Midway Atoll
Midway Atoll (also known as
Midway Island or
Midway Islands,
Hawaiian:
Pihemanu) is a 6.2 square kilometer
atoll located in the North Pacific Ocean (near the northwestern end of the
Hawaiian archipelago) at , about one-third of the way between
Honolulu and
Tokyo. It is less than 150 miles east of the
International Date Line, about 2,800 miles west of
San Francisco and 2,200 miles east of
Japan. It consists of a ring-shaped barrier
reef and several sand
islets. The two significant pieces of land, Sand Island and Eastern Island, provide habitat for hundreds of thousands of seabirds.
The atoll, which has a tiny population (40 in 2004, but no indigenous inhabitants), is an
unincorporated territory of the
United States, part of the
United States Minor Outlying Islands, designated an
insular area under the authority of the
U.S. Department of the Interior. It is a
National Wildlife Refuge administered by the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The visitor program closed in January 2002 and there are no facilities at the present time for receiving visitors. However, visitors who are able to provide their own transportation can contact the refuge manager for information on visiting the atoll. The economy is derived solely from governmental sources. All food and manufactured goods must be imported.
Midway, as its name suggests, lies nearly halfway between
North America and
Asia. It also lies almost halfway around the earth from
Greenwich, England.
Midway is best known as the location of the
Battle of Midway, fought in
World War II on
June 4,
1942. Nearby,
United States Navy defeated a
Japanese attack against the "Midway Islands," marking a turning point in the war in the
Pacific theater.
 |
Midway Atoll - NASA NLT Landsat 7 (Visible Color) Satellite Image |
Midway Atoll is part of a chain of volcanic islands,
atolls, and
seamounts extending from
Hawai'i up to the tip of the
Aleutian Islands and known as the
Hawaii-Emperor chain. Midway was formed roughly 28 million years ago when the seabed underneath it was over the same
hotspot from which the
Island of Hawai'i is now being formed. In fact, Midway was once a
shield volcano perhaps as large as the island of
Lana'i. As the volcano piled up lava flows building up the island, the load of it depressed the crust and the island slowly subsided over a period of millions of years, a process known as
isostatic adjustment. As the island mass subsided, a
coral reef around the former volcanic island was able to maintain itself near sea level by growing upwards. That reef is now over 160 m (516 ft) thick (Ladd, Tracey, & Gross, 1967; in the lagoon, 384 m or 1,261 ft), comprised mostly post-
Miocene limestones with a layer of upper Miocene (Tertiary
g) sediments and lower Miocene (Tertiary
e) limestones at the bottom overlying the basalts. What remains today is a shallow water atoll about 10 kilometers across.
The islands of Midway Atoll have been extensively altered as a result of human habitation. Starting in
1869 with a project to blast the reefs and create a port on Sand Island, the ecology of Midway has been changing. Birds native to other NWHI islands, such as the
Laysan Rail and
Laysan Finch, were released at Midway.
Ironwood trees from
Australia were planted to act as windbreaks. Seventy-five percent of the 200 species of plants on Midway were introduced. The FWS has recently continued this trend by introducing the Laysan duck to the island, while, at the same time, extending efforts to exterminate other introduced species.
The atoll has some 32 kilometers of roads, 7.8 kilometers of pipelines, one port (on Sand Island, which is closed to public use), and two runways (both paved, around 2,000 meters long). As of
2004, the airfield at Midway Atoll has been designated as an emergency diversion airport for aircraft flying under
ETOPS rules. The FWS closed all airport operations on
November 22,
2004. Since that time, no public visitation at all has been allowed.
|
Midway atoll in November 1941. |
The atoll was discovered
July 5,
1859 by Captain N.C. Middlebrooks, though he was most commonly known as Captain Brooks, of the
sealing ship
Gambia. The islands were named the "Middlebrook Islands" or the "Brook Islands". Brooks claimed Midway for the United States under the
Guano Islands Act of
1856, which authorized Americans to temporarily occupy uninhabited islands to obtain
guano. On
August 28,
1867,
Captain William Reynolds of the
USS Lackawanna formally took possession of the atoll for the United States; the name changed to "Midway" some time after this. On
28 August 1867 the atoll became the first offshore islands annexed by the U.S. government, as unincorporated territory Midway Island; administered by the U.S. Navy. Midway was the only island in the entire Hawaiian archipelago that was not later part of the
State of Hawai`i.The first attempt at "settlement" was in 1871, when the Pacific Mail and Steamship Company started a project of blasting and dredging a ship channel through the reef to the lagoon using money put up by the U.S. Congress. The purpose was to establish a mid-ocean coaling station avoiding the high taxes imposed at ports controlled by the Hawaiians. The project was shortly a complete failure, and the
USS Saginaw, evacuating the last of the channel project's work force in October 1871, then ran aground at
Kure Atoll, stranding all aboard.
In 1903, workers for the
Commercial Pacific Cable Company took up residence on the island as part of the effort to lay a trans-Pacific telegraph cable. These workers introduced many non-native species to the island, including the
canary,
cycad palm,
Norfolk Island pine,
ironwood,
coconut, and various
deciduous trees, along with ants, cockroaches, termites, centipedes, and countless others.
Later that year, President Theodore Roosevelt placed the atoll under the control of the U.S. Navy, which on
20 January 1903 opened a radio station, in response to complaints from cable company workers about
Japanese squatters and poachers. In 1904 - 1908 Roosevelt sent 21
U.S. Marines to stop the wanton destruction of bird life by Japanese poachers, and to keep Midway safe as a U.S. possession, protecting the cable station.
In
1935, operations began for the
China Clipper, a large flying boat run by
Pan American Airlines. The Clipper island-hopped from
San Francisco to
China, providing the fastest and most luxurious route to the Orient and bringing tourists to Midway until
1941. Only the extremely wealthy could afford a Clipper trip, which in the 1930s cost more than three times the annual salary of an average American. With Midway on the route between
Honolulu and
Wake Island, the large seaplanes landed in the quiet atoll waters and pulled up to a float offshore. Tourists were loaded onto a small powerboat that whisked them to a pier, where finally they would ride in
"woody" wagons to the Pan Am Hotel or the "Gooneyville Lodge," named after the ubiquitous "Gooney birds" (
albatrosses).
|
Burning oil tanks on Sand Island during the Battle of Midway. |
The location of Midway in the Pacific became important to the military. Midway was a convenient refueling stop on transpacific flights. It also became an important stop for Navy ships. Beginning in 1940, as tensions with the Japanese were rising, Midway was deemed second only to
Pearl Harbor in importance to protecting the west coast of the U.S. Airstrips, gun emplacements and a seaplane base quickly materialized on the tiny atoll. The channel was widened, and Naval Air Station Midway was completed. Architect
Albert Kahn designed the Officer's quarters, the mall and several other hangars and buildings. Midway's importance to the U.S. was brought into focus on
December 7,
1941 with the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor. Six months later, on
June 4,
1942, a naval battle near Midway resulted in the
U.S. Navy exacting a devastating defeat of the
Japanese Navy. This
Battle of Midway was, by most accounts, the beginning of the end of the Japanese Navy's control of the Pacific Ocean. Midway was also an important submarine base for what was known as the
Silent Service.
From
August 1,
1941 - 1945 it was occupied by U.S. military forces.In
1950, the Navy decommissioned Naval Air Station Midway, only to re-commission it again to support the
Korean War. Thousands of troops on ships and planes stopped at Midway for refueling and emergency repairs.From 1968 -
September 10,
1993 Midway Island was a Navy Air Facility.During the
Cold War, the U.S. established a secret underwater listening post at Midway in an attempt to track
Soviet submarines. These sensitive devices could pick up whale songs for miles and the facility remained top-secret until its demolition at the end of the Cold War. "Willy Victor" radar planes flew night and day as part of the DEW Line (
Distant Early Warning), and antenna fields covered the islands.
With about 3,500 people living on Sand Island, Midway also supported the U.S. troops during the
Vietnam War. In June 1969, President
Richard Nixon held a secret meeting with
South Vietnamese President
Nguyen Van Thieu at the Officer-in-Charge house or "Midway House."
In 1978, the Navy downgraded Midway from a Naval Air Station to a Naval Air Facility and large numbers of personnel and dependents began leaving the island. With the conflict in Vietnam over, and with the introduction of
reconnaissance satellites and nuclear submarines, Midway's significance to national security was diminished. The World War II facilities at Sand and Eastern Islands were listed on the
National Register of Historic Places on
May 28,
1987.
Midway was designated an overlay
National Wildlife Refuge on
April 22,
1988 while still under the primary jurisdiction of the Navy. As part of the
Base Realignment and Closure process, the Navy facility on Midway has been operationally closed since
September 10,
1993, although the Navy assumed responsibility for cleaning up environmental contamination at Naval Air Facility Midway Island.
On
October 31,
1996, President
Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 13022, which transferred the jurisdiction and control of the atoll to the
US Department of the Interior. The
US Fish and Wildlife Service assumed management of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. The last contingent of Navy personnel left Midway on
30 June 1997, after an ambitious environmental cleanup program was completed. The atoll fell under the
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument that was established in 2006.
*Ladd, H.S., J.I. Tracey Jr., and M.G. Gross. 1967. Drilling at Midway Atoll.
Science, 156(3778): 1088–1095 (
May 26,
1967).
*
Midway Island Dot Com : Site Dedicated to Midway.
*
AirNav - Henderson Field Airport : Airport facilities and navigational aids.
*
Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge (this article incorporated some content from this public domain site)
*
Where the Gooney Birds Are*
Quick Facts on the Midway Atoll from the PBS Ocean Adventures site*
WorldStatesmen
