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Wake Island
A remote Pacific atoll run by the U.S. Air Force
Disputed
Wake Island is a V-shaped atoll of three low islets, Wake, Wilkes and Peale, wrapped around a shallow lagoon far out in the western Pacific between Hawaii and Guam. It has less than three square miles of land and no permanent residents, but it is rarely empty. Some 300 military personnel and contractors keep its long runway open as an emergency landing field and missile-testing site. Because it lies west of the International Date Line, Wake runs a day ahead of the U.S. mainland.
The United States annexed Wake in 1899, and in 1935 Pan American Airways built a hotel and seaplane base there for its transpacific flying boats. In December 1941, hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan struck the island. Its outnumbered defenders held out for about two weeks before surrendering, and Japan occupied Wake until 1945. The Marshall Islands also claim the atoll, which Marshallese tradition calls Ānen Kio.