A journey back home

A man in his twilight years yearning to finally find his roots after 42 years. A daughter desperate to see his father make that connection. A family who has longed for their lost relatives and a photo and newspaper clipping that made all things possible.

The Sablan family of Saipan and the Asanuma family of Brisbane, Australia got the shock of their lives, and their generations, when they found out their century-old search for one another had finally ended.

A search within a search

It happened by the end of last year when three Australian ladies of Chamorro descent also began their search for their own relatives in Guam and Saipan. They brought with them every conceivable proof of their lineage — old photographs, letters and even names unearthed from the stories of relatives long gone.

In October 2000, Beverly Barter, who was also looking for the Guerrero family, went to an elderly Japanese-Chamorro gentleman in their native city of Brisbane to ask if he too would like to know if he still has relatives in Micronesia.

Michael Asanuma, 72, was delighted to receive Beverly and soon was excited with the chance of finally tracing back his heritage. Michael has always known he had Chamorro blood running through his veins. Although, his father was Japanese, her mother, Luisa, brought up Michael and her brood in the ways of the homeland.

Chamorros in a foreign land

In the years before the outbreak of World War I, Luisa’s father Simeon left Saipan for the island of Yap. Germany, the island’s administrator at that time, needed conscripts for the West Guinean capital of Rabaul, and Simeon was one of many Chamorros sent to the colony.

Years passed and in 1959, Elias Sablan, Simeon’s cousin, visited Rabaul as a delegate of the sixth South Pacific Conference and met up with Luisa and her children, Michael included.

The chance reunion was newspaper fare as the Territorial Sun, the predecessor of Pacific Daily News and the leading broadsheet in Micronesia at that time, ran an article about Elias Sablan meeting up with his cousin’s children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

The story said that some 50 to 100 families of Guamanian ancestry reside in Rabaul and although the elders still speak the native tongue the youngsters speak only English with a marked British accent. West Guinea was then a thrust territory of Australia.

The news article also included photographs and unbeknown to anyone, even to Michael, those now yellowed images would one day prove to be the compass that would stir him and his daughter, Jacqueline, back to their families’ ancestral land.

When Papua New Guinea gained its independence in 1975, Michael’s family and tens of thousands of Chamorros were forced out of Rabaul because the new government wanted to nationalize everything.

Being Australian citizens, Michael and his family simply hopped on a plane and migrated to Brisbane were they started a new life and have been there since. It is estimated that over 1,200 Chamorros are living in that Australian city.

In 1995, Rabaul, disappeared completely from the face of the earth as a volcanic eruption destroyed the once adopted land of the Chamorros.

The search is over

Meanwhile, while searching for her own relatives, Beverly also asked Guamanians about the whereabouts of the sons and daughters of a man in the picture of a 1959 newspaper clipping she was carrying — the newspaper clipping was of the Territorial Sun and the man in the picture was Elias Sablan.

Michael shortly got a call after Beverly came in touch with Dave Sablan Jr. in Guam, grandson of Elias and Michael’s own nephew. Soon, Michael and Jacqueline were on their way to Guam and to Saipan after Dave Sr. sent them two round-trip tickets delivered directly to their doorsteps courtesy of Federal Express.

In a “little” get together last Sunday, the Sablan family welcomed a branch of their family from across the seas and from across generations. The get-together was emotional as Michael and Jacqueline expressed their thanks for being warmly received.

“Coming over here, we didn’t know what to expect. We only knew that we are brown and our family comes from these islands. It’s a relief to finally find out where you came from and who your relatives are,” Jacqueline said.

Michael could never be happier for finally fulfilling something he has been dreaming of for the last 72 years. From the time he was a boy, his mother, Luisa, had told him of a land far away where his grand father lived.

The footprints of those memories are growing dimmer by the day and Michael says if he and Jacqueline were not able to make the connection, the names and the stories would have followed him to the grave.

“I don’t like stories, I like to hear the facts. You see, we can omit the events, but we cannot conceal the facts. And the fact is me, Jacqueline, my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have a family here in Saipan,” he beamed.

In between traditional Chamorro songs, where Michael gamely joins in, Jacqueline is seen playing with Lala, three years old and one of youngest members of the Sablan family.

The image is a testament that neither the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean nor the passage of time could prevent families from finding each other.