Browse Items (204 total)

These photos were taken by Naval Photographer Harry Setzer during May and June of 1944, while he was visiting Palmyra on his tour through the Pacific with USN Scouting Squadron VS-47. They feature several very unique images:

1. Actress and Singer…

This book was published throughout World War 2, and gave pilots general overviews of friendly island facilities throughout the Pacific, and instructions for landing on them.

Unfortunately the scan is lower quality, but the text and images are…

These images are of a coconut crab in the archives of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii. We know the specimen was donated to them in 1924, but there's no other documentation on it.

Our suspicion the crab came to Hawaii from Palmyra in 1922, aboard the…

Extensive piece covering the return journey and discoveries of Judge Henry Cooper on his initial visit to Palmyra, after purchasing it for $750. He sailed aboard his ship the Luka, with a small crew that included the then curator of the Bishop…

This newspaper account comes from a letter, presumably written by a crew member of the USS Portsmouth while on their surveying mission. It describes several details not mentioned other places, and is one of the earliest recordings of certain bird…

Interesting and colorful article by the well known (at the time) Lorrin Thurston. Describes several methods for dealing with sharks while wading on reefs, including Palmyra.

This group of memos and letters trace the development of Executive Order 8616, which put Palmyra under the official management of the US Navy. Most date from 1939 offer a unique view into the process of how land was acquired by the military during…

Palmyra Call Sign: KP6
Operator Call Sign: K6IGP
Operator Name: Donald Richtenburg

Palmyra Call Sign:
Operator Call Sign: W7FNK
Operator Name: Jack Wheeler

As part of the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program, Research Curator Max Thompson spent 3 days on Palmyra in March of 1967, cataloguing birds with other project members.

This excerpt from his field journals described the activities and various…