In search for a little hidden history, I went hiking through the jungle to find 3 coastal defense guns used to defend Guam in 1944.
The start of the trail was hidden in a field behind an old church. There were old concrete steps leading the way up the steep incline into dense jungle filled with more spiders than we could count.
We were hiking to find what are called the Piti Guns, which are three 140 mm coastal defense guns placed on a hillside in Guam near a farming community. These guns were placed here by the Japanese in WWII in order to hopefully ward off an attack by the US Marines. However, it wasn't the Japenese themselves who placed these guns, rather they forced the local Chamorro population to construct the defense site.
A little bit of backstory is needed to understand this gun site. Guam is a tiny little island in the Pacific which held strategic military importance in WWII. It was a US held land prior to WWII, but the Japanese decided to invade the island in December of 1941. The small garrison of US troops on the island was overrun by the attack, thus the Japanese occupation of Guam began.
The island had a large population of locals called Chamorros, who were native to the island. The Japanese generals in control of the island implemented harsh standards of living for the locals, essentially making them slaves. As threats loomed of the US trying to regain control of the island, fortification of the coast began. It was during this fortification that the Piti guns were built in harsh conditions by slave labor.
Gun 1, the lowest of the 3 guns, is still intact. All three guns had an operational range of just about 10 miles. While the hillside they were mounted on is quite overgrown now, it would have provided great viewpoints of US Navy ships off the coast during an attack.
The second of the guns was a little worse for the wear and had completely fallen apart. Construction on this coastal defense site was close to finishing in the summer of 1944, but one interruption caused this site to never become operational: the US invasion. On July 21, 1944, US Marines began a hard-fought invasion of Guam, eventually retaking over the island.
The third gun was on the crest of the hillside and was the most pristine of all of the guns.
One thing that stood out on this hike was the conditions of the land. Hiking through the dense jungle hillside in Guam was harsh – the humidity made it that much harder. While it made for a fun hike, it was wretching to imagine Marines have to climb through this terrain under fire in order to retake the island.
There was a clearing cut away in front of the final gun that gave us some idea of the sightline these defenses were designed to protect. It was almost surreal to look out on the coast from the site and imagine the battles that would have been fought on the corral-ridden beaches.
Even though these guns were never used in battle, they grant onlookers an amazing perspective as to what the battles of Guam would've been like in WWII. Thankfully the US retook the island before they were in use, successfully freeing the Chamorro people and restoring the island back to a thriving place in the Pacific.
If you ever get a chance to visit Guam, there are tons of hiking locations and the Piti Gun site should likely be on your to-do list.