At tax time each year, we all have desks covered with earning statements, receipts, W-2 and 1040 forms as we rush to make sure that the "monetary" treasury gets its share of our earnings. Should you make a habit of forgetting to pay tribute to the government treasury every year, do not worry about being forgotten. Sooner or later, folks in fast cars with blue flashing lights will drop by to let you know that they are thinking about you.

While there may be only one official Treasurer of Guam, we have more than one treasury such as museums, where "material" things that are part of our cultural history are preserved and displayed, and a research center whose archives include manuscripts that attest to the written accounts of the early history of our island and our people.

The most complete and prominent of the museums is the Guam Museum located atop a hill at Adelup, behind the Governor's Complex. Its lofty location provides the visitor with a breathtaking panoramic view of one side of our island. Incidentally, climbing all 67 steps to reach the Museum is also a breathtaking experience. But don't despair; there is reward at the top of the last stair.

A visit to this Museum gives one a good grasp of Guam's history from antiquity to modern times. The legendary Chamorro proa occupies a prominent spot. A good collection of indigenous artifacts and precise and concise historical notes make a visit to this Treasury an enjoyable and educational experience.

There is also a Treasury at the Naval Activities Command located right in the heart of old Sumay, a village we lost in World War II. Appropriately enough, this Museum emphasizes the military aspects of Guam's history. The area surrounding the Navy Museum is enriched with more history per square foot than any other place on Guam.

We visited one private Treasury which is still under development. This one features many interesting and historical items, many of which were recovered from wrecks of Spanish, German, Japanese and American ships. An eye catcher in the collection is a container for water and provisions from one of the Spanish galleons that plied our waters for 250 years. Lanterns salvaged from the German ship Cormoran which was scuttled in Apra Harbor during World War I are reminders of German colonial interests in Micronesia during the early part of this century.

But the Treasury where I spent most of my time doing research was this one, a Treasury of Manuscripts, the Richard F. Taitano Micronesian Area Research Center at the University of Guam. Conceived in 1967 by Dr. Tony Yamashita and made a reality by a public law introduced by Senator Richard Taitano, MARC has become a Center of note and recognition with one of the finest collections of important original documents and translations of Spanish papers dealing with our region of the Pacific.

My own interests made me focus on translated Spanish documents and was awed by the depth and breadth of the material that has been collected and translated. The Curator of the Spanish Documents Collection is someone very well known to us on Guam, Professor Marjorie Driver, a founding member of MARC, whose devotion to enlightening us with writings and translations has made her a national treasure. This Treasury of manuscripts gives back to our people something very valuable -- knowledge about you, me, and us. It gives us a glimpse of our past and insures that we are not forgotten, not so much by others, but by ourselves.

Some accounts of our early history are very flattering; many are not. But, unless we swallow the bitter with the sweet, we may never fully understand and appreciate the storied past of our ancestors.