BAKER ISLAND

formerly New Nantucket, or Phoebe Island, unincorporated territory of the United States in the South Pacific Ocean, 1,650 miles (2,650 km) southwest of Honolulu. A coral atoll rising to 25 feet (8 m), it measures 1 mile long by 0.7 mile wide and has a land area of about 0.6 square mile (1.5 square km). The uninhabited island is arid and is fringed by a reef. Sighted (1832) by an American mariner, Captain Michael Baker, the island was claimed (1857) along with nearby Howland Island by the United States under the Guano Act of 1856, but its guano deposits are now exhausted. In the 1930s, rising interest in transpacific aviation prompted the United States to strengthen its claim on Baker by colonizing it from Hawaii. In 1936 it came under the administration of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Evacuated in early 1942, the island was reoccupied by U.S. forces in late 1943, and an air base was built.