World Island Info

A Veterans’ Day query. A reader asks:

Any information on Mapie Island near the Solomons, New Guinea or this general area? My cousin was buried there during the 2nd World War in about 1944:

John H. Carroll, Jr.
Second Lieutenant, U.S.A A.F.
390th Bomber Squadron
42 nd Bomber Group
Died: 12-Nov-44

According to additional information he was listed as M.I.A.

I think this must be the Mapia Islands, north of the hook at the end of the Indonesian side of New Guinea.

The Approach to the Philippines in the series U.S. Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific says this:

The only other important offensive undertaken in the western New Guinea region was the seizure, in mid-November [1944], of the Asia and Mapia Island Groups, lying respectively 100 nautical miles northwest and 160 northeast of Sansapor. Loran and radar stations were established on these islands, which were were captured by elements of the 31st Infantry Division operating under the control the newly established of U.S. Eighth Army. (note, p. 450)

On this page it says that the 390th Bomber Squadron moved to Sansapor, New Guinea on 8/23/44. This page includes a couple of pictures of that unit’s planes.

This history says specifically that the unit was operating against the Mapia Islands on the date of this death, and this site says that on 11/12/44 “50+ B-25s blast Mapia and Asia Islands, New Guinea.”

So it would make sense if he died during that operation, given the date.

Lastly, page 12 of this document includes a picture of a burial ceremony on the Mapia Islands after the American landings.

I like a double island — an island on another — and the Indonesians have accomplished a special one: a mini-Java on Java.

It is the island in the foreground of the lake here, at Taman Mini Indonesia, where the Southeast Asian country is reproduced in minature, all on the north shore of maxi-Java.

Due to plate tectonics, Taiwan is creeping toward the mainland, and the island will unite with the continent in “a few million years.”

Meanwhile, the same article reports that the island is getting rapidly taller: the same tectonic processes are pushing up its mountains at 2 or 3 cm a year.

To firm up the definition of Okinotorishima as an island — and thereby insure rights to a large economic zone in the Pacific — Japan is planning to seed corals on the reef in hopes that the island might grow. The island is now almost wholly covered at high tide.

Overall, the Japanese case is weak, though the government argues otherwise. According the the UPI article,

Last year Shintaro Ishihara, the nationalist Governor of [Tokyo], was photographed kissing its dwindling earth. The problem is Article 121 of Part VIII of the UN Convention: “Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.” Even Mr Ishihara would balk at living on Okino-Torishima, although there is talk of setting up an electricity plant to establish “economic life”.

(Perhaps the Japanese have heard this Malay saying: “Where good seed falls into the sea, one day an island may appear.”)

A reader asks: “In my atlas there is a large island at the northwest end of the Lena River delta in the Russian Arctic. It is not named in the atlas, but it appears to be bigger than Vaygach. Have you any information on this?”

The distinct islands shown on some maps of the delta seem to be illusory; see Google maps, which shows a largely unifed delta.

That said, see the map on p. 2 of this paper. “Arga Island” seems largely to correspond with the beige area in the Google satellite view, and could be some 10,000 square km, or 4,000 square miles.

But it’s not much of an island: see these details of the channels that would form its southern boundary.

Virtually the only references to Arga Island online (at least in English) are in the context of that single paper on Nikolay Lake.

This paper has this to say:

The western part of the Lena Delta is formed by a large, 20-m-high sand island fringed by a unique lace coast formed by narrow estuary-like bays deeply penetrating the land. This unique coast undergoes intensive erosion not only on promontories but also inside of estuaries due to storm surges reaching to >2 m height. The sand island is characterized by typical lake-thermokarst relief.

Page 17 of that paper refers to Tit-Ary Island, south of Arga.

Here is a small, real island in the delta, indicating that other islands have names.

So, is there a large island in the northwest of the Lena River Delta? I suppose so, but you can be the judge.

[Russian islands, delta islands]

The Tokdo (Dokdo) / Takeshima dispute between Japan and Korea is heating up again, and could lead to a particularly stupid war.

On a blog, an angry poster listing Japan’s historical offenses against Korea leveled this curious accusation: “The Japs has made the land to be officially named ‘Half Island’ instead of ‘Peninsula’. Kingdom of Forgery!”

“Hanto” is Japanese for “peninsula,” and means “half-island” in English. That is of course the same meaning as “peninsula,” which is Latin for “almost island.”

The oddest part of this complaint is that in Korean the Koreas occupy a “bando.” What does this mean? An American university notes that “the Korean term for peninsula (bando) means literally ‘half-island.’”

(”Half-” or “semi-island” is the term for peninsula in many languages. Perceiving a protuberance of land this way does not seem self-evident, and I wonder what peninsulas are called by peoples for whom islands were the center of things, not isolated fragments, for instance in the Pacific?)

A Reuters article in the Washington Post claimed today that Chongming Dao, in the Yangtze north of Shanghai, is larger than Cyprus. In fact, it is much smaller, at only 1,041.4 sq km. Cyprus is actually nine times Chongming’s size, at 9,251 sq km, making it the 81st largest island in the world.

Chinese commonly claim that it is the largest alluvial island in the world. This is incorrect, as most river islands are alluvial, and Brazil has a number of larger alluvial islands in the Amazon, beginning with 40,100 sq km Marajo.

They also cite it as the third largest island of China, after Taiwan and Hainan, but it is more accurately the second largest, as Taiwan is not currently administered by China.

Two Indian fishermen who drifted onto North Sentinel Island in the Andamans have been killed by the Sentinelese, who are the world’s most isolated islanders.

The Sentinelese, thought to number between 50 and 200, have rebuffed all contact with the modern world, firing a shower of arrows at anyone who comes within range.  They are believed to be the last pre-Neolithic tribe in the world to remain isolated.

DNA suggests they have been isolated for a very long time indeed:

DNA analysis of another tribe, the Jarawa, whose members made first contact with the outside world in 1997, suggest that the tribesmen migrated from Africa around 60,000 years ago.  

Indian survivors of exile by the British colonial authorities go back to the Andaman Islands.

Manned lighthouses are a thing of the past in the United States and most of the developed world, but a crew still serves on a small island in Vietnam.

It does not sound easy: they battle monsoon storms and snakes, grow their own food, and only get to see their families every six months.