This article assesses local tensions that plague the U.S.-centered hub-and-spokes security framework in the Western Pacific region, which finds its most concrete expression in increasingly vulnerable legacy installations. I start by considering how people living outside the fence in places like Guam and Okinawa have tended to see the U.S. military, while summarizing global trends in U.S. base expansion and contraction outside of the continental United States (OCONUS). I tie this past to the most common dilemmas of global basing manifesting today, explain how these dilemmas have been understood, and highlight core concerns undergirding most base protest cultures. In the absence of sweeping policy changes to legal structures that disenfranchise militarized civilians in the most heavily fortified islands in the U.S. global base network, changing the way recent history is represented at U.S. controlled public sites could catalyze meaningful change within perennially troubled relationships between the U.S. military and overburdened host communities.