Jarvis Island Airport

The airfield was abandoned due to the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific. The civilian settlement on Jarvis Island, known as Millersville, was shelled by a Japanese submarine on December 7, 1941. The island was deemed too remote and vulnerable to defend. Consequently, the U.S. evacuated the civilian colonists in February 1942, and the military abandoned the outpost and its landing strip.

The site is now part of the Jarvis Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The island is uninhabited, and access is strictly controlled by permit for scientific and conservation purposes. The former runway is completely unusable, heavily overgrown with vegetation, and eroded by time and weather. The faint outline of the strip and the ruins of the Millersville settlement are still visible on satellite imagery and are treated as historical archaeological sites.

The airfield, often referred to as Millersville Field, was a crucial part of the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project from 1935 to 1942. It was constructed by American colonists, primarily young men of Hawaiian descent known as the Hui Panalāʻau. Its primary purpose was to solidify U.S. sovereignty over the island and to serve as a potential emergency landing and refueling stop for the nascent trans-Pacific commercial and military air routes. The compacted coral and sand runway was used for observation and patrol aircraft by the U.S. military in the period just before and at the very beginning of U.S. involvement in WWII.

There are no plans or prospects for reopening the airport. The island's status as a protected National Wildlife Refuge and its inclusion in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument make any form of development, especially an airport, extremely unlikely. The strategic importance of such a remote airfield has been superseded by modern long-range aircraft, making its reactivation economically and logistically unfeasible. Its primary value is now ecological and historical.