Howland Island

Howland Island (/ˈhaʊlənd/) is an uninhabited coral island located just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean, about 1,700 nautical miles (3,100 km) southwest of Honolulu. The island lies almost halfway between Hawaii and Australia and is an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the United States. Together with Baker Island it forms part of the Phoenix Islands. For statistical purposes, Howland is grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands.^[2] The island has an elongated cucumber-shape on a north–south axis, 1.40 by 0.55 miles (2.25 km × 0.89 km), and covers 1 square mile (640 acres; 2.6 km²).^[1]

Howland Island National Wildlife Refuge consists of the entire island and the surrounding 32,074 acres (129.80 km²) of submerged land. The island is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as an insular area under the U.S. Department of the Interior and is part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.

The atoll currently has no economic activity. It is managed as a nature reserve. It is best known as the island Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were searching for but failed to find when they and their airplane disappeared on July 2, 1937, during their planned round-the-world flight. Airstrips constructed to accommodate her planned stopover were subsequently damaged in World War II, not maintained, and gradually disappeared. There are no harbors or docks. The fringing reefs may pose a maritime hazard. There is a boat landing area along the middle of the sandy beach on the west coast, as well as a crumbling day beacon. The island is visited every two years by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.^[3] It was mined for guano in the 19th century, and in the 1930s it was colonized by the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project. In modern times, it is a nature reserve, and there are some historical remains from the colony and a stone tower called Earhart Light.

Flora and fauna

The climate is equatorial, with little rainfall and intense sunshine. Temperatures are moderated somewhat by a constant wind from the east. The terrain is low-lying and sandy: a coral island surrounded by a narrow fringing reef with a slightly raised central area. The highest point is approximately 20 feet (6.1 m) above sea level.

There are no natural

Howland is primarily a nesting, roosting, and foraging habitat for seabirds, shorebirds, and marine wildlife. The island, with its surrounding marine waters, has been recognized as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports seabird colonies of lesser frigatebirds, masked boobies, red-tailed tropicbirds and sooty terns, as well as serving as a migratory stopover for bristle-thighed curlews.^[6]

Economics

The U.S. claims an

Howland Island was claimed by the United States in 1856 and was mined for guano later that century. In the 1930s, a small colony was started with a few people, several buildings, a day beacon, and a cleared landing strip. This was the island Amelia Earhart was going to land on when she was not heard from again on her long flight. The day after Pearl Harbor, the island was bombed and attacked several more times, which damaged the day beacon and killed two people, finally leading to its evacuation. After the war, the day beacon was repaired, and the island became a nature reserve. It has been the subject of visits to honor or look for the lost aviator, Earhart.

Prehistoric settlement

Sparse remnants of trails and other surface features indicate a possible early Polynesian presence, including excavations and mounds along with stacked rocks and a footpath made of long flat stones. In the 1860s, James Duncan Hague noted discovering the remains of a hut, canoe fragments, a blue bead, and a human skeleton buried in the sand. However, the perishable nature of the wooden materials and the lack of bead work in Polynesia suggests these materials are historic in nature.^[7] The presence of the kou tree (Cordia subcordata) and Polynesian rats (Rattus exulans) on the island is also considered a possible indicator of early Polynesian visits to Howland.^[8]

However, the only modern archaeological survey of Howland, conducted by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1987, found no evidence of prehistoric settlement or use of the island, but sub-surface testing was limited in scope due to time constraints. Additionally, the USACE survey failed to locate the architectural features described by Hague, though they concede this may be due to the destruction of these features later during the construction of an airstrip.^[9] A later conservation plan by the US Fish and Wildlife Service suggests that Howland was likely used as a stopover or meeting point as opposed to being permanently occupied.^[10]

Sightings by whalers

Captain George B. Worth of the Nantucket whaler Oeno sighted Howland around 1822 and called it Worth Island.^[11][12] Daniel MacKenzie of the American whaler Minerva Smith was unaware of Worth's sighting when he charted the island in 1828 and named it after his ship's owners^[13] on December 1, 1828. Howland Island was at last named on September 9, 1842 after a lookout who sighted it from the whaleship Isabella under Captain Geo. E. Netcher of New Bedford.

Howland Island was uninhabited when the United States took possession of it under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. The island was a known navigation hazard for many decades, and several ships were wrecked there. Its guano deposits were mined by American companies from about 1857 until October 1878, although there was dispute between mining companies.

Captain Geo. E. Netcher of the Isabella informed Captain Taylor of its discovery. As Taylor had discovered another guano island in the Indian Ocean, they agreed to share the benefits of the guano on the two islands. Taylor put Netcher in communication with Alfred G. Benson, president of the American Guano Company, which was incorporated in 1857.^[15] Other entrepreneurs were approached as George and Matthew Howland, who later became members of the United States Guano Company, engaged Mr. Stetson to visit the island on the ship Rousseau under Captain Pope. Mr. Stetson arrived on the island in 1854 and described it as being occupied by birds and a plague of rats.^[16]

The American Guano Company established claims in respect to Baker Island and Jarvis Island which were recognized under the U.S. Guano Islands Act of 1856. Benson tried to interest the American Guano Company in the Howland Island deposits; however, the company directors considered they already had sufficient deposits. In October 1857 the American Guano Company sent Benson's son Arthur to Baker and Jarvis Islands to survey the guano deposits. He also visited Howland Island and took samples of the guano. Subsequently, Alfred G. Benson resigned from the American Guano Company and together with Netcher, Taylor and George W. Benson formed the United States Guano Company to exploit the guano on Howland Island, with this claim being recognised under the U.S. Guano Islands Act of 1856.^[15]

However, when the United States Guano Company dispatched a vessel of their own in 1859 to mine the guano, they found that Howland Island was already occupied by men sent there by the American Guano Company. The companies ended up in New York state court,^{[Note 1]} with the American Guano Company arguing that the United States Guano Company had in effect abandoned the island since the continual possession and actual occupation required for ownership by the Guano Islands Act did not occur. The result was that both companies were allowed to mine the guano deposits, which were substantially depleted by October 1878.^[17] Laborers for the mining operations came from around the Pacific, including from Hawaiʻi; the Hawaiian laborers named Howland Island Ulukou ('kou tree grove').^[18]

In the late 19th century, there were British claims on the island as well as attempts at setting up mining. John T. Arundel and Company, a British firm using laborers from the Cook Islands and Niue, occupied the island from 1886 to 1891.^[19]

To clarify American sovereignty, Executive Order 7368 was issued on May 13, 1936.^[20]

Itascatown (1935–42)

In 1935, colonists from the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project arrived on the island to establish a permanent U.S. presence in the Central Pacific. It began with a rotating group of four alumni and students from the Kamehameha School for Boys, a private school in Honolulu. Although the recruits had signed on as part of a scientific expedition and expected to spend their three-month assignment collecting botanical and biological samples, once out to sea, they were told, according to one of the Jarvis Island colonists, George West, "Your names will go down in history" and that the islands would become "famous air bases in a route that will connect Australia with California".^[21]

The settlement was named Itascatown after the USCGC

Ground was cleared for a rudimentary aircraft landing area during the mid-1930s, in anticipation that the island might eventually become a stopover for commercial trans-Pacific air routes and also to further U.S. territorial claims in the region against rival claims from Great Britain. Howland Island was designated as a scheduled refueling stop for American pilot Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan on their round-the-world flight in 1937. Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds were used by the Bureau of Air Commerce to construct three graded, unpaved runways meant to accommodate Earhart's twin-engined Lockheed Model 10 Electra.

The facility was named Kamakaiwi Field after James Kamakaiwi, a young Hawaiian who arrived with the first group of four colonists. He was selected as the group's leader, and he spent more than three years on Howland, far longer than the average recruit. It has also been referred to as WPA Howland Airport (the WPA contributed about 20 percent of the $12,000 cost).

Earhart and Noonan took off from Lae, New Guinea, and their radio transmissions were picked up near the island when their aircraft reached the vicinity, but they failed to arrive. It is known that they must have gotten within the radio range of Howland, due to the strength of the final radio communications that morning, despite some problems with radio communication and radio direction finding. In some of the last messages recorded from them on 2 July 1937, 7:42 am, Earhart reported, "We must be on you, but cannot see you – but gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet."^{[25] [26][Note 3]} At 8:43 am, Earhart reported, "We are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait."^[25] Between Earhart's low-on-fuel message at 7:42 am and her last confirmed message at 8:43, her signal strength remained consistent, indicating that she never left the immediate Howland area as she ran low on fuel. The U.S. Coast Guard made this determination by tracking her signal strength as she approached the island, noting signal levels from her reports of 200 and 100 miles out. These reports were roughly 30 minutes apart, providing vital ground-speed clues.^[28]

After the largest search and rescue attempt in history up to that time, the U.S. Navy concluded that the Electra had run out of fuel and Earhart and Noonan ditched at sea and perished. Based on the strength of the transmission signals from Earhart, the Coast Guard concluded that the plane ran out of fuel north of Howland.^[28] Many later studies came to the same conclusion; however, an alternative hypothesis that Earhart and Noonan may have landed the plane on Gardner Island (now called Nikumaroro) and died as castaways has been considered.^[29]

Japanese attacks during World War II

A Japanese air attack on December 8, 1941, by 14 twin-engined Mitsubishi G3M "Nell" bombers of Chitose Kōkūtai, from Kwajalein islands, killed colonists Richard "Dicky" Kanani Whaley and Joseph Kealoha Keliʻihananui.^[30] The raid came one day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and damaged the three airstrips of Kamakaiwi Field. Two days later, shelling from a Japanese submarine destroyed what was left of the colony's buildings.^[31] A single bomber returned twice during the following weeks and dropped more bombs on the rubble. The two survivors were finally evacuated by the USS Helm, a U.S. Navy destroyer, on January 31, 1942. Thomas Bederman, one of the two survivors, later recounted his experience during the incident in a March 9, 1942 edition of Life.^[32] Howland was occupied by a battalion of the United States Marine Corps in September 1943 and was known as Howland Naval Air Station until May 1944.^[33]

All attempts at habitation were abandoned after 1944. Colonization projects on the other four islands, also disrupted by the war, were also abandoned.^[34] No aircraft is known to have landed on the island, though anchorages nearby were used by float planes and flying boats during World War II. For example, on July 10, 1944, a U.S. Navy Martin PBM-3-D Mariner flying boat (BuNo 48199), piloted by William Hines, had an engine fire and made a forced landing in the ocean off Howland. Hines beached the aircraft, and though it burned, the crew were unharmed, rescued by the USCGC Balsam, transferred to a sub chaser and taken to Canton Island.^[35]

National Wildlife Refuge

On June 27, 1974, Secretary of the Interior

Public entry to the island is allowed with a special use permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and it is generally restricted to scientists and educators. Representatives from the agency visit the island on average once every two years, often coordinating transportation with amateur radio operators or the U.S. Coast Guard to defray the high cost of logistical support.^[3]

Earhart Light

Earhart Light

Howland Island Light
Location	Howland Island, Phoenix Islands, United States Minor Outlying Islands, US
Coordinates	0°48′20″N 176°37′09″W / 0.805689°N 176.619042°W / 0.805689; -176.619042
Constructed	1937
Construction	rubble
Height	6 m (20 ft)
Shape	cylindrical tower, no lantern[39]
Markings	white and black horizontal bands (originally)
Light
Deactivated	1942

Colonists sent to the island in the mid-1930s, to establish possession by the United States, built the Earhart Light (0°48′20.48″N 176°37′8.55″W / 0.8056889°N 176.6190417°W / 0.8056889; -176.6190417 (Earhart Light)), named after

Ann Pellegreno overflew the island in 1967, and Linda Finch did so in 1997 during memorial circumnavigation flights to commemorate Earhart's 1937 world flight. No landings were attempted, but both Pellegreno and Finch flew low enough to drop a wreath on the island.^[43]

Image gallery

• 
  Aircraft wreckage on Howland
• 
  Itascatown settlement remains
• 
  Howland island flora
• 
  Howland island flora (

  leeward

  )
• 
  Young masked boobies
• 
  Masked boobies
• 
  Ruddy turnstones
• 
  Earhart Light, 2008

See also

• List of lighthouses in United States Minor Outlying Islands
• Howland and Baker islands
  , includes coverage of the Howland-Baker EEZ
• History of the Pacific Islands
• List of Guano Island claims
• Phoenix Islands

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Bryan, Edwin H. Jr. American Polynesia and the Hawaiian Chain. Honolulu, Hawaii: Tongg Publishing Company, 1942.
• ISBN 0-306-80887-0
  .
• Grover, David H. (2001). "Question 40/99: USN Involvement with Amelia Earhart". Warship International. XXXVIII (4): 339–340.
  ISSN 0043-0374
  .
• "Eyewitness account of the Japanese raids on Howland Island (includes a grainy photo of Itascatown)." ksbe.edu. Retrieved: October 10, 2010.
• Irwin, Geoffrey. The Prehistroric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  ISBN 0-521-47651-8
  .
• Long, Elgen M. and Marie K. Long. Amelia Earhart: The Mystery Solved. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.
  ISBN 0-684-86005-8
  .
• Maude, H.E. Of Islands and Men: Studies in Pacific History. Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press, 1968.
• Safford, Laurance F. with Cameron A. Warren and Robert R. Payne. Earhart's Flight into Yesterday: The Facts Without the Fiction. McLean, Virginia: Paladwr Press, 2003.
  ISBN 1-888962-20-8
  .
• Sharp, Andrew. The Discovery of the Pacific Islands. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960.
• Suárez, Thomas. Early Mapping of the Pacific. Singapore: Periplus Editions, 2004.
  ISBN 0-7946-0092-1
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Howland Island.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Howland Island.

• Howland Island National Wildlife Refuge – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
• Geography, history and nature on Howland Island
• "Historic Light Station Information and Photography: Pacific Rim". United States Coast Guard Historian's Office. Archived from the original on May 25, 2017.
• 'Voyage of the Odyssey' – pictures and travelogue
• Howland Island at Infoplease
• Howland Island – Small Island, Big History Archived April 2, 2007, at the Wayback Machine