piponwa OP t1_irtm7vj wrote on October 10, 2022 at 11:07 PM

In the 1940's, the uninhabited Midway Atoll was developed as a boat plane hub for Pan Am and their trans-Pacific service. The planes would go from San Francisco to Hong Kong and back, stopping every few hours to refuel. The plane would follow this path: San Francisco - Honolulu - Midway Atoll - Wake Island - Guam - Manilla - Macau - Hong Kong.

It turns out that in the 1940's, pollution had already made its way to this remote island in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Japanese nets contained these glass balls used for floatation. When the nets were damaged, the glass balls broke free and floated to the uninhabited shores of Midway Atoll.

Source

Better__Off_Dead t1_irz51db wrote on October 12, 2022 at 2:54 AM

>In the 1940's, the uninhabited Midway Atoll was developed as a boat plane hub for Pan Am and their trans-Pacific service.

There was a USN (radio tower) and USMC (protection of radio and bird life from poachers) presence on Midway before Pan Am. As far back as 1903. It wasn't totally "uninhabited", although it has no indigenous population.

The Pan AM route through Midway for the Martin M-130s wasn't developed in the 1940s. It was setup in 1935 and abandoned within days or weeks of the IJN attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

Midway Atoll became part of the "Midway Island Naval Defensive Sea Area" early in 1941 and was the scene of one of the most important battles of the Pacific in WWII in June 1942.