Statistical information Wake Island 2021

Wake Island was probably visited by Micronesian and Polynesian settlers, and oral legends tell of periodic voyages to the islands by people from the Marshall Islands. Wake Island was uninhabited when Spanish explorer Alvaro de Mendana de NEYRA became the first European to see it in 1568 and still had no humans when English captain Samuel WAKE sailed by it in 1796. The United States Exploring Expedition visited the island in 1841 and the US annexed it in 1899 to use as a cable and refueling station between its newly acquired Pacific territories of Hawaii and the Philippines and Guam. In the 1930s, Pan-American Airways built facilities on Wake Island so that it could be used as a stopover for flights from the US to China. In January 1941, the US began to install military assets on Wake Island and in early December of that year, Japan attacked Wake Island, capturing it by the end of the month after a heroic resistance. Japan held Wake Island until the end of World War II, and in 1946, commercial airlines once again used Wake Island as a refueling stop.
In 1973, the Marshall Islands claimed Wake Island based on the oral legends, although the US has not recognized these claims. In 1974, the US military took exclusive control of the island’s airstrip and restricted visitors. In 1978, Bikini Islanders from the Marshall Islands, who were evacuated in the 1950s and 1960s because of US nuclear tests, considered rehoming on Wake Island, but the US military rejected that plan. Since the 1970s, the island has been important for missile defense testing. In 2009, Wake Island was included in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.

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