Guam Navy Base, Guam, US Territories

A major navy base, with a nuclear missile submarine squadron, and many other tenants and ships based there. Guam is the largest of the Mariana Islands, which extend north from Guam for a few hundred miles in the western Pacific Ocean, 1,300 miles east of the Philippines, and 1,400 miles south of Japan. It became a US territory in 1898, during the Spanish American War, when it was taken from Spain by the US Navy, without firing a shot (the navy was on its way to the larger prize, the Philippines). Ever since then, it has been a major asset for the US military control in southeast Asia, referred to by some as “the tip of the spear.”