Midway Island Revisited

[mso489]

I was stationed on Midway Island with the Navy from December 1970 to September 1971, so every year or two I check in online learn a little about the island's current status. It no longer has a Navy presence; that ended in the nineties. It's now under the management of the Department of the Interior and is a wildlife refuge for birds, seals, turtles, and such. When I was there, there were about 3,000 inhabitants, mostly Navy personnel and dependents, and contractors. Today there are about 80 residents, federal employees, contractors, and researchers. The Island weathered a tsunami in 2011, but the waves raised only between four and five feet, so personnel took refuge on the third floor of a building and experienced very little other than clean-up afterwards. The Navy's largest presence was during the Korean War, with about 5,000 inhabitants. When I was there, there were amenities such as enlisted and officers' clubs, a theater, bowling alleys, and schools and little league teams for dependents. Even a tiny TV and radio station and a "newspaper" run on multilith. After the Navy decommissioned its base, tourists were allowed to visit for several years, and later from cruise ships that sent boats from the ships at anchor, but now access is limited and by special permission, apparently since the tourism did not pay for maintaining lodging and access.

 

[ray47]

I believe I landed there in July 1969 for refueling, on my way home from Vietnam. It was dark out and we never disembarked, so I never got to see anything of the island.

 

[ssjones]

My father was in the Army Air Corps in WWII (later transitioned to the US Army). He was at Midway and other island right after the war doing clean up. By his account, pretty miserable duty.

 

[anotherbob]

I knew an albatross named Stu that lived there. He was kind of jerk. Now that I think about it that might have been one of those guys @chasingembers was talking about earlier.

 

[Chasing Embers]

I knew an albatross named Stu that lived there. He was kind of jerk. Now that I think about it that might have been one of those guys @chasingembers was talking about earlier.

 

[Derby]

I believe I landed there in July 1969 for refueling, on my way home from Vietnam. It was dark out and we never disembarked, so I never got to see anything of the island.

Thank you for your service. I too had a all expense paid tour of Vietnam in the mid sixties. Welcome Home Brother.

 

[mso489]

When I got the orders, I thought it would be like Alcatraz, a building on the rocks with an air strip. When I saw the Navy was one village, but mostly it was albatross and other wildlife, I felt better about it. When I first glimpsed the white albatross all spread out on the grass in their nests, I thought they were tombstones from the battle. The island was a kind of Eden, but now it has more plastic waste and the buildings are going slowly to ruin.

 

[anantaandroscoggin]

Had a shipmate who spent a year's duty on French Frigate Shoals LORAN station as an engineer. Once a year, the highest high tide would put the island (about the size of an aircraft carrier's flight deck) underwater by a foot or so.

 

[mso489]

The Coast Guard had a station on an island even further west, Kure, and people used to helicopter over there to visit. It was yet smaller than Midway, and I think the crew was about twenty people, really isolated. Our radio and TV stations broadcast to them, and the radio guys would get requests from them via radio messages. I'm glad I didn't get that duty.

 

[Dan-o$]

My father was in the Army Air Corps in WWII (later transitioned to the US Army). He was at Midway and other island right after the war doing clean up. By his account, pretty miserable duty.

yeah just saw this, pretty late. they slept in the rocks by the ocean at night because the island was shelled inland at night, then the beaches during the day, japanese were... oops can't say that now these days (emoji). the place was awful, my dad was wounded during shelling @ Bouganville towards the end. I'm writing the story.

 

[Dan-o$]

The Coast Guard had a station on an island even further west, Kure, and people used to helicopter over there to visit. It was yet smaller than Midway, and I think the crew was about twenty people, really isolated. Our radio and TV stations broadcast to them, and the radio guys would get requests from them via radio messages. I'm glad I didn't get that duty.

I'll bet he didn't talk about it much too. mine would not.

 

[mso489]

I had a Cadillac tour at Midway. It was not overcrowded the way it was during the Korean War with then maybe 5,000 people, but it still had many amenities. Nixon had met with the South Vietnamese prime minister there about a year before I arrived. There was a lot of well maintained lawn and well established Australian Ironwood trees from the 1920's, tall evergreens. For some of the senior enlisted guys with dependents, it was sort of a reward tour where families could come along. They had schools for the kids, little league ... somewhat strange while the ground war was raging for another several years. Now it is sort of a ghost town, with about eighty people. Back when cruise ships had it as a stop, I thought about going back as a nostalgia tour, but by now I probably couldn't get permission, and it would be expensive for a somewhat depressing visit. The idea of stopping there for refueling on the way to Vietnam is really grim. I landed there in daylight, and as we circled, it was this tiny spot in the middle of the sea. The thought of landing on it seemed like a remote chance.

 

[kanaia]

The Coast Guard had a station on an island even further west, Kure, and people used to helicopter over there to visit. It was yet smaller than Midway, and I think the crew was about twenty people, really isolated. Our radio and TV stations broadcast to them, and the radio guys would get requests from them via radio messages. I'm glad I didn't get that duty.

While stationed on Midway a friend and I took the helicopter from NAS Midway to Kure for a 3 day R&R. The diving conditions were just pristine and the Coast Guard served better cuisine than the Navy.

 

[mso489]

kanaia, Interesting! An R&R tour to Kure, what a concept. I thought the Navy food was pretty good, boot camp, ship, and Midway Island, but I'm glad the Coast Guard had better food; that was an isolated duty station at best, even with visitors from "big metropolitan" Midway. Good to have a fellow Islander in Forums. It really was a distinct part of the world, what space travel should have been. I'm glad you didn't meet any of those local tiger sharks in your diving. Those things were hugh, like 15 feet and more. A sailor was lost off one of the Sunfish sailboats and he never reappeared. The Island commander went out shark hunting and harpooned a huge one, but no sailor inside.

 

[Dan-o$]

I had a Cadillac tour at Midway. It was not overcrowded the way it was during the Korean War with then maybe 5,000 people, but it still had many amenities. Nixon had met with the South Vietnamese prime minister there about a year before I arrived. There was a lot of well maintained lawn and well established Australian Ironwood trees from the 1920's, tall evergreens. For some of the senior enlisted guys with dependents, it was sort of a reward tour where families could come along. They had schools for the kids, little league ... somewhat strange while the ground war was raging for another several years. Now it is sort of a ghost town, with about eighty people. Back when cruise ships had it as a stop, I thought about going back as a nostalgia tour, but by now I probably couldn't get permission, and it would be expensive for a somewhat depressing visit. The idea of stopping there for refueling on the way to Vietnam is really grim. I landed there in daylight, and as we circled, it was this tiny spot in the middle of the sea. The thought of landing on it seemed like a remote chance.

That was interesting. Thanks

 

[briarbuck]

Cool view of the islands. The diving looks amazing.

Google Earth

earth.google.com

 

[cosmicfolklore]

My roommate in college, who seems to have had this fantastic, miraculous life grew up on the Quadulan Atol. During Vietnam, his father was stationed there, and there was a warehouse full of these crates of Morris Minors that were all still in the box, unopened and unassembled. No one was really sure where they came from. So, his dad. an AF Major, had them all shipped back to Alabama to assemble them, which set off his car collecting, and his establishment of a car club that influenced a fellow named Jay Leno, who is still a member. So now, when I call to see what my buddy is up to and invite him to dinner, he seems to always be playing with Mr Leno. And, no... I'm not jealous at all, ha ha.

But, I did get to help assemble one of the MMs back in college. It used leather flaps as valves, and the Bakelite knobs on the thing were still pristine. It was amazing to get to work with such a simple machine like that. And, driving them was a blast... well, they weren't speed demons, but kinda cool to tool around on a huge ranch.

 

[mso489]

cosmic, what a great Morris Minor story, cars from an earlier time, like Morgans. Is that an alternate spelling of Kwajalein? We stopped there for refueling on the minesweeper. Decades later, a friend's son took a job there on some kind of computer work, as a sort of youthful adventure after graduating from Dartmouth. It's remote, but in the computer age it may not seem as remote.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Is that an alternate spelling of Kwajalein?

I've just always heard said verbally, and when I Googled it, both spellings were used, so I just flipped a coin.
There is also a book by Maarten Troost, called something like "Getting Stoned with a Cannibal" or something like that, which isn't about drugs like we know them, but the local custom of making a drink on one of the Atolls. It has been a long time since I read it, but it was a humorous look at living on a teeny tiny Atoll with modern day nerdy cannibals.

 

[mso489]

A footnote to my Midway experience. After I was transferred from my ship, U.S.S. Gallant, to Midway, I had some leave, so before heading back to Chicago for holidays with my family, I made a side trip to New York City to visit a school friend, a classmate at University of Missouri. We weren't an item, so it was kind of her to have me to her apartment in Chelsea not far from Carnegie Hall. She had a newspaper job on Long Island and a cool Karman Ghia red convertible which she parked in a garage with an elevator to hoist the car into place. We had a great time tooling around New York and finding a bucket on the street to act as a Christmas tree stand for the tree we carried home to her apartment. We saw a Broadway show, "Home" with Sir Richard Guilgud, and had hotdogs at Nathans that we ate on the street. Forty years after that, after I'd lost my first wife, we were married and she moved to North Carolina with me. Life has surprising turns.