THE Pacific Ocean is 64 million square miles in size and lies between the United States of America and the Republic of the Philippines, and so vast is this body of water that if you relocate the seven continents and 15 subcontinents and put them inside the Pacific Ocean, you will still have sufficient space for navigation.

Well-to-do Filipinos shop at Guam, where things are cheap without realizing that this unincorporated territory of the United States, has three military bases. Most have heard of Midway Island, Wake Island and Pearl Harbor but not of Johnston Island, and Howland and Baker Islands. Both are US overseas possessions in the Pacific with outstanding strategic importance.