Asan, Guam. (January 26, 2023): In this photo by Lance Corporal Garrett Gillesie, the Honorable Meredith Berger, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment, speaks at the Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz Reactivation and Naming Ceremony at Asan Beach, Guam. The ceremony officially recognizes the rebirth of Naval Support Activity Camp Blaz after the Marine Barracks was deactivated in 1992. Named after the late Brig. Gen. Vicente “Ben” Thomas Garrido Blaz, the first CHamoru Marine to attain the rank of general officer, Camp Blaz represents a renewed commitment to the people of Guam and the defense of the Indo-Pacific. The CHamoru are the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, politically divided between the United States territory of Guam.
The ceremony included a joint ship display including Guam’s fast cutters, the U.S. Coast Guard cutters Myrtle Hazard and the Frederick Hatch.
The U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Marine Corps have a history of cooperation dating back nearly 80 years when Coast Guard members drove the landing craft that brought the III Amphibious Corps ashore in 1944 to retake Guam from Imperial Japanese Forces in World War II. When Marines first landed on Guam during the Spanish-American War, they established Marine Barracks Guam in the village of Sumay, thus beginning a century-long relationship that continues today with the activation of Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz.
The base is currently under construction but will eventually house 1,300 per permanently stationed Marines who will support some 3,700 additional Marines on rotating assignment. Base construction includes multiple new firing ranges and training facilities, schools, housing, and other support facilities. The U.S. military owns about 49,000 acres of land on Guam, roughly a third of the island.
The Department of Defense spent $365 million in FY2020 on relocation expenses, with the total cost of reactivating Camp Blaz is expected to be $8 billion, of which the Government of Japan will provide $2.8 billion. This is part of an allied build up in the Indo-Pacific in response to increasing tensions with China.