War in the Pacific 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]