[Homer_J_Simpson]

Looks like a pretty strategic location to me.

And yet the U.S. forces working their way to Japan via New Guinea and the Philippines were able to bypass it. Perhaps the Spratlys central location did not yield the strategic benefits one would expect.

[CougarGA7]

I guess not. Apparently the Japanese only used it as a submarine base (according to Wikipedia) so if that was the case I can see it not being very useful to the island hopping campaign.