Wake Island is an atoll and an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the central Pacific Ocean. It consists of three low-lying coral islets that are connected by bridges - Wake, Wilkes, and Peale. They add up to less than 3 square miles of land. Wake Island is the first piece of American land that you encounter when flying west across the International Dateline. The highest point of the atoll is only 20 feet above sea level, and thousands of hermit crabs and rats live there.
Wake Island was named after the British Sea Captain who arrived in 1796 named William Wake. He visited the island first, followed by a chartered expedition under Lieutenant Charles Wilkes in 1841. In the later decades of the 19th century, the island underwent many changes in ownership, from Spain for 300 years, to Germany in the 1880's for guano and copra trade. It wasn't until 1899 that the United States formally claimed it for an undersea cable relay station to help maintain communications with new territories in the Western Pacific. In 1934, Wake Island was placed under naval jurisdiction. Commercial flights began to land seaplanes there, and a base and hotel were built for overnight stops on flights to the Philippines and Guam. An air and submarine base were constructed by the Navy in 1939, and was about halfway done when the island was attacked and occupied by the Japanese in December of 1941. In 1945, the Battle of Wake Island ended in the Japanese capturing more than 1600 US troops. In 1945, the Japanese surrendered and the US personnel returned to the island. Today, there is an airfield there that is used by the US Military with restricted access, and there are no ports. The only other people who use the landing zone are commercial planes that require emergency landings.
Wake Island was used to house Vietnamese refugees in 1975, and in 1995, stranded Chinese refugees on boat to Hawaii were repatriated there. The US National Weather Service and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration have research stations there. It was hit by a super typhoon in 2006, where everyone was evacuated to Hawaii and 150 mile an hour winds caused major damages. Wake Island was designated a Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in 2009. Air force personnel and civilian contractors are the only people who live there today.
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