Dad soon set out for the Island of Guam, to be the Chief Engineer on the island. After Dad got settled in Guam and had made arrangements for proper housing, Pearl set out on her journey. A young woman barely twenty years old, with a very young child. She was basically a very young, unsophisticated, country girl from the West.

At the turn of the century, travel was essentially by horse drawn vehicles, or trains drawn by coal burning steam engines, Facilities were primitive by modern standards. Those of us who remember the old steam engines will recall that simple cleanliness was almost impossible because of the coal soot flying back into the passenger cars. There were times when the screen in the car windows could hardly keep the cinders out let alone the suffocating smoke. Furthermore, this little woman had to take her child across an ocean. The most water she had ever seen until she reached the West Coast on this trip , was the Platte River. I call her courageous.

There were days and days of monotonous train travel, and then, many days again in the unfamiliar surroundings of the ocean transport.

There was no ìharbourî in Guam at the time. The ships had to anchor outside of the reef, and cargo and passengers were taken in by lighters or small boats.

Pearl had expected that Dad would meet her there when she arrived. He was not there. As she waited on the ship, she asked the Captain if he would permit her to continue on with him to Japan and then back to the United States, Departure time was approaching. Finally, she saw a small boat leave the beach arid come across the bay. There in the stern sheets she could clearly recognize Dad standing to attract her attention At last this was journeyís end. It seems that ships only came to
Guam once a month, and Dad had been informed that it was not due until the next day, and when he heard that the ship was there, he tore up the road getting there.

When they got ashore with all of her things, they were transported from the beach to the house Dad had had built at the top of a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean by bull cart. Pearl claimed, in later years, that this was her first ìhorseless carriageî.

Sanitation conditions in the town on the beach were unacceptable. Therefore,the house was out of town and high on a hill. The water up there would have a better chance of being potable, and there were other sanitary considerations.