The first US Pivot to the Pacific was all about strategic islands.

During the Spanish-American War the US secured it's hold on Hawaii; and then scooped up additional critical deep water ports/coaling stations in Guam and the Philippines and Samoa.

When China looks a few hundred miles to the East we have a cow, but a little over a century ago we leaped several thousand miles to the West, and remain there to this day. For good reason. Like Great Britain we are a maritime nation and "strategic islands" remain an effective way to extend one's influence well beyond their borders.