MIDWAY ISLAND

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3796, 17 August 1936, Page 3

MIDWAY ISLAND

THE ONLY WOMAN. PLENTY OF DIVERSION. The only woman on Midway Island, an atoll,’ five miles in diameter, in mid-Pacific, Mrs. George B. Perry, wife of the cable station manager, says she is not lonely. “I am much too busy,” she says. “While I have little housework and no cooking, I look after my two small children, also the only ones on the island, and the diversions of life fully occupy me. I play tennis or golf every day, swim in summer, and walk in winter, when the water is too cold for swimming. The Territorial Library in Honolulu sends us a hundred books a month, together with all the latest reviews, magazines and periodicals. Besides, I have my handwork.” Midway, once occupied by eight employees of the cable station, has now assumed great strategic importance as one of the four calling places —Honolulu, Midway, Wake, and Guam —of the Pan-Pacific Airway machines on the trans-Pacific flight from California to Manila. It has a naval and cable station, weather bureau, lighthouse, quarter and workshop for the air line, as well as a hostel for passengers, who stay overnight. The total personnel is 35 men, one woman, and two children.

“Being the only woman, I am, of course, in demand at dances that are held periodically,” said Mrs. Perry. “Anywhere else but at Midway it would seem rather ludicrous to run barefooted on the beach in a trailing dinner dress, or to wear shores to see the Clipper aeroplanes land and take off. But we are governed by.our own conditions of life. Behold me, then, on ‘movie’ night, with skirts held high, trudging through the sand foi a quarter of a mile to Pan-Air’s supply room, dumping my shoes on arrival, and sitting on a wooden bench. The motion picture is operated to the accompaniment of “wisecracks” from the audience, and is run backward, to add variety to the programme.