any other person who was responsible for getting the park plan moving. . . . T. Stell Newman WAS [the] Historic Park. . . . The people of Guam will miss him, and we hope that some day his memorial will be a completed, beautiful and touching War in the Pacific National Historical Park. [352]

In late December, the Thirteenth Guam Legislature passed a resolution asking the governor to give Newman the Ancient Order of Chamorri posthumously. [353] This was the first time such an award had been given to a non-Chamorro.

Two days after his death, friends of Stell's gathered privately to celebrate his life and honor his person in a letter "To Stell."

We remember his cool competence under stress, the humorous, even playful part of his nature, the grace and friendship that warmed the lives around him, the values and firm grounding that informed his work, the art and craft that inspired his leisure and edified what might have been the barren hours. . . . Stell was a man of action, but also an academic and philosopher who seemed effortlessly to combine his gifts for the greater enjoyment of life's offerings. . . . We must grieve his untimely loss–to his family, to us his friends, to the institution he served so well. Yet, the view of his life that we all share cannot help but bring a smile–he did so many things so well with such good spirit. To honor him, let us share his amused view of the human condition, his joy in physical and intellectual quest, his seeking in the mysteries that surround. [354]

On Sunday, January 16, 1983, about 150 people gathered at Gaan Point in a memorial to remember Superintendent T. Stell Newman and tell stories about his life. [355] Some time later, some of his ashes were spread at sea, from Asan Point in the War in the Pacific National Historical Park. Hundreds of dollars were donated to plant dozens of palm trees in a cluster at the Agat Beach unit as a living memorial to Stell Newman. [356] Twenty years later, this memorial and memories of Newman remain vivid. In 2003, Roque Borja recalled that he had "never had a supervisor like him. . . . He was truly outstanding. He was good." [357]