Johnston Atoll, Island of the Cold War

September 2nd 1796 the boston-based brig Sally accidentally grounded on a remote shoal the Pacific Ocean the Sally's captain John Pierpont recanted the events a year later including that Shoals location and that seems to have been the first Western discovery of that particular tiny Pacific atoll later one of the two islands of the Atoll was named Johnston Island after the name of a British sea captain who also recorded the location of the islands although the local name for the island was II we PO Amaka Pune this Atoll was remote the islands were tiny they had no human population and didn't even have a fresh water source it was an unlikely place to develop a rich history that deserves to be remembered the anvil was created some 70 million years ago as underwater volcanic eruptions built up layers of basalt geologically the islands anchored the northern end of the line islands Ridge over time the island eroded beneath the surface but corals around its fringes grew and eventually created a limestone cap thousands of feet thick on top of the ancient volcano the area is a shallow coral platform of some 50 square miles the first commercial exploitation of Johnston Island was for its bird poo used for fertilizer one of more than 100 islands came to under the 1856 US guano Islands act the Kingdom of Hawaii also claimed the island naming it kalana King Kamehameha the fourth declared the island be part of his kingdom in July 1856 however the Kingdom of Hawaii never tried to economically exploit the island even as the bird poo was being mined away and the dispute became irrelevant after Hawaii was annexed to the United States in 1898 the island was mapped and surveyed as part of the wide-ranging Tanager expedition in 1923 named after the Navy ship USS Tanager which to the thorough biological survey partly as a result of the survey in 1926 President Calvin Coolidge declared Johnston Island and tiny Sand Island next to it a bird refuge the Johnston Island reservation for the protection of native birds the purpose of the protection was largely the compat poachers who killed native birds for their feathers used in the fashion and millinery trade but at the time the Department of Agriculture which had responsibility for the refuge had no ships that could be used to visit the remote at all in 1934 President Franklin Roosevelt moved administration of the island to the Navy subject however to the use of said Johnston and sand islands by the department of agriculture as a refuge in breeding ground for native birds the change in administration was partly because unlike the Department of Agriculture that Navy actually had ships that could visit Johnston Island but it was also because the Navy had developed an interest in the at all for strategic purposes the Navy began using the islands quickly and in 1935 began construction of a seaplane base on a Sand Island the base required some coral blasting to clear the seaplane approach and materials from coral plasting and dredging would be used to progressively expand the island eventually Sand Island was extended into a seaplane base that could support a patrol squadron the antal had never had a human population before but now suddenly tiny sand island had facilities for 400 people including a mess hall a hospital water tanks a radio station and a control tower the Navy also built a small parking the area southwest of the island connected the two via a causeway the first of many changes that the military would make to the islands geography Marine Jim Devine described the changes to Sand Island in 1944 Sand Island at the time consisted of two islands connected by a single lane coral roadway about 600 feet long the Northeast Island was natural about five acres the southwest island was completely dredged up from the sea was about the size of a baseball diamond there's about eighteen inches out of high tide and you could stand in the middle throw a piece of coral and hit the water but the navy had bigger plans for the larger nearby Johnston Island in February 1941 with tensions in the Pacific high President Roosevelt issued another executive order regarding Johnston atoll establishing both a naval defense sea area and the naval airspace reservation only u.s. government ships and aircraft were allowed within the area's construction of a 4,000 foot by 500 foot runway and a base on Johnston Island begin in September and was completed before December 7th a ship channel was dredged with the material used to expand the islands area the base was attacked by fire from Japanese submarines twice in December 1941 but was too close to Hawaii for the Japanese to consider an amphibious assault quickly the war shifted west in the Pacific as divine put it the war was about 1500 miles west of us that made for an interesting wartime experience define describe the horrors of war the most horrific instances occurred when for one whole week we had no chocolate ice cream only vanilla and strawberry because the ice cream machine broke down then the movie machine broke for a week and the shark even got into our swimming area while the Japanese caused no casualties on the alcohol there were a few deaths there including six Seabees who died from bad moonshine they'd cooked up in March of 1943 a consolidated Catalina PBY sea plane crashed on approach killing all ten crew members on board but being far from the front does not mean that the island was not active by 1944 Johnston atoll was one of the busiest airport transport terminals in the Pacific and the runway was extended to 6,000 feet and later to 9,000 feet during the war the island was used as an airfield a base for anti-submarine patrols a reconnaissance plane base a communication station and a ship and submarine refueling station one of the islands anti-aircraft batteries have been destined for Wake Island before the island fell to the Japanese on December 23rd 1941 by 1947 over 1300 b-29 and b-24 bombers had passed through Johnston island being returned to the US after the war in 1948 administration of the island passed the United States Air Force and Johnston Island Air Force Base serve the needs of both the Air Force and the military air transportation service the importance of the island is a transportation hub increased again during the Korean War and it was also used as a refuting stop for airplanes during the Vietnam War despite being well outside the line of fire for most the war Johnston's World War two experience was significant being developed into a base with an airfield large enough to land the Air Force's biggest bombers pass clear through the coral to allow access to ships and established military protected air and sea space would have a significant impact on the islands history in the post-war world a base with such facilities in such a remote location was a value to the United States as Grace Plummer and Barbara Johnson former Department of Energy employees on the island described it little Johnson at all boasts a huge launch window a wonderfully effective sea cleaning Lagoon and as far away from inhabited spaces Mike Kirby who worked on the island in the 1970s put a more blood with no reporters allowed the Armed Forces were free to run almost any kind of program on Johnston Island with minimum oversight among those uses was as a navigational station in 1958 a Lauren or long-range navigational station operated by the US Coast Guard began operating Lauren a was a type of hyperbolic radio navigation in which a navigation receiver instrument on a ship or aircraft is used to determine location based on the difference in timing of radio waves received from fixed land-based radio navigation beacon transmitters establishing the transmitter at Johnston allowed better accuracy in determining the position of ships along an important transportation route the Coast Guard operated a Lauren's station on the at'll for 34 years friendly ending operation in July of 1992 by which time the advent of satellite navigation had reduced the need for the station but Johnston also played a role in the nuclear arms race of the Cold War not only was the airfield an important transportation point between Hawaii and Islands engaged in testing but a handful of nuclear tests were conducted from the island in 1958 the size of the island was expanded again using coral dredging and a launch facility established on the new ground operation hardtack Wan was a series of nuclear tests in 1958 that included more nuclear detonations in the total of all prior nuclear explosions in the Pacific Ocean two of those high-altitude test codenamed teak and orange were approximately 3.8 Megaton detonations from missiles launched from the Johnston Island launch facility in August 1958 this photo shows the brightness of the hardtack TKE explosion on August 1st nearly 48 miles above the base it was however tests during Operation Dominick in 1962 that would have a larger impact on the islands future nine missiles eight Thor intermediate-range missiles and one nike hercules missile were launched from Johnston Island between May and November 1962 fully four of those launches failed at different points and three of those failures resulted in significant radiological contamination on the island most notably the launch codenamed bluegill prime on July 25th occurred on the launch pad and resulted in explosions and fire that engulfed the missile and nuclear warhead a 2016 report by the Air Force Safety Center weapons division explained extensive radioactive contamination to the launchpad occurred as a result of this launch failure the Johnston Island launch complex was heavily damaged and contaminated with plutonium launches had to be halted until the radioactive debris could be dumped and the launchpad rebuilt troops were sent in to do a rapid clean up but repairs still took three months in 2016 the Air Force noted the radiological impacts of the bluegill prime launch failure invokes significant cleanup activities during Dominic 1 and for nearly four decades after the failures much of the contaminated area was covered up when the island was expanded through dredging a final time between 1962 and 1963 expanding the island which initially encompassed 46 acres to 596 acres for about 1.06 square miles the Dominic 1 launches from Johnston Island also included the July 8th starfish prime launch the 1.4 Megaton nuclear explosion at an altitude of some 250 miles created an electromagnetic pulse that was far larger than expected so much so that it was difficult to measure as it threw the instruments off scale the pulse was so significant that according to the Associated Press it knocked out power to traffic lights and telecommunications in parts of Honolulu some 898 miles away illuminating the sky and even leading hotels the host viewing parties the results of the high altitude test of operation Dominic gave rise then to one of the more interesting parts of Johnston Islands history Johnston Island was the base for the super secret operation 437 the operation had Johnston locating two Thor missiles at its launch facility as an anti-satellite weapons program the PGM Thor ballistic missiles would carry w50 nuclear warheads and were intended to explode in the high atmosphere destroy enemy satellites with an electromagnetic pulse further facilities were built and there were several test launches of modified Thor missiles although without nuclear payloads the program was inactivated in 1970 partly because the Air Force was afraid the poles could destroy our own satellites as well just in the US are housed part of the u.s. satellite tracking program housing a baker none cameras satellite tracking station from 1965 to 1977 the camera used 50 millimeter wide film derived from the cinema scope 55 motion picture process and 20 inch aperture allowing it to follow satellites in the sky already a part of several Cold War programs Johnson was also used for the recovery of data from CIA reconnaissance satellites the low-earth orbit satellites would drop capsules with film canisters the capsules would be captured in midair by Jay c-130 aircraft based at Johnston Island and operated by the US National Reconnaissance Office and if nuclear testing and spy operations weren't enough Johnson was also a part of the US biological weapons program Johnson was one of locations used for project shad ship-borne hazard defense intended to test us worships vulnerabilities from chemical and biological attacks the test had specifically designed Navy warships and aircraft releasing a biological agent in the air to test in the sea environment on US warships Johnston Island would use for communication and age of preparation for one of the tests the tests used bacillus goby G or agent B G on Navy ships with many of the test subjects unaware that they were being tested agent B G was intended to stimulate a biological attack but was thought at the time to have few health consequences while the test helped to develop detection and decontamination procedures agent B G turned out to have much more significant health consequences than the Navy had anticipated details of the secret program didn't start to be released until 2002 in 1970 Johnston's remote location resulted in yet another use chemical weapons storage a high-security facility was built and sorted tons of chemical weapons from throughout the world in both world wars much of which have been previously stored at a US base in Okinawa Japan munitions included rockets mines and artillery projectiles as well as containers of dangerous agents such as sarin mustard gas in the deadly nerve gas VX at its height the island stored six point six percent of the u.s. chemical weapons stockpile after 1972 one point eight million gallons of herbicide orange defoliant used in the Vietnam War which has been connected to significant health problems was stored on the island in leaking barrels that contaminated both the storage area and the lagoon Mike Kirby was an explosive ordnance demolition specialists that helped to move the infamous Agent Orange to the island he said of johnston at the time now much on the island at the time i was surprised to find there were five bars and numerous dogs running around the herbicide orange was destroyed by incineration aboard a german incinerator ship in beat volcanus in 1977 and in the final phase of the US military operation on johnston at all between 1985 and 1986 the US Army created its first chemical weapons disposal facility the johnston atoll chemical agent disposal system or jake adds in 1985 congress mandated the demilitarization and destruction of all chemical agents on johnston at all new facility use mechanical procedures to demilitarize the weapons and incinerate the chemical and explosive agents jacobs was the test facility for other army projects dispose of the u.s. chemical weapons stockpile the destruction of the weapons on the island was completed in 2000 and the jacobs facility was demolished in 2003 in its 14 years of operation jake has destroyed more than 400,000 munitions and four million pounds of nerve and blister agents in august of 2009 the US Environmental Protection Agency approved the final closure of the facility Conrad F wine director of the US Army chemical materiel agency said at the time the men and women of the Jacobs team in our EPA partners have made the chemical weapons of Justin dental history they have made the world a safer place in 2005 Johnston Island was briefly put up for option by the u.s. General Services Administration bill to say potential residents or vacation get away but the add was removed Johnston atoll has now been left to the birds and the occasional monk seal the base has been closed the building's demolished in the airfield decommissioned and no longer maintained the antal is a National Wildlife Refuge and officially closed to the public although occasionally visited by vessels crossing the Pacific since 2010 the Fish and Wildlife Service have been working to eradicate an infestation of yellow crazy ants on the island the little at all was a centerpiece of some of the darkest projects of the Cold War and yet now it's a wildlife refuge still its history represents an era not just in US history and world history but in the lives of the people who work there as grace Plummer and Barbara Johnson concluded the little that everyone and no one wanted house thousands of civilian and military personnel in its time as a flash in the pan of national security but it was a great flash and many memories burn brightly I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets a forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on T spring comm and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 850,676

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, johnston atoll, cold war, us pacific islands, us history

Id: kzvuJtqUGiY

Length: 16min 32sec (992 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/paullinia23]

Super interesting, thanks for sharing

[u/upfuppet]

Awesome, thanks.