Book excerpt: During the final stages of World War II, Japan was finally defeated through the strategic use of the Marianas Islands as a jumping-off point for power projection into the heart of Japan. The main island, Guam, and her northern sister islands, Saipan and Tinian, were the hub from which American forces inched northward towards Japan. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, USN, believed in the strategic value of the Marianas because he moved his Pacific Ocean Areas headquarters to Guam where he could better direct joint forces operations closer to Japan. Guam, Saipan, and Tinian were used as staging bases from which over 500,000 troops and approximately 1,500 ships were readied for their move on Okinawa. It was from these islands where U.S. B-29's took off for bombing raids on Japanese cities and where the Enola Gay began its mission to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like World War II, the U.S. military should withdraw all its foreign bases in the Asia Pacific region and return to Guam and possibly, the Marianas which are United States soil and make it their hub of operations. We can still maintain a strategic forward military presence from Guam and feasibly project our military power deep into Asia to protect America's vital interests in peace and regional stability. We will be near, yet far enough away from Asia to do so.