Amerika Sāmoa

Visiting the one-time ‘Gibraltar of the Pacific’, a former military base well out of harm’s way. Part 1 of a two-part post.

ONE good thing about New Zealand is that while it might be isolated from places like Europe or America, it is handy to many of the most fabled isles of the South Pacific. Fabled isles such as those of Sāmoa, to which I flew from Auckland in April 2023.

The Sāmoan islands on the globe. Image created by TUBS, 6 May 2011, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

(The macron means that the first ‘a’ in Sāmoa is longer than the second. Sāmoa is also pronounced with emphasis on the first syllable, not the second: SAAHmoa. Once you get used to this, the usual English pronunciation, SuhMOA, sounds very wrong.)

Here are the Sāmoan islands in more detail, including the names of the islands. There are two more islands off the map that both belong to American Sāmoa: Swain’s Island to the north, and Rose Atoll to the east.

The Independent State of Sāmoa and American Sāmoa. Map data ©2023 Google. The names of Savai’i, Upolu, Tutuila and the Manu’a islands have been added for this post. North at top.

The islands are divided, first, into the Independent State of Sāmoa, which used to be known as Western Sāmoa, consisting of Savai‘i and Upolu plus small outlying islands.