Here's an interesting (albeit old) article about a project to preserve historic World War II ruins on Wake Island, a tiny, virtually uninhabited atoll some 600 miles from anywhere in the western Pacific Ocean.
The Americans tried to fortify it in advance of being dragged into World War II, but there wasn't enough time. The Japanese attacked it hours after they bombed Pearl Harbour, then successfully overtook it a couple of weeks later, holding onto Wake Island until the end of the war.
Prior to the war, Wake Island's claim to fame was as a refuelling stop / operations base for Pan Am's "Clipper" luxury flying boat service from California to the Philippines.
Pan Am's Herculean efforts to setup a base of operations here are pretty interesting too. Putting together a hotel in the middle of nowhere, shipping in tons of supplies with barges from ships anchored miles offshore, blowing up enough underwater coral to make a suitable landing area in the lagoon, growing hydroponic vegetables because the islands don't contain one speck of soil... It was altogether nuts, but that's how they built out world-wide aviation in the 1930s.
Hollywood even made a movie about the battle of Wake Island in 1942. I haven't watched it yet. It looks moderately cheesy but with a 6.8 rating on IMdB I figure it's worth a view.
The film's available here for free. Unfortunately, it's on one of those annoying sites that pops ads up in a new tab before the play button becomes functional. And if you pause playing for too long the site will disconnect you and you'll need to reload the page. Bah.
Wake Island is administered by the US Air Force these days. Unless you're military or a contractor, chances are you'll never be allowed to see this place in person.
Posted by Emperor Wang Here's an interesting (albeit old) article about a project to preserve historic World War II ruins on Wake Island, a tiny, virtually uninhabited atoll some 600 miles from anywhere in the western Pacific Ocean.
I recently came a cross an archaeological survey of Wake Island which indicated plenty of Japanese KIA were eventually just buried in shallow graves, and it wasn't too difficult for the surveyors to come across bones, some still in fragments of uniforms, plus some weapons & live ordnance such as hand grenades. I don't know about Wake, but some similar islands under US control allow special delegations from Japan to visit occasionally, to pay respects to their war dead & maintain a memorial for them.
Should you experience difficulties in booking a cheap Allegiant Airlines seat for their twice-daily flights to Wake Island, you can always visit the remains of the Wake Island movie film set, located upon the bustling shores of the fabulous Salton Sea: https://www.desert...sea-part/32128649/
Just book your suite at one of the many resort hotels/motels far in-advance (or, bring your camper!), as the Salton Sea is a very popular weekend vacation spot for the Los Angelenos, what with all the water sports activities and swinging nightclub action.
The effort that the Pan American Airways System (later known as "Pan Am") undertook to create *everything* needed to provide supporting infrastructure for their Flying Clipper & other flights was stupendous -- their own navigational aides, radio communications network & regional/local stations, refueling & field maintenance, and as our dear Emperor already mentioned, blasting channels through coral. It merits it's own research & historical preservation, which thankfully, somewhat exists: https://www.panam.org/
/-/oolie
[last edit 11/22/2021 2:29 AM by /-/ooligan - edited 1 times] There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
I shoulda known you'd show up around here sooner or later, Hoolie
Posted by /-/ooligan an archaeological survey of Wake Island
Is this on the web somewhere? Sounds like an interesting read.
Posted by /-/ooligan Allegiany Airlines twice-daily flights to Wake Island
I take it that's a joke. I surfed around for photos or videos of the modern-day state of the island and found pretty much squat. Wake Island tourism appears to be, sadly, non-existent. Let me know if you find any servicemen posted there that are documenting the state of the place.
There does seem to have been a recent effort at cleaning up the atoll's garbage dumps though. Just sifting through the contents of that garbage scow would've been an interesting experience in itself.
Posted by Emperor Wang I shoulda known you'd show up around here sooner or later, Hoolie
Is this on the web somewhere? Sounds like an interesting read.
I'll see if I can locate it, and if-so, I'll post a link. Since 9//11/01, there have been some efforts to keep historical/archaeological reports that detail unexpended old munition locations restricted, out of concern that Jihadi Johnny could possibly go to the location & get some free, though potentially volatile, explosives.
/-/oolie
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
My information may be a bit dated, but Wake Island, Midway Island and Groom Lake (aka Area 51) are all managed by EG&G.
Midway was open to the public as a resort for a few years, but that abruptly ended in the 2000 with no explanation. Access was still possible if you had legitimate business or scientific reasons for visiting the island, but that ended in 2012,
Rumor has it that a project got moved from Groom Lake to Midway Island in mid-2000s. So far, Midway Island remains closed to the public.
Wake Island is still open for emergency landings by commercial aircraft. Midway Island also has this designation.
I've heard the "easiest" island to get legit access to nowadays is Palmyra Atoll. The Fish & Wildlife Service is less picky about access permits for Palmyra than any of the other islands, but the remoteness of the island makes it rather difficult to actually get there.
To my surprise, there's actually a comprehensive Google Street View of Midway Island. From the satellite view it looks like the whole island is left to nature. But when you get on Street view, you can actually tour much of the island and even inside some of the warehouses.
The island still seems minimally staffed, some buildings look more recent, while there are clearly lots of abandoned buildings throughout. Lots of birds, too, they're everywhere!
It's funny how hard it is to find modern-day pics of the Wake Atoll. Yeah, the web's chock full of historic war pics, and yeah it's one of the locations of some shoot-em-up war-nerd game, but my Google fu's usually not this weak.
I did manage to find a couple of decent sources of info though...
Bonita Gilbert is an author, historian, and daughter of one of the American POWs captured on Wake. She visited a couple of times in 2011 to do research for a book she wrote about the buildup on Wake prior to war breaking out.
Her web site has quite a few detailed and personal blog entries on Wake, that include many of her pictures. Sadly her site has no search function so you'll just have to click around, or maybe try using Google's "site:" keyword.
Brice Environmental Services is one of the contractors doing work for the military on Wake. These two short PDFs give a nice overview of the atoll's history and what Brice has been up to there recently.
A "Wake Island site:" search of their web site will turn up more of these promotional PDFs, including one on their three-season long project to barge the historic contents of Wake's dump sites back to the mainland.
If you really want to lose yourself down the internet rabbit hole of this place, there's this document. It's a 10 MB, 63 page inventory and cultural assessment of the various historical Wake artifacts, prepared by a couple of professional Hawaiian historical architects in 2011. There's tons of detail in there, but just a handful of maps and aerial photos towards the end.
How depressing to think historical documents might be being excised off the internet thanks to these ak-tards.
Posted by Deconstrukt
Oh great, yet another internet rabbit hole to get lost in. Thanks, I think.
It's very strange how dragging the ole pegman over Midway turns up tons of details to peruse. Do the same thing over Wake Atoll and nothing turns up at all. Not even one photosphere. Very strange indeed.
Edit: Spling spazticity ~Wang
[last edit 12/1/2021 6:31 PM by Emperor Wang - edited 2 times] It's great to be alive!
Ethics
