In a ceremony celebrating Amelia Earhart‘s legacy in Washington this week, top State Department officials also talked about the nation’s ties to the Pacific region where she disappeared. 

Kurt Campbell, the department’s assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific, said that “too often the Pacific is a small ‘P’ not a big ‘P’,” and emphasized the United States is working to “step up our own game” in the region. 

Part of nurturing relationships in the Pacific means exploring U.S. history in the region, he said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expanded on this idea by talking about Earhart, whose plane disappeared over the Pacific 75 years ago. 

“Think for a minute about the world Amelia and her navigator Fred Noonan were circumnavigating,” Clinton said. “America in 1937 was still in the grips of the Great Depression; millions were out of work, millions more were struggling. Around the world, authoritarianism was on the march. War loomed, people wondered openly about the future of our country. They asked if democracy, if free market capitalism, America itself could survive.”

Also this week, researchers announced they have a newly enhanced photograph that may show the wrecked landing gear of Earhart’s downed plane in the Pacific. Watch a video of the remarks, below, or read the State Department transcript.