The Northern Marianas District was ably represented in both houses and on the political status commission.
There was concern that if Micronesia fractured into a hundred little countries, each would want an equal vote in the United Nations.
Guam Senator William D. L. Flores was named chairman of the special committee on reintegration. It read in part:“WHEREAS despite this unfortunate and perhaps accidental division of one race, the people of the Marianas have never lost hope that a day will come when all the Chamorros once again will be reunited within a homogenous political and economic union under one governmental administration.”A report by the Saipan Committee on Reunification was published on 5 May 1959. Recognizing the strategic value of the Marianas, Legazpi claimed not only Guam, but the entire archipelago for Spain.In 1898, after declaring war on Spain to free Cuba from “barbaric rule,” the American Navy overwhelmed the Spanish Navy in the Caribbean and quickly defeated Spanish troops in Cuba and Puerto Rico in what Secretary of State John Hay called a “Splendid Little War.”In the months that followed, the US Army captured Manila from Spanish forces.
Working with Ed Pangelinan and Pete A. Tenorio, the status commission conducted the popular plebiscite on 17 June 1975. The resolution requested incorporation of the Mariana Islands within the framework of the US territory of Guam.Richard Barrett Lowe, the presidentially appointed governor of Guam at the time, wrote to Anthony T. Lausi, director of the Office of Territories, about the resolutions. Their interest in US citizenship and self-government were heightened when, on 1 August 1950, President Truman signed the Organic Act of Guam into law.By the Organic Act, all federal income taxes paid by residents of Guam were returned to the Government of Guam for operations. Times have changed. Reunifying the Marianas would help their cause. Their position in the immediate vicinity of Guam is capable of development into submarine bases within supporting distance of Japan, and, in the event of war, this would make their continued possession by that country a perpetual menace to Guam, and to any fleet operations undertaken for the relief of the Philippines.”At the end of the World War I, President Woodrow Wilson personally drafted the Versailles Peace Treaty, especially the section creating the League of Nations. The Charter of the Mariana Islands District Legislature was adopted on 21 December 1962. In October 1963 another unofficial plebiscite was conducted, and again, the people voted for reunification. “Just drive around for 10 minutes and it’s obvious.
They were transferred back to the Department of the Interior on 1 July 1962. The new United States-Japan Roadmap for Realignment Implementation was issued on May 1.The Roadmap led to the creation of JGPO, the Joint Guam Program Office. Not unexpectedly, the mission’s report stated that secession, or separation, was not possible under the trusteeship agreement: “Both the Trusteeship Council and the Administering Authority have made this point clear to the people of Saipan and the question should be regarded as firmly settled,” the report said.Members of the Guam Legislature visited with the Marianas District Legislature in February 1966 to once again discuss the possibility of reunification. The results of that poll were as follows:The poll showed that the voters were overwhelmingly in favor of gaining US citizenship and some form of permanent affiliation with the US. “Guam needs to figure out what’s best for Guam,” said Col. Philip Zimmerman, the officer in charge of the 20-strong Marine contingent on Guam.But, he said, from a military perspective, Guam is a crucial forward base, noting tensions with North Korea and with China around the Spratly Islands and the South China Sea in recent months. Lt.
The people of the Northern Marianas were politically isolated from the people of Guam by a foreign decision outside of their control.After 1950, the people of the US territory of Guam steadily advanced in their political and economic development. The US had just acquired all the Hawaiian Islands by joint resolution, and now they were proposing to take all the Philippine archipelago.