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Midway Atoll

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Geography of Oceania
(Australasia)

   Orthographic projection centred over Midway.
   Enlarge
   Orthographic projection centred over Midway.

   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
   28°13′N 177°22′W, about one-third of the way between Honolulu and
   Tokyo. It is less than 140 nautical miles east of the International
   Date Line, about 2,800 nautical miles west of San Francisco and 2,200
   nautical miles east of Tokyo. 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. Island sizes are:

                              Island     acres km²
                           Sand Island   1200  4.86
                          Eastern Island  334  1.35
                           Spit Island     6   0.02

   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 (FWS). 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 theatre.

Geography and geology

   Midway Atoll - NASA NLT Landsat 7 (visible color) satellite image.
   Enlarge
   Midway Atoll - NASA NLT Landsat 7 (visible colour) 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, Henderson
   Field 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.

History

   Midway atoll in November 1941.
   Enlarge
   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 the Unincorporated Territory
   of 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.
   Enlarge
   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
   Harbour 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 Harbour. 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.
   Unofficial flag
   Enlarge
   Unofficial flag

   From August 1, 1941 to 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 to 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. FWS 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.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Atoll"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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