Give Them Samoa Recognition!

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 21, 1998

The U.S. Postal Service won't issue a stamp honoring the 100th anniversary of American Samoa as a territory of the United States, and Samoans aren't happy about it. "It isn't as big as some political things over here, but I'd say it's a seven or an eight on a scale of one to 10," says island historian Stan Sorensen in a telephone interview with for the people from Samoa. "We have had political races where people don't agree on anything but the desire for a stamp.

American Samoa is the only piece of the United States in the Southern Hemisphere. It supplies more soldiers to the U.S. military per capita than any other state territory, and it's the only piece of U.S. territory that still isn't a state but did join the United States voluntarily. In 2000, it will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the raising of the American flag over Samoa, and Samoans believe that the event deserves a stamp.

On April 17, 1900, the chiefs of Tutuila, Aunuu and Manu'a signed a deed handing over the island to the United States. Samoans are proud of the island's courting of the United States and, in their stamp campaign, are glad to have Allen P. Stayman, director of the Office of Insular Affairs of the Department of the Interior, on their side. "American Samoa is the only major jurisdiction in the U.S. that never had been honored or depicted on a postage stamp," he wrote in a letter to Postmaster General William Henderson. "Samoa has waited 100 years. That is long enough."

The postal service so far has refused the commemorative on the claim that stamps aren't issued for territories. Stayman, however, counters with a letter showing stamps honoring the Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and Hawaii and Alaska when they were territories. Just to make the point, a copy of the letter was sent in an envelope festooned with postage stamps honoring former Puerto Rican governor Luis Munoz Marin.

During a three-day period, for the people's calls to the postal service's public-relations office were not returned, and a receptionist said that postal service public-relations employees were "all in meetings all the time."

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