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She helped build basketball courts with the Clippers and the Manny Pacquiao Foundation throughout the Philippines, including in her family’s ancestral home, Olongapo.

Navy base in Subic, now a bustling commercial freeport and tourism destination northwest of Manila, news of the Philippine government’s decision to allow an expanded American military presence rekindled memories of an era when thousands of U.S. sailors pumped money, life and hope into the neighboring city of Olongapo.

“Olongapo was like Las Vegas then,” Filipino businessman AJ Saliba told The Associated Press in an interview in his foreign currency exchange and music shop along what used to be Olongapo’s garish red-light strip.

But this time there will not be thousands of US marines and airmen filling the red-light districts of Olongapo or Angeles city again.

The organisation first set up a children's home for girls back in the 1970s near the port city of Olongapo, once home to a large American naval base.