If you stopped a person on any street in America today and asked them what they thought about the U.S. naval station at Guantánamo Bay, chances are, you would hear a response about “detainees,” “torture,” or the “War on Terror.” If you asked a person who has lived or served at GTMO that same question,…

I came to Pensacola to study at the University of West Florida, but almost anyone you might ask would consider this a military rather than a college town. Comparatively, when many people think of The U.S. naval station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, they immediately think of the military installation there.  This means thousands of military…

“I never missed out on anything,” said Daline Riley, who was born at GTMO in the 1950s and spent several years at the Caribbean base as a teenager. Daline was one of several GTMO children interviewed in the summer of 2012 through the University of West Florida’s Public History program. “It gave me a better perspective; it…

The presence of the United States Navy on the island of Cuba is not comparable to anything I have ever experienced in my life. In Minnesota, we are not familiar with having another country’s naval base and detention center in our backyard. Cubans living around the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base are all too familiar with…

  “It was easy [to raise children] because I felt that if John walked down the street at midnight, I wouldn’t have to worry about him. It was a very safe place. We never locked our doors, and there was always something for the children.” -Dot Arguelles when asked about the safety of GTMO I…

The author of Guantánamo Blues (anonymous Naval Wife) describes the accounts she had heard describing life in Guantánamo Bay for Naval families: “Cuba sounded romantic, she recalls; “it was the fleet’s winter base. There would be dancing, swimming, sailing, horse-back riding, and all other things I love.”   The world in which I grew up, the…

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “Guantanamo”? I’m guessing it’s not “Mayberry.” I wasn’t particularly aware of Guantanamo and its history before my involvement with the Guantanamo Public Memory Project, but in studying I’ve learned a lot more than just facts and timelines. I’m a part of the team at the University…

  Is there any danger in fond remembrance? Most people look back on some point in their lives with happiness or even wistfulness; their memories of that time constitute an essential part of their self-understanding. Memory is vital to both the personal/individual and political/collective human experience: oral history projects across the globe have shown us…

“If someone didn’t live through it, didn’t experience it, they would know nothing about it,” a man I interviewed for another project once told me, referring to a place and time that held deep meaning for him. What can those of us who’ve never been to Guantánamo know about it? There’s knowledge derived from reading…

The most interesting fact I learned about GTMO was the presence of family and their daily lives on the military base.  I am ex-military and knew about dependent life on a military base.  However, the presence of family at GTMO was not something I had previously considered.  One hears about the current history and tends…