Word: aires
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Most of the dots, and all of the void, are of vital concern to the U.S. military. Unless they have specific clearance, Air Mike passengers are barred from leaving the plane during refueling stops on Johnston, a storage dump for poisonous gas; nobody gets off at Kwajalein, a target for missiles test-fired from California. Says Commander David Burt, Navy liaison to the trust territory government: "The fact that they're smack dab in the middle of the ocean makes all these islands important...
About the only things on Saipan as intractable as tangantangan are some of the symbols of modern U.S. civilization. Large supermarkets offer a wide variety of frozen goods. Many homes are air conditioned; so are most of the cars that whiz at alarming rates along the asphalt roads. Cinder block typhoon houses are neatly arranged, as is the golf course, which could be in the U.S. were it not for the crudely lettered sign outside the clubhouse door reading DO NOT GET ON THIS ROOF...
...Marianas offer a honeymoon resort and war shrine. Thirty thousand Japanese soldiers died on Saipan, and every year Japan Air Lines sends "bone-picker charters" to the island. They bring hundreds of cash customers who thwack through the tangantangan in search of ancestral skeletons -though any human bones will do. These are then burned to release the spirits of the dead, while the living grow nostalgically misty-eyed on tours of old bunkers. Says one local bureaucrat with profound seriousness: "The only problem I can foresee for the Marianas is running out of bones. We are aware of the shortage...
...most unusual mix of American expatriates in the Pacific. The island's biggest contractor is a Portuguese Hawaiian. A Massachusetts Jew manages the copra-processing plant. They are a demonstrative lot. When Majuro's American Chamber of Commerce got no satisfaction at a meeting to protest air-freight rate increases, members pelted the two Air Mike representatives with banana cream pies...
After Communist Chairman Pol Pot became Premier of Democratic Kampuchea in 1976, his forces stepped up their assaults along the border. The Vietnamese retaliated with air and artillery strikes. Four months ago, the defiant Khmer Rouge launched their most ferocious attack yet, killing at least 1,000 villagers in a series of raids...