"Guam's geostrategic importance cannot be overstated," Admiral Thomas Fargo, the senior military officer in the Pacific, with 300,000 soldiers, sailors and marines under his command, said in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on March 31. "Both Navy and Air Force facilities will continue to figure prominently in Guam's increasing role as a power projection hub."
Across the naval station here, new housing is being built, part of a near-doubling of military spending on the island from levels of a decade ago.
"Guam is no longer the trailer park of the Pacific," Johnson said of the new military investment. "Guam has emerged from backwater status to the center of the radar screen. This is rapidly becoming a focus for logistics, for strategic planning."
Washington's investment in Guam is most easily seen from the catwalk of Andersen's 13-story air traffic control tower.
In clockwise order, work is under way on an air-conditioned, typhoon-resistant hangar for B-1 bombers, a huge war reserve material warehouse, a new base exchange shopping center, a new fitness and health center and a new base security center. Out of sight, new underground pipes are delivering aviation fuel directly to parking pads for jets, and the first of 60 munitions storage "igloos" are being built. To foil terrorists, workers are drilling water wells on base and are burying power lines off base.
"This is by far the largest amount of construction I have seen at any Air Force base in my years in the service," said Captain David Vandenburg, a 29-year-old Oklahoman who is chief of base development.
While new apartments, fitness centers and military support offices are not particularly glamorous, they are essential for increasing what Captain David Boone, a Navy Seabee, calls Guam's "surge capacity." In a military emergency, the island could quickly swell with planes, submarines, and ships.
"The real trick for me is to figure out how many people are going to be living here 10 years from now," said Captain Boone, who has command of military construction on Guam. "It is a moving target."
Guam has been a supply base since Spanish galleons from Manila stopped here to pick up fresh water and food before crossing the Pacific to Acapulco, Mexico. In the late 19th century, the island was a Spanish coaling station. In recent decades, Air Force pilots dubbed Guam "the world's largest gas station." The US gained control in 1898 after the Spanish-American War.
Training for war
But it is increasingly being used for training. The Marines have rented typhoon-damaged structures for urban warfare exercises. Rural warfare training has been conducted in the southern jungles, forests so thick that one holdout Japanese soldier from World War II was captured only in 1972.
During the December 1972 bombing of North Vietnam, more than 150 B-52s flew from here. On a recent morning, bulldozers and pavers were upgrading the acres of tarmac that make Andersen comparable to a major international airport.
In this treeless landscape, even B-52s look small. In the shade of one the planes' huge, drooping wings, Master Sargent Ralph Gillikan, a mechanic last stationed at the North Dakota base, surveyed the surrounding sea of concrete and said, "The parking here is good."
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