The prospect of war between the Unit­ed States and North Korea has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the last week.

On Thurs­day, North Kore­an state media announced that Kim Jong-Un’s mil­i­tary per­son­nel are prepar­ing a plan to fire four bal­lis­tic mis­siles into waters off the coast of Guam, a U.S. ter­ri­to­ry in the Pacif­ic Ocean that is home to rough­ly 163,000 civil­ians, two mil­i­tary bases, around 7,000 troops and many more per­son­nel mil­i­tary per­son­al and their depen­dents. This is only the lat­est devel­op­ment in what CNN is call­ing ​“an unprece­dent­ed exchange of mil­i­tary threats between Wash­ing­ton and Pyongyang.”

Despite calls for calm and restraint from Gov. Eddie Cal­vo, many of the island’s res­i­dents are unsur­pris­ing­ly wor­ried about a poten­tial nuclear shootout between the two coun­tries. As one local stand-up come­di­an told the BBC, ​“There have been threats before but this time feels dif­fer­ent. We’re real­ly caught in the cross fire. Pres­i­dent Trump seems as much of a saber-rat­tler as Kim Jong-Un in Pyongyang. And a lot of peo­ple here feel like Trump is the guy who might actu­al­ly press the button.”

But while media pun­dits end­less­ly debate whether or not Trump will enforce his ​‘red line,’ the dec­i­ma­tion of Guam’s ecosys­tem and the dis­place­ment of its indige­nous pop­u­la­tion at the hands of the U.S. mil­i­tary goes large­ly unmentioned.

Guam’s strate­gic impor­tance to the Unit­ed States is well doc­u­ment­ed. Locat­ed rough­ly 1,500 miles east of the Philip­pines and rough­ly equidis­tant to the Kore­an Penin­su­la and the South Chi­na Sea, the island is, as described by for­mer Sec­re­tary of Defense Ash­ton Carter, ​“an impor­tant strate­gic hub for U.S. mil­i­tary in the West­ern Pacif­ic.” His­tor­i­cal­ly, the island has played an out­sized role in U.S. mil­i­tary ven­tures in the Pacif­ic, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the Kore­an War in the 1950s and the Viet­nam War a decade later.

But Guam’s ecosys­tem and its indige­nous peo­ple, the Chamor­ros, have paid a high price for the island’s strate­gic impor­tance to the Unit­ed States.

Guam was attacked and invad­ed by Japan in 1941, short­ly after the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor. It took the Unit­ed States near­ly three years to recap­ture the island. Dur­ing that time, the Japan­ese mil­i­tary sub­ject­ed the indige­nous peo­ple of Guam, the Chamor­ros, to tor­tur­ous con­di­tions. In all, his­to­ri­ans esti­mate that vio­lence result­ing from World War II killed 10 per­cent of the island’s total pop­u­la­tion.

After the war, the Unit­ed States sought to mil­i­tar­i­ly for­ti­fy Guam and its oth­er Pacif­ic ter­ri­to­ries. This led to the dis­place­ment of thou­sands of Chamor­ro fam­i­lies as the mil­i­tary seized thou­sands of acres of land for its own use. Soon after, the mil­i­tary bases became a major source of employ­ment on the island, mak­ing it hard­er for tra­di­tion­al modes of sub­sis­tence liv­ing to con­tin­ue. As a mark­er of the intense Amer­i­can­iza­tion that took place in Guam after World War II, only 20 per­cent of Chamor­ros in Guam spoke the Chamor­ro lan­guage in 2010: In 1950, that fig­ure was 100 percent.

U.S. nuclear test­ing in the near­by Mar­shall Islands dur­ing the 1950s also bore dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for the Chamor­ros. Accord­ing to a 2010 arti­cle in The Asia-Pacif­ic Jour­nal,

The inci­dence of can­cer in Guam is high and Chamor­ros have sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rates than oth­er eth­nic groups. Can­cer mor­tal­i­ty rates for 2003 – 2007 showed that Chamor­ro inci­dence rates from can­cer of the mouth and phar­ynx, nasophar­ynx, lung and bronchus, cervix, uterus, and liv­er were all high­er than U.S. rates. Chamor­ros liv­ing on Guam also have the high­est inci­dence of dia­betes com­pared to oth­er eth­nic groups, and this is about five times the over­all U.S. rate. The entire island was affect­ed by tox­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion fol­low­ing the ​“Bra­vo” hydro­gen bomb test in the Mar­shall Islands in 1954. Up to twen­ty years lat­er, from 1968 to 1974, Guam had high­er year­ly rain­fall mea­sures of stron­tium 90 com­pared to Majuro (Mar­shall Islands). In the 1970s, Guam’s Cocos Island lagoon was used to wash down ships con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with radi­a­tion that had been in the Mar­shall Islands as part of an attempt to clean up the islands.

In 2009, Madeleine Bor­dal­lo, Guam’s elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Con­gress — who, in accor­dance with the Guam Organ­ic Act of 1950, has no vot­ing pow­er — intro­duced an amend­ment the Radi­a­tion Expo­sure Com­pen­sa­tion Act (RECA) so that it includes Guam in its list of ​“down­winder” areas affect­ed by atmos­pher­ic nuclear test­ing con­duct­ed in Microne­sia. The act got stuck in com­mit­tee.

A year lat­er, Sen­a­tor Tom Udall of New Mex­i­co intro­duced an amend­ment to RECA that would give Chamor­ros in Guam com­pen­sa­tion for the haz­ardous effects of nuclear fall­out. It, too, didn’t make it out of com­mit­tee. Udall re-intro­duced the bill in 2011 and again in 2013 to no avail. As of today, Chamor­ros in Guam only qual­i­fy for com­pen­sa­tion under the ​“onsite par­tic­i­pants” cat­e­go­ry, which only cov­ers vic­tims who were present at ​“any des­ig­nat­ed loca­tion with­in a naval ship­yard, air force base, or oth­er offi­cial gov­ern­ment instal­la­tion where ships, air­craft or oth­er equip­ment used in an atmos­pher­ic nuclear det­o­na­tion were decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed,” leav­ing out many affect­ed by nuclear fall­out on the island.

Today, the Depart­ment of Defense owns near­ly a third of Guam’s total land­mass. But as the Pen­ta­gon seeks to relo­cate Marines from its base in Oki­nawa — pri­mar­i­ly due to con­tin­u­ous protests against the mil­i­tary base by Japan­ese cit­i­zens — that fig­ure is only going to increase. In 2006, the Navy pro­posed mov­ing 8,600 Marines from Oki­nawa to Guam, as well as expand­ing its oper­a­tions in Apra Har­bor, which would have destroyed 70 acres of coral reefs in the process. Out­cry against the destruc­tion of the reefs even­tu­al­ly forced the Navy to can­cel its plans in Apra Har­bor. While the Apra Har­bor was stopped (for now), the Navy still plans to relo­cate 5,000 Marines and 1,300 depen­dents begin­ning in 2022. In con­junc­tion with the tens of thou­sands of con­struc­tion work­ers who will be sent to work on mil­i­tary buildup projects on the island over the next decade, Guam’s water sup­ply will come under great duress, as will it its trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture, while also cre­at­ing thou­sands of pounds of haz­ardous waste.

Of course, the Pen­ta­gon argues that these projects boost Guam’s econ­o­my. But for many on the island, the ben­e­fits are out­weighed by the costs — envi­ron­men­tal, social, and polit­i­cal. The issue for many on the island is that there is no demo­c­ra­t­ic process in place to set­tle these dif­fer­ences. As a non-self-gov­ern­ing ter­ri­to­ry — a.k.a. a colony—the peo­ple of Guam have no say in whether or not they want to live in prox­im­i­ty of four fast-attack nuclear sub­marines and an expe­di­tionary heli­copter squadron.

Thank­ful­ly, the Unit­ed Nations has advo­cat­ed for Guam’s right of self-deter­mi­na­tion, and there’s a big chance high school­ers on the island will be intro­duced to decol­o­niza­tion class­es and instruc­tion­al mate­r­i­al as ear­ly as next year. But until the peo­ple of Guam are allowed to decide their own des­tiny, they will remain in the crosshairs of mil­li­tary esca­la­tion fueled by the Unit­ed States.