Wake Island
Wake Island, also known as Wake Atoll, is a coral atoll in the Micronesia subregion of the Pacific Ocean. The atoll is composed of three islets – Wake, Wilkes, and Peale Islands – surrounding a lagoon encircled by a coral reef. The nearest inhabited island is Utirik Atoll in the Marshall Islands, located to the southeast.
The island may have been found by prehistoric Austronesian mariners before its first recorded discovery by Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira in 1568. Ships continued visiting the area in the following centuries, but the island remained undeveloped until the United States claimed it in 1899. Significant development of the island did not begin until 1935 when Pan American Airways constructed an airfield and hotel, establishing Wake Island as a stopover for trans-Pacific flying boat routes. In December 1941 at the opening of the Pacific Theatre of World War II Japan seized the island, which remained under Japanese occupation until the end of the war in September 1945. In 1972, Pan American Airways ceased using the island for trans-Pacific layovers, instead using Boeing 747 aircraft, which could cross the ocean without stopping. With the withdrawal of Pan American Airways, the island's administration was taken over by the United States Air Force, which later used the atoll as a processing location for Vietnamese refugees during Operation New Life in 1975.
Wake Island is claimed by the Marshall Islands but is administered by the United States as an unorganized and unincorporated territory and is part of the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The island is administered by the Department of the Interior and managed by the United States Air Force. While there are no permanent residents, approximately 300 people are on the island at any given time, primarily military personnel and contractors.
The natural areas of Wake are a mix of tropical trees, scrub, and grasses that have adapted to the limited rainfall. Thousands of hermit crabs and rats live on Wake, and in the past, cats were introduced to help control the rat population, which at one time was estimated at 2 million. The Wake Island rail, a small flightless bird, once lived on the atoll but went extinct during World War II. Many seabird species also visit Wake, although the thick vegetation has caused most birds to nest in a designated bird sanctuary on Wilkes Island. The submerged and emergent lands at Wake Island are a unit of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.
Etymology
Wake Island derives its name from British sea captain Samuel Wake, who rediscovered the atoll in 1796 while in command of the Prince William Henry. The name is sometimes attributed to Captain William Wake, who also is reported to have discovered the atoll from the Prince William Henry in 1792.Peale Island is named after the naturalist Titian Peale, who visited the island in 1841, and Wilkes Island is named after U.S. Naval officer Charles Wilkes, who led the U.S. expedition to Wake Atoll in 1841.
History
Prehistory
The presence of the Polynesian rat on the island suggests that Wake was likely visited by Polynesian or Micronesian voyagers at an early date. In the Marshallese oral tradition, stories tell of Ānen Kio, or "island of the orange flower," where men would collect albatross bones for tattooing rituals. Dwight Heine speculated that the Marshall Islanders treated Ānen Kio similar to a game preserve for hunting and gathering food and that no one permanently lived there, similar to land usage practices on Bokak Atoll and Bikar Atoll. He also speculated that the islanders may have stopped traveling to Wake Atoll in the mid-1800s, around the time the first missionaries arrived in the Marshalls. However, the atoll's remoteness and lack of fresh water may have prevented permanent pre-modern human habitation; no ancient artifacts have been discovered.Early exploration and shipwrecks
The first recorded discovery of Wake Island was on October 2, 1568, by Spanish explorer and navigator Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira. In 1567, Mendaña and his crew had set off on two ships, Los Reyes and Todos los Santos, from Callao, Peru, on an expedition to search for a gold-rich land in the South Pacific mentioned in Inca tradition. After visiting Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands, the expedition headed north and came upon Wake Island, "a low barren island, judged to be eight leagues in circumference". Since the date, October 2, was the eve of the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, the captain named it St Francis Island. The ships were in need of water and the crew was suffering from scurvy, but after circling the island, it was determined that Wake was waterless and had "not a cocoanut nor a pandanus" and "there was nothing on it but sea-birds, and sandy places covered with bushes."In 1796, Captain Samuel Wake of the merchant ship Prince William Henry also came upon Wake Island, naming the atoll Wake, for himself. Soon thereafter, the 80-ton fur trading merchant brig Halcyon arrived at Wake and Master Charles William Barkley, unaware of Captain Wake's visit and other prior European contact, named the atoll Halcyon Island in honor of his ship. In 1823, Captain Edward Gardner, while in command of the whaling ship Bellona, visited an island at, which he judged to be long. The island was "covered with wood, having a very green and rural appearance". This report is considered to be another sighting of Wake Island.
File:Commodore Charles Wilkes, commander of the United States Exploring Expedition 1838 - 1842.jpg |thumb|left|upright=0.8|Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, commander of the U.S. Navy's United States Exploring Expedition, 1838–42
On December 20, 1841, the United States Exploring Expedition, commanded by US Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, arrived at Wake on and sent several boats to survey the island. Wilkes described the atoll as "a low coral one, of triangular form and above the surface. It has a large lagoon in the center, which was well filled with fish of a variety of species; among these were some fine mullet." He also noted that Wake had no fresh water but was covered with shrubs, "the most abundant of which was the tournefortia." The expedition's naturalist, Titian Peale, noted that "the only remarkable part in the formation of this island is the enormous blocks of coral that have been thrown up by the violence of the sea". Peale collected an egg from a short-tailed albatross and added other specimens, including a Polynesian rat, to the natural history collections of the expedition. Wilkes also reported that "from appearances, the island must be at times submerged, or the sea makes a complete breach over it".
Wake Island first received international attention with the wreck of the barque. On the night of March 4, 1866, the 650-ton iron-hulled Libelle, of Bremen, struck the eastern reef of Wake Island during a gale. Commanded by Captain Anton Tobias, the ship was en route from San Francisco to Hong Kong with a cargo of mercury. After three days of searching and digging on the island for water, the crew recovered a water tank from the wrecked ship. Valuable cargo was also recovered and buried on the island, including some of the 1,000 flasks of mercury, coins, and precious stones. After three weeks with a dwindling water supply and no sign of rescue, the passengers and crew decided to leave Wake and attempt to sail to Guam on the two remaining boats from Libelle. Twenty-two passengers and some of the crew sailed in the longboat under the command of First Mate Rudolf Kausch, and the remainder of the crew sailed with Captain Tobias in the gig. On April 8, 1866, the longboat reached Guam after 13 days of frequent squalls, short rations, and tropical sun. The gig, commanded by the captain, was lost at sea.
The Spanish governor of the Mariana Islands, Francisco Moscoso y Lara, welcomed and aided the Libelle shipwreck survivors in Guam. He also ordered the schooner Ana, owned and commanded by his son-in-law George H. Johnston, to be dispatched with first mate Kausch to search for the missing gig and then sail on to Wake Island to confirm the shipwreck story and recover the buried treasure. Ana departed Guam on April 10 and, after two days at Wake Island, found and salvaged the buried coins, precious stones, and a small quantity of the quicksilver.
On July 29, 1870, the British tea clipper Dashing Wave, under the command of Captain Henry Vandervord, sailed out of Fuzhou en route to Sydney. On August 31, "the weather was very thick, and it was blowing a heavy gale from the eastward, attended with violent squalls and a tremendous sea." At 10:30 pm, breakers were seen, and the ship struck the reef at Wake Island. The vessel began to break up overnight, and at 10:00 am, the crew launched the longboat over the leeward side. In the chaos of the evacuation, the captain secured a chart and nautical instruments but no compass. The crew loaded a case of wine, some bread, and two buckets, but no drinking water. Since Wake Island appeared to have neither food nor water, the captain and his 12-man crew quickly departed, crafting a makeshift sail by attaching a blanket to an oar. With no water, each man was allotted a glass of wine daily until a heavy rain shower came on the sixth day. After 31 days of drifting westward in the longboat, they reached Kosrae in the Caroline Islands. Captain Vandervord attributed the loss of Dashing Wave to the erroneous way Wake Island "is laid down in the charts. It is very low, and not easily seen even on a clear night."
American annexation
With the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 and the acquisition of Guam and the Philippines resulting from the conclusion of the Spanish–American War that same year, the United States began to consider the unclaimed and uninhabited Wake Island, located approximately halfway between Honolulu and Manila, as a good location for a telegraph cable station and coaling station for refueling warships of the rapidly expanding United States Navy and passing merchant and passenger steamships. On July 4, 1898, United States Army Brigadier General Francis V. Greene of the 2nd Brigade, Philippine Expeditionary Force, of the Eighth Army Corps, stopped at Wake Island and raised the United States flag while en route to the Philippines on the steamship liner SS China.On January 17, 1899, under orders from President William McKinley, Commander Edward D. Taussig of landed on Wake and formally took possession of the island for the United States. After a 21-gun salute, the flag was raised, and a brass plate was affixed to the flagstaff with the following inscription:
Although the proposed Wake Island route for the submarine cable would have been shorter by, the Midway Islands and not Wake Island was chosen as the location for the telegraph cable station between Honolulu and Guam as part of the Commercial Pacific Cable Company. Rear Admiral Royal Bird Bradford, chief of the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Equipment, stated before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce on January 17, 1902, that "Wake Island seems at times to be swept by the sea. It is only a few feet above the level of the ocean, and if a cable station were established there, costly work would be required; besides, it has no harbor, while the Midway Islands are perfectly habitable and have a fair harbor for vessels of draught."
On June 23, 1902,, commanded by Captain Alfred Croskey and bound for Manila, spotted a ship's boat on the beach as it passed closely by Wake Island. Soon thereafter, the Japanese launched the boat on the island and sailed out to meet the transport. The Japanese told Captain Croskey that they had been put on the island by a schooner from Yokohama in Japan and that they were gathering guano and drying fish. The captain suspected they were engaged in pearl hunting. The Japanese revealed that one of their parties needed medical attention, and the captain determined from their descriptions of the symptoms that the illness was most likely beriberi. They informed Captain Croskey that they did not need any provisions or water and expected the Japanese schooner to return in a month or so. The Japanese declined an offer to be taken on the transport to Manila and were given some medical supplies for the sick man, some tobacco, and a few incidentals.
After USAT Buford reached Manila, Captain Croskey reported the Japanese presence at Wake Island. He also learned that USAT Sheridan had a similar encounter at Wake with the Japanese. The incident was brought to the attention of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Charles Darling, who at once informed the State Department and suggested that an explanation from the Japanese Government was needed. In August 1902, Japanese Minister Takahira Kogorō provided a diplomatic note stating that the Japanese Government had "no claim whatever to make on the sovereignty of the island, but that if any subjects are found on the island the Imperial Government expects that they should be properly protected as long as they are engaged in peaceful occupations."
Wake Island was now clearly a territory of the United States, but the island was only occasionally visited by passing American ships during this period. One notable visit occurred in December 1906, when U.S. Army General John J. Pershing, later famous as the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in western Europe during World War I, stopped at Wake on and hoisted a 45-star U.S. flag that was improvised out of sail canvas.