Travel deep dive
Guam's War in the Pacific Park: Seven Sites, One Coast
War in the Pacific National Historical Park was established to commemorate the bravery and sacrifice of those who took part in the Pacific campaigns of World War II, and to conserve Guam's natural, scenic and historic places — and on the ground it does both at once, because its units are beaches, ridges and reef flats as much as memorials. They are scattered along the island's west coast rather than gathered behind one gate, which makes the park easiest to understand as a sequence: the landing beaches, the heights that overlooked them, and the visitor centre that ties them together.
Updated 2026-09-19
Seven units, and where to begin
Authorised in 1978, the park is made up of seven separate units: Asan Beach, Asan Inland, Fonte Plateau, Piti Guns, Mount Chachao–Mount Tenjo, Agat and Mount Alifan. Together they cover the ground of the 1944 landings from the shoreline to the hilltops, and the T. Stell Newman Visitor Center is the park's own gateway to them — the place to see how the units relate before driving between them.
Asan: the landing beach and the ridge above it
US forces came ashore at Asan Beach, and the Memorial Beach Park there keeps gun emplacements and several monuments on an open stretch of shoreline. On Asan Ridge above the beach, gun mounts, pillboxes and tunnels still face the water they once covered, and standing among them makes the geography of the landing easy to read.
The Asan Bay Overlook honours both the Chamorro people and the US service personnel who were killed on Guam in World War II. Its Memorial Wall of Names records soldiers who fought on the front lines alongside civilians who lived through the war, with particular recognition for the island's own residents. Every 21 July the island marks Liberation Day, the anniversary of the 1944 landings, with a parade through Hagåtña.
Fonte Plateau, Piti and Ga'an Point
The main feature at the Fonte Plateau unit is a U-shaped bunker that served as the Japanese Army's communications centre for the island until it was overrun on 28 July 1944. The Piti Guns unit keeps defensive gun mountings at Piti, and at Ga'an Point in the Agat unit, visitors can see guns and a well-hidden fortified position that faced the southern landing beach.
Beaches and reefs inside a battlefield park
Swimming, fishing, hiking, diving and snorkelling are all popular in the park, and the reef flats off Asan and Agat are part of what it protects. The battle is still on the seafloor there, too: artifacts lie near both landing beaches, and the National Park Service notes that no complete underwater inventory of them has ever been made — reason enough to look, photograph and leave everything where it lies.