Howland Island was claimed by the United States in 1857 under the
1856 Guano Islands Act and was mined for
guano later that century. In the 1930s, economic activity on the island began with a few people, several buildings, a day beacon, and a cleared landing strip. This was the island Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were going to land on when they were not heard from again on their long flight. The day after Pearl Harbor, the island was bombed and attacked several more times, which damaged the day beacon and killed two people, finally leading to the island's evacuation. After the war, the day beacon was repaired, and the island became a nature reserve. It has been the subject of visits to honor or look for the lost aviator, Earhart.
Prehistoric settlement Sparse remnants of trails and other surface features indicate a possible early
Polynesian presence, including excavations and mounds, stacked rocks, and a footpath made of long, flat stones. In the 1860s,
James Duncan Hague noted discovering the remains of a hut, canoe fragments, a blue bead, and a human skeleton buried in the sand. However, the perishable nature of the wooden materials and the lack of beadwork in Polynesia suggests these materials are historical. The presence of the kou tree (
Cordia subcordata) and
Polynesian rats (
Rattus exulans) on the island is also considered a possible indicator of early Polynesian visits to Howland. However, the only modern archaeological survey of Howland, conducted by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1987, found no evidence of prehistoric settlement or use of the island. Still, sub-surface testing was limited in scope due to time constraints. Additionally, the USACE survey failed to locate the architectural features described by Hague. However, they concede this may be due to the destruction of these features later during the construction of an airstrip. A later conservation plan by the US Fish and Wildlife Service suggests that Howland was likely used as a stopover or meeting point as opposed to being permanently occupied.
Sightings by whalers Captain George B. Worth of the
Nantucket whaler
Oeno sighted Howland around 1822 and called it
Worth Island. Daniel MacKenzie of the American whaler
Minerva Smith was unaware of Worth's sighting when he charted the island in 1828 and named it after his ship's owners on . Howland Island was at last named on after a lookout who sighted it from the whaleship
Isabella under Captain Geo. E. Netcher of
New Bedford.
Captain William Bligh of
HMS Bounty, in his diary after the
mutiny, described stopping at the island shortly after being set adrift by the mutineers in April 1789. He had 18 crew members who scoured the island for sustenance, such as oysters, water, and birds. Bligh was unsure of the island's name, but apparently, it was known to cartographers. Bligh's account on Howland Island is open to question since his route in the boat began between
Tonga and
Tofua and ran more or less west directly to
Timor.
U.S. possession and guano mining Howland Island was uninhabited when the United States took possession of it under the
Guano Islands Act of 1856. The island was a known navigation hazard for decades, and several ships were wrecked there. Its
guano deposits were mined by American companies from about 1857 until October1878, although there was a dispute between mining companies. Captain Geo. E. Netcher of the
Isabella informed Captain Taylor of its discovery. As Taylor had discovered another guano island in the Indian Ocean, they agreed to share the benefits of the guano on the two islands. Taylor put Netcher in communication with Alfred G. Benson, president of the American Guano Company, which was incorporated in 1857. Other entrepreneurs were approached as George and Matthew Howland, who later became United States Guano Company members, engaged Mr. Stetson to visit the island on the ship
Rousseau under Captain Pope. Mr. Stetson arrived on the island in 1854 and described it as being occupied by birds and a plague of rats. The American Guano Company established claims with respect to
Baker Island and
Jarvis Island, which were recognized under the U.S. Guano Islands Act of 1856. Benson tried to interest the American Guano Company in the Howland Island deposits; however, the company directors considered they already had sufficient deposits. In October1857, the American Guano Company sent Benson's son Arthur to Baker and Jarvis Islands to survey the guano deposits. He also visited Howland Island and took samples of the guano. Subsequently, Alfred G. Benson resigned from the American Guano Company. Netcher, Taylor, and George W. Benson formed the United States Guano Company to exploit the guano on Howland Island, with this claim recognized under the U.S. Guano Islands Act of 1856. Laborers for the mining operations came from around the Pacific, including from Hawaii; the Hawaiian laborers named Howland Island ('kou tree grove'). Established in 1861, the
Pacific Guano Company purchased Howland Island to provide a source of guano for its fertilizer plant. In the late 19th century, British claims were made on the island, and attempts were made to set up mining.
John T. Arundel and Company, a British firm using laborers from the
Cook Islands and
Niue, occupied the island from 1886 to 1891. Executive Order 7368 was issued on to clarify American sovereignty.
Itascatown (1935–1942) In 1935, colonists from the
American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project arrived on the island to establish a permanent U.S. presence in the Central Pacific. It began with a rotating group of four alumni and students from the
Kamehameha School for Boys, a private school in
Honolulu. Although the recruits had signed on as part of a scientific expedition and expected to spend their three-month assignment collecting botanical and biological samples, once out to sea, they were told, according to one of the Jarvis Island colonists, George West, "Your names will go down in history" and that the islands would become "famous air bases in a route that will connect Australia with California". The settlement was named
Itascatown after the USCGC
Itasca that brought the colonists to Howland and made regular cruises between the other equatorial islands during that era. Itascatown was a line of a half-dozen small wood-framed structures and tents near the beach on the island's western side. The fledgling colonists were given large stocks of canned food, water, and other supplies, including a gasoline-powered refrigerator, radio equipment, medical kits, and (characteristic of that era) vast quantities of cigarettes. Fishing provided variety in their diet. Most of the colonists' endeavors involved making hourly weather observations and constructing rudimentary infrastructure on the island, including clearing a landing strip for airplanes. During this period, the island was on Hawaii time, which was then 10.5hours behind
UTC. Similar colonization projects were started on nearby
Baker Island and
Jarvis Island, as well as
Canton Island and
Enderbury in the
Phoenix Islands, which later became part of
Kiribati. According to the
1940 U.S. census, Howland Island had a population of four people on April 1, 1940.
Kamakaiwi Field Ground was cleared for a rudimentary aircraft landing area during the mid-1930s in anticipation that the island might eventually become a stopover for commercial trans-Pacific air routes and also to further U.S. territorial claims in the region against rival claims from Great Britain. Howland Island was designated as a scheduled refueling stop for American pilot
Amelia Earhart and navigator
Fred Noonan on their
round-the-world flight in 1937.
Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds were used by the
Bureau of Air Commerce to construct three graded, unpaved runways meant to accommodate Earhart's twin-engined
Lockheed Model 10 Electra. The facility was named
Kamakaiwi Field after James Kamakaiwi, a young Hawaiian who arrived with the first group of four colonists. He was selected as the group's leader and spent more than three years on Howland, far longer than the average recruit. It has also been referred to as
WPA Howland Airport (the WPA contributed about 20 percent of the $12,000 cost). Earhart and Noonan took off from
Lae,
New Guinea, and their radio transmissions were picked up near the island when their aircraft reached the vicinity, but they failed to arrive. It is known that they must have gotten within the radio range of Howland due to the strength of the final radio communications that morning, despite some problems with radio communication and radio direction finding. In some of the last messages recorded from them on 2 July 1937, 7:42 am, Earhart reported, "We must be on you, but cannot see you – but gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000 feet." At 8:43 am, Earhart reported, "We are on the line 157 337. We will repeat this message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. Wait." After the largest search and rescue attempt in history up to that time, the U.S. Navy concluded that the Electra had run out of fuel, and Earhart and Noonan ditched at sea and perished. Based on the strength of the transmission signals from Earhart, the Coast Guard concluded that the plane ran out of fuel north of Howland.
Japanese attacks during World War II A
Japanese air attack on , by 14 twin-engined
Mitsubishi G3M "Nell" bombers of
Chitose Kōkūtai, from Kwajalein islands, killed colonists Richard "Dicky" Kanani Whaley and Joseph Kealoha Keliʻihananui. The raid came one day after the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor. It damaged the three airstrips of Kamakaiwi Field. Two days later, shelling from a Japanese submarine destroyed what was left of the colony's buildings. A single bomber returned twice during the following weeks and dropped more bombs on the rubble. The two survivors were finally evacuated by the , a U.S. Navy destroyer, on . Thomas Bederman, one of the two survivors, later recounted his experience during the incident in a edition of
Life. Howland was occupied by a
battalion of the
United States Marine Corps in September1943 and was known as Howland Naval Air Station until May1944. All attempts at habitation were abandoned after 1944. Colonization projects on the other four islands, also disrupted by the war, were abandoned. No aircraft is known to have landed on the island, though anchorages nearby were used by float planes and flying boats during World War II. For example, on , a U.S. Navy
Martin PBM-3-D Mariner flying boat (BuNo 48199), piloted by William Hines, had an engine fire and made a forced landing in the ocean off Howland. Hines beached the aircraft, and though it burned, the crew were unharmed, rescued by the , transferred to a subchaser, and taken to Canton Island. ==National Wildlife Refuge==