Diane Watson: “I just returned as a U.S. ambassador from the Federated States of Micronesia; 607 islands stretching across a million…”

“I just returned as a U.S. ambassador from the Federated States of Micronesia; 607 islands stretching across a million miles of ocean. Without the United States Coast Guard, we would have lost many citizens and many visitors. We found a package of white substance being handled by a group of children on the beach of Yap. We found it to be cocaine. It was the Coast Guard that moved in. Right after that, we found a headless, armless, legless body. A torso. It was the Coast Guard that my embassy called to contact the FBI and DEA to investigate. We had many, many occasions to call on the Coast Guard for search and rescue. Many of the native boats would go out, and in these shabby craft would end up missing. The motor broke down, the boat came apart, there were high waves. Without the Coast Guard being called in for search and rescue, we would have lost many of our countrymen there in the Federated States of Micronesia. Boat safety training was something that was done often on the request of the embassy, and we went to the Islands of Chuuk, where we trained 19 young people to go back to their respective islands and to train others to do boat safety.”