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Midway Atoll
Albatross refuge and site of a turning-point battle of WWII
Midway Atoll lies near the far western end of the Hawaiian chain, roughly midway across the North Pacific between North America and Asia, which is where it gets its name. Its three islets, Sand, Eastern and Spit, add up to about 2.4 square miles inside a ring of coral reef. The United States claimed the atoll in 1867, and unlike the rest of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, it was never part of the state of Hawaii.
In June 1942, aircraft from three American carriers sank four Japanese carriers near Midway in a battle widely seen as the turning point of the Pacific War. The Navy left in 1993, and the atoll is now a national wildlife refuge within Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Each winter it hosts roughly 70 percent of the world's Laysan albatrosses, though some 20 tons of debris, most of it plastic, wash ashore every year, and many chicks die after swallowing it.