MORE ISLANDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 146, 23 June 1938, Page 8

MORE ISLANDS

LINE OF OBSERVATION AMERICA IN THE PACIFIC (From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, May 25. , The "Line of Observation" in the Pacific has been added to by the purchase of portion of the Palmyra igroup of islands, about 1000 miles south of Honolulu. It comprises 35 atolls aggregating less than one Square mile in area but enclosing a U-shaped lagoon having a certain strategic value as a seaplane port. The islands are said ■ to be owned by American interests. It is intended to erect a radio station and the necessary buildings to house the wireless staff, as well as furnish quarters for navy air personnel, and, possibly, provision for an intermediate base for oil fuel. The group is in the vicinity of Canton and Enderbury Islands, for the ownership of which the United States for two years past has been disputing, or negotiating, with Great Britain. Another "advanced operating base," at Midway Island, is provided for in | the legislation submitted by Congress I for the annexation of the Palmyra group." Westward, beyond Midway, the United States Navy is already] controlling a string of islets which are j described as a useful landing place for long-range bombing planes. Two hundred miles beyond Midway is Kure, which President Roosevelt two years ago ordered to be transferred to the Navy. These new developments are disclosed for the first time in an explanatory note to the legislation authorising an additional 28,000,000 dollars of expenditure on the Line of Observation, which, according to Navy strategists, will extend 6000 miles from the Aleutians to Samoa, in thte vicinity of the 180 th degree of longitude—the International Date Line, as it is known to Pacific travellers. The appropriation covers' a new naval air station at Kodiak Island, Alaska, dry-dock facilities in Hawaii for the largest battleships, highpowered wireless installation, and an extra link to draw remote sectors of the Hawaiian Islands into closer contact with naval, military, and aviation units in the vicinity of Honolulu,