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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: Well, I'm not a trillion miles from anywhere, except maybe I'm a trillion miles from everything. That's an interesting philosophical question. What I was trying to get at is, I'm not on an unoccupied island in the middle of the Pacific, so I'm feeling pretty good about life right now.
J. Aughenbaugh: See, the way you just started that caused two disparate thoughts in my brain this Friday morning.
N. Rodgers: You had coffee?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm already on my second mug. This is going to be, listeners, a three mug day for me.
N. Rodgers: At least.
J. Aughenbaugh: The first thought was, Nia is going existential.
N. Rodgers: It went there, didn't it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Which was odd 'cause we typically stay very earthbound in our podcast episode. Even when you come up with hypotheticals where you say, I want to be x government position. By the end of the episode, I've brought both sets of feet back down to the ground. This is usually when you lament, really?
N. Rodgers: You always say no to me.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I always say no. The other one was, I thought you were referencing a very well known Dwight Yoakam song, I'm a 1,000 Miles From Nowhere.
N. Rodgers: I wasn't, but that's awesome.
J. Aughenbaugh: I was just like, I don't think we've ever name dropped Dwight Yoakam on this podcast episode.
N. Rodgers: We have now.
J. Aughenbaugh: We have now.
N. Rodgers: Because Dwight Yoakam is amazing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, I know if you're not a big fan of country music, you should still go see him in concert because he will plow through the most two and a half minute songs in two hours that you have ever experienced. There is no chit chat between the songs. It's from one to [inaudible] and by the end, you're just like, how is he and his band not exhausted both physically but also in terms of musical intellect?
N. Rodgers: How many songs does this man have? Actually, hundreds.
J. Aughenbaugh: His covers are just absolutely fantastic. Listeners, we will get to the topic of today's episode in just a moment. But I highly recommend you listen to his cover of the Clashes Train in Vain. He does a Texas swing version of a punk rock bands, one of their signature songs and he pulls it off.
N. Rodgers: 'Cause he's Dwight Yoakam.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's also the one who did a cover version of Queen's Crazy Thing Called Love which was money grab on Dwight's part, he then went ahead and sold it to GAAP for their advertising.
N. Rodgers: Damn.
J. Aughenbaugh: Do you recall that ad?
N. Rodgers: I don't, but that's good for him parlaying that you know he had to pay a lot of money to get the rights to do it. He got some money back on that investment.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and he also got the approval of the remaining members of Queen, who were like, sure.
N. Rodgers: Go for it, man.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because every time that ad showed, they got a cut of the rules.
N. Rodgers: Very nice. That reminds me we should bring Hilary back sometime to talk about intricate third and fourth right deals where you make a thing, and then somebody else uses your thing, but you get a cut off of the third person using your thing, that stuff. Using third and fourth party copyright usage.
N. Rodgers: We should get her in the talk. Wouldn't it be interesting? I'll put it on the list.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hilary, that episode's going to be easily 90 minutes.
N. Rodgers: Although excitingly enough, Hilary is now going by her middle name, Catherine.
J. Aughenbaugh: Catherine, yes.
N. Rodgers: We'll have to remember that when we invite her because it's rude to not use people's proper names.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's like your given name is Stefanie, right?
N. Rodgers: Yeah. But my mother calls me that, and if you call me that, I'm going to think I'm in trouble.
J. Aughenbaugh: Likewise, I always know when I'm in trouble when people actually use my first two names, John Mark.
N. Rodgers: Strangers are calling you when they say, I'd like to talk to Mr. John Aughenbaugh. You're like, you don't know me, you know I'm called Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Everybody calls me Aughie, even the Dean. But anyways, listeners, today's episode. Please forgive the frivolity.
N. Rodgers: 'Cause we're actually going to get serious about our last episode of the series.
J. Aughenbaugh: We've been doing this series about US territories. There's an entire category of US territories that we've not yet covered. Nia, what are they known as?
N. Rodgers: Well, I thought that they were known as.
J. Aughenbaugh: Unoccupied.
N. Rodgers: Unoccupied, but they are not. There's this whole thing with incorporated and unincorporated. I thought this was much less complex than it is. Y'all know that Aughie creates the notes for these episodes and these notes were on for seven pages. I'm like, wow, how is there this much to talk about? The answer is, there really is this complex system of incorporated versus unincorporated and what that means for the rights of the people who may or may not be on those islands. Now, they're not unoccupied, but they're weirdly occupied. Like, there's some that are occupied. Well, Aughie will get to it, and he'll explain to us. But it's fascinating because it's not. I just thought they were just islands where there was a military base and four guys. That's their job is to make sure that the runway is landable and the dock is landable, is peerable. Then that's it. I thought that's what it was and it's not. Some of them are like that, but some of them are totally not like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: I got to admit, Nia, when I began the research, like you, I thought the distinction was occupied versus unoccupied. I thought with the unoccupied territories, basically, you had a skeleton crew of typically Department of Defense.
N. Rodgers: Or interior. One or the other.
J. Aughenbaugh: Their basic job was, as you just pointed out.
N. Rodgers: Keep the island alive.
J. Aughenbaugh: The runway works. They cut down the vegetation and the foliage so that people who might want to land there know that there is a runway, a landing strip.
N. Rodgers: They offer emergency assistance. If your plane is in the middle of the Pacific and you need to land somewhere, they would be able to help you with the mechanical problem or whatever, or at least another plane can come get your people, and it can be dealt with. That's what I thought. But boy, howdy. Can I just preview something?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, go ahead..
N. Rodgers: A huge amount of the importance of these islands has to do with bird poop.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Bird poop. This could technically be called a bird poop episode.
J. Aughenbaugh: In fact, it would not be inappropriate to go ahead and call this the Guano episode.
N. Rodgers: I might do that, the Guano Islands.
N. Rodgers: There is something, I think they're grouped, in a name called the Minor Outlying Islands?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which I think is funny because I guess the Major Outlying Islands are Guam and Puerto Rico and the ones we've already discussed, Samoa and Marianne. These are the Minor Outlying Islands. Part of that has to do with the fact that are any of them bigger than your front yard?
J. Aughenbaugh: Typically, no.
N. Rodgers: Good news is, upkeep is probably pretty easy. Bad news is, there's nowhere you can go that the other three people on this island cannot see at all times.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. We've been talking about US territories. There's 14 of them, five of which we've already done previous episodes on. Those are Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, the Northern Marianas, and American Samoa. We're going to be focusing this episode on the other nine as Nia just described them, and this is actually from the US government website. They are called the Minor Outlying Islands. Now, Nia also introduced a few moments ago a key distinction, Incorporated versus unincorporated territories. Incorporated territories exist because Congress has passed legislation. You may recall listeners from the previous episodes, they're called, organic statutes that recognize a territory as being incorporated into the United States. Now, what does that mean for those on those territories? Well, what it basically means is that those territories can have their own local government, and they do have some US civil rights and liberties.
N. Rodgers: They all have some federal representation in Congress.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Not voting.
N. Rodgers: But at least they're allowed to show up and complain.
J. Aughenbaugh: They got a non-voting delegate who can bring to the attention of the voting representatives.
N. Rodgers: She's pursuant to their happiness and joy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Unincorporated, still have fundamental rights per international law.
N. Rodgers: The Geneva Convention, by the way, applies everywhere. There's some basic civil rights. You have the right to not just be murdered. There's some basic stuff that pretty much theoretically applies outside of dictatorships all over the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: However, US constitutional rights are not available for the unincorporated territories.
N. Rodgers: If you're on one of these itty bitty islands and something happens to you, you don't necessarily have the right to a trial, a speedy trial or,
J. Aughenbaugh: Due process of law. Now, could Congress give residents,
N. Rodgers: Could they incorporate an island?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, one, yes, Congress can incorporate an island, but could Congress give selected civil liberties to those on unincorporated territories?
N. Rodgers: I would bet yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: The answer is yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: 'Cause Congress can technically pretty much do anything it wants to, in that sense. It could, in fact, grant all of the same rights as an incorporated territory without incorporating the territory.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. All of this arises, Nia, from a series of Supreme Court case opinions from 1901-1905. They're called the Insular Cases. The Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution basically gives Congress complete authority to decide what they want to do with a non state territory. Why? Because in Article 1 of the United States Constitution, the United States Congress gets to make decisions about acquiring new territory and then what they want to do with that territory. For instance, when Thomas Jefferson made the infamous land deal, known as the Louisiana Purchase, the United States Congress could have basically just went ahead and said, All that territory is going to be unincorporated. Now, that's not what the United States Congress did. The United States Congress allowed people from other states to migrate to and settle into this new property, this new territory and then they went ahead and carved it up, and then they applied for statehood, and Congress said, Sure, let's go ahead and recognize, for instance, Kentucky, Missouri, whatever the case may be. But the Supreme Court in the Insular cases went ahead and ratified what had already been going on for about 111 years. They basically went ahead and said, Congress, you can go ahead and be really mean spirited, or you can be really kind and generous with what you want to do with these territories.
N. Rodgers: I like that they extended Ex proprio vigore, which is in your notes, which is of its own force to the continental territories, meaning you are if you are in the Continental United States, the Constitution applies to you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: All those people who went west and tried to make the Wild West, or make the West wild, as it were, the US Supreme Court was like, No, if you're on this land mass within the borders that are the United States, the Constitution applies to you, in good ways and in bad ways, it applies to you.
J. Aughenbaugh: But if the territory is not part of the continental US,
N. Rodgers: All bets are off. It's the wild islands as it were instead of the West.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mentioned these Insular Cases. There is one in particular that human rights advocates just absolutely abhor. The case is Downs versus Bidwell from 1901. The court said the US Constitution did not fully apply in uncorporated territories because these territories were inhabited by alien races. Folks, this is not the high mark by any stretch of the United States, Supreme Court being, shall we say, enlightened.
N. Rodgers: A bunch of racist slops, is what they were. What's good about the modern court, and this is the thing that needs to be remembered. Even conservatives on the modern court are like, No, these people sucked and they got it wrong. This is not an acceptable way to treat anybody.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We don't treat them like they're "aliens", and so they get to be mistreated. They don't have constitutional rights. Gorsuch has said that other modern Supremes have said, No, that was a bad ruling.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned Neil Gorsuch, 'cause Gorsuch, in particular, has slipped it in in a number of concurring opinions where he's just like, I know that this subject is not at the heart of X case today, but I really would like this court to revisit its rulings in the Insular Cases. Because in part, it reflects Gorsuch's concern about how the United States federal government treated Native Americans.
N. Rodgers: Well, and it goes to the point of, if you're going to call yourself decent people, you have to treat other people decently. That's part of decency.
J. Aughenbaugh: Particularly if you've claimed ownership of the territory.
N. Rodgers: Right. I'm going to grab your land, and I'm going to treat you like crap. That's not acceptable.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's not acceptable.
N. Rodgers: We agree with Gorsuch on that. We can say that there are lots of stuff we don't agree with Gorsuch on, but we agree on that. That's an easy peasy. No, if you're going to take people's territory, you have to somehow give them rights within your system.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because his larger point is, when the United States government takes ownership, it also takes ownership of obligations that are imposed on the government within the US Constitution.
N. Rodgers: The US government is Spider Man. With great power comes great responsibility.
J. Aughenbaugh: Responsibility, yes. You have all these cases, and this plays out, as we previously discussed in the other episodes in regards to how the United States government has treated the incorporated territories. There's a whole bunch of court cases in regards to Puerto Rico status.
N. Rodgers: Right. It doesn't necessarily protect you to be incorporated, although it protects you more than being unincorporated, but it's like a stepped process, is it not?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You're totally out in the wilderness hoping for the best, then you're somewhere in between the wilderness and not the wilderness hoping for the best, and then you become a state and you get a much more regimented due process of your rights.
J. Aughenbaugh: The reason why I'm bringing up Puerto Rico, and Nia, you figured this out. The reason why I give the example of Puerto Rico is that Puerto Rico is an incorporated territory, but as we discussed in our previous episode about Puerto Rico, it's not like Puerto Ricans have all of the rights that Americans living in states have.
N. Rodgers: The Puerto Rican government doesn't have the same financial resources that state governments have.
J. Aughenbaugh: What rights, and opportunities, and economic, if you will, privileges that do exist in Puerto Rico is because Congress has decided this.
N. Rodgers: Right. Congress sometimes is petty and mean, and they could change that at any time because we have seen Congress be petty and mean.
J. Aughenbaugh: This stuff is still with us today. I have in my research notes or prep notes, the fact that the Supreme Court and lower federal courts have been dealing with this stuff throughout the 20th century and even into the 21st century. For instance, we talked in a previous episode about American Samoa. The DC Court of Appeals ruled in 2015 in the Tuana versus US case, that the United States Congress had the authority to deny birthright citizenship to American Samoans.
N. Rodgers: Can I just say? I know that lately my arms are flailing a lot because of a lot of things that are going on in the federal government, and things that are going on in the state government, and things that are going on in our workplace, so now my arms are getting a lot of exercise. This case made my arms flail because the idea that you would take a territory, basically occupy the territory, which is what we are, we're an occupying force, and then deny the people in that territory the right to citizenship. We own the land, but we don't care about the people on it. It's so obnoxious. Let me just say, listeners briefly, when you wonder when you go to other countries, why people don't like Americans, that's the crap they don't like. They don't like the fact that Samoa has been an American territory since [inaudible], I can't remember the exact date, and it's people don't have birthright citizenship. That's insane to the rest of the world. It's either yours or it's not yours. This horrible in between means that those people don't have rights.
J. Aughenbaugh: It undercuts American legitimacy.
N. Rodgers: As a democracy.
J. Aughenbaugh: When we go ahead and say, we're spreading democracy around the world.
N. Rodgers: Apparently not.
J. Aughenbaugh: But we have territories that we have incorporated that we have said are a part of the United States as a sovereign entity, and these folks don't have birthright citizenship, or in 2018, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Segovia versus the US, that former residents of the state of Illinois who moved to Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands, did not have the right to cast overseas ballots in an election. Apparently, they gave up their voting rights when they moved out of Illinois to an incorporated US territory. That doesn't make any sense.
N. Rodgers: No, it doesn't. Because the military get to vote overseas, and many expats get to vote overseas, but apparently, you have to move to a completely foreign country to be able to vote from overseas. It's bonkers.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the case that Nia referenced just a few minutes ago. In 2021, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in the, what is it? Fitisemanu Case, denied birthright citizenship to American Samoans, and refused to overrule the Insular Cases.
N. Rodgers: They got a chance six years later to fix the 2015 ruling, and instead they doubled down.
J. Aughenbaugh: The US Supreme Court denied cert. They refused to accept the appeal of the Tenth Circuit Court ruling. This is the case where Neil Gorsuch in a dissenting opinion because he wanted the Supreme Court to take the case, said that the Supreme Court should overrule the Insular Cases because they rest on a "Rotten Foundation", and called the cases "Shameful", and they are.
N. Rodgers: Well, it's what we hold up other countries and say, look how bad they are. They don't give their people rights. Well, we don't either. We're standing in a great big glass house on a great big glass island, and we need to not be throwing any rocks.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Wow, I haven't heard that metaphor forever, but it's true.
N. Rodgers: I think that most people don't know that this is a problem because I think if the people knew this was a problem, Congress would be pushed to fix it because I think people would say, dude, that's not fair. You can't do that to people. They either cut them loose and say, good luck, Samoa. I hope you make it out there in the wilderness on your own, or if you're going to be in American territory because we need you for strategic purposes or whatever the reason is, then we give you the same rights. We noted this in the rest of the episodes, everybody else, Guam, Puerto Rico, they all have birthright citizenship. Samoa is the weird one out, and there's no reason for it, but it's leading to questions modernly today in this administration about who has access to birthright citizenship because the courts opened this door.
J. Aughenbaugh: The courts opened this door.
N. Rodgers: Then you get people who want to walk through it. No, they should slam this door closed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, this all goes back to the first sentence of the 14th Amendment. We talked about this in a previous podcast episode when we reviewed some of the initial actions of the Trump Administration. I think it was very clear on that episode that both Nia and I do not agree with the Trump Administration's interpretation of that clause of the 14th Amendment, and we particularly don't like that interpretation as it applies to US territories because these are people who basically have been occupied, and thus the reason why we use that expression in previous podcast episodes. They're being occupied by the US government.
N. Rodgers: We need to own that.
J. Aughenbaugh: We need to own that. We didn't like it all that much when the colonies resisted the occupation of the British crown in the 18th century. Hello, pot, this is kettle.
N. Rodgers: England is like, you're occupied, we tell you what to do. We're like, no, you don't. You don't tell us what to do. We're going to have a war over it. The only reason that they're not having a war over in Samoa is because they are wildly outnumbered. Anyway, would you mind giving us the quote about unoccupied territories being caught in limbo?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. In analyzing the Insular Cases, Christina Duffy Ponsa, who was a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, she wrote in 1998 in the New York Times. To be in unincorporated territory is to be caught in limbo. Although unquestionably subject to American sovereignty, they are considered part of the United States for certain purposes, but not others. Whether they are part of the United States for the purposes of the Citizenship Clause remains unresolved.
N. Rodgers: I think that's a great summation. Sometimes we give you rights and sometimes we don't, and it's totally arbitrary and capricious. One of our favorite phrase on this podcast because it depends on what will benefit the federal government the most, which I find personally aggravating and against everything that I believe is a democratic ideal, which is everyone is treated equally and no one is above the law.
J. Aughenbaugh: So much of the US Constitution is not about expediency, it's about giving a fair process.
N. Rodgers: However long that takes and however hard that is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Do you want to talk about some of these unincorporated territories? There are nine of them.
N. Rodgers: I do. Let me be more accurate. We're not going to do the in-depth treatment that we did culturally and historically with all of the other islands in part because there's not a lot of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: But also, there's nine.
N. Rodgers: There's a theme. The theme is bird poop. Bird poop is the theme. The other theme is tiny. These are all in the parlance of technical language. They are itty bitty.
J. Aughenbaugh: The technical language alert.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Itty bitty, technical language alert.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which is one of my phrases I use in class when I'm about ready to swear. I'm like, technical language alert, and then I let loose a profanity and then I'm like, so let's get back to the discussion of X. Of course, my students were like, where the heck did that come from?
N. Rodgers: Sometimes it just has to be incorporated.
J. Aughenbaugh: But these are itty bitty but the theme that connects all of these is the fact that, and once again, we're going to have some fun at the expense of the United States Congress. In 1956.
N. Rodgers: 1956?
J. Aughenbaugh: Excuse me, 1856.
N. Rodgers: Thank you.
J. Aughenbaugh: In the 19th century, Congress passed the Guano Islands Act. This law allowed US citizens to claim any island that had the potential of minable deposits of bird guano. Not already claimed by another nation as appertaining to the United States, with presidential approval. The reason why is, the United States Congress was persuaded that bird guano. And Nia, what's bird guano?
N. Rodgers: Bird guano was poop.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, bird poop was rich in necessary minerals, that could be used by whom for what purpose?
N. Rodgers: By farmers for fertilizer. It is a nitrogen-rich form of fertilizer. What I learned from Aughie this morning is that because of their bodily function systems, how they process food in their stomach enzymes, they create high-quality fertilizers, different from many other animals. Although all animal poop has some fertilizing mechanism. If you've seen the martian, you know that you can do that with human, Matt Damon. But birds apparently make better quality, higher quality of this. I would imagine that bats have a similar, because bird guano is also popular.
J. Aughenbaugh: Highly in demand by farmers because for farmers, they want a plentiful source of nutrient-rich fertilizer to grow their crops.
N. Rodgers: Especially important in the modern agricultural system for organic farmers, because these are organic materials. They only pass through a bird or a bat. They don't pass through a mechanization system the way some of the other fertilizers do. Anyway, so the Guano Act, by the way, is still law. If you were wondering if it had gone away, it has not, is in the US Code. It's in the 48th title and Chapter 8 US Code. If you come across an island full of bird poop, whether you can claim it, as long as no one else has claimed it, go for it. You can mine it all to your heart's content.
J. Aughenbaugh: For instance, the Navassa Island, which is an uninhabited island less than two square miles in size in the Caribbean between Jamaica and Haiti was claimed by the United States government per the Guano Islands Act of 1856. Now, if you come across Navassa Island sometimes also referred to as the Devil's Island. By the way, 59 islands were claimed per the Guano Islands Act. But today, only nine are unincorporated islands of the United States.
N. Rodgers: I assume the other 50 were mostly abandoned.
J. Aughenbaugh: They were mostly abandoned after all their bird guano was mined.
N. Rodgers: Scooped up and taken away. The thing about that is that the mining process is faster than the bird process. Not unlike other fossil fuel-type things or natural things like that. For instance, we are burning oil at a significantly faster rate than it is being replaced because it takes millions of years to crush plant matter or material into oil making, and I know sometimes it's animals and sometimes it's plant. But anyway, that process takes millions and millions of years, and in the last 200, we have pretty much used up most of it because it's quicker to use. In this instance, when one thinks about a bird and one thinks about how much poop bird makes in a day, it is not a huge amount because birds are not large, unless you're talking about emus. These are not the birds we're talking about. We're talking about small-flighted birds. You could easily mine something out in 40 or 50 years and be done and you'd have to go away and come back two or 300 years later to get another 10 years off of that island in terms of guano.
J. Aughenbaugh: A good example of what Nia is describing, listeners, is I come from a coal country. The mining of coal has far surpassed Earth's ability to produce more coal deposits. Which is the reason why after a coal company gets done mining in a particular area, they typically just abandon it unless they're required by the government to rehab the land because they've already stripped the land of the coal deposits, and then they move on.
N. Rodgers: Because humans don't manage these things very well. Hence why you go from 59 islands to nine islands in approximately 170 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's Navassa, also known as Devil's Island.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. Can I just say I didn't know any of these islands were in the Caribbean? I, for some reason, thought they were all stashed in the Pacific.
J. Aughenbaugh: And they're not. There's not a lot.
N. Rodgers: No, there's just what, two or three in the Caribbean. But still, who knew that there were islands this close to me that I could go inhabit? I'm just saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: The next one is the Bajo Nuevo Bank. This one is actually disputed. It's a 15-mile long reef with grassy island outcrops in the Caribbean Sea, midway between Jamaica and Central America. It was claimed by the United States in 1869 per what law?
N. Rodgers: The Guano Islands Act.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you very much. But most of the islands in the region were renounced by the United States in 1972 because of a treaty with Colombia.
N. Rodgers: That makes sense. We don't want to encroach on other people's sovereignty because we don't want them to encroach on ours.
J. Aughenbaugh: But there is a toll like structure 70 miles west that continue to be claimed by the United States, though Colombia also has made a claim per the 1972 treaty.
N. Rodgers: Is that Sarnia?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The Sarnia bank?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We're willing to say they can have the Bajo Nuevo, but we're like, no, the Sarnia is still ours because we never mentioned that we didn't want it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But it's not really ours, isn't it? Don't we share it with, is it Colombia or Nicaragua?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, both of those countries have made a claim on it.
N. Rodgers: The reality is, we're not willing to fight over a mostly submerged 25-mile long reef. We're not going to war with Colombia over that. We're not going to war with Nicaragua over that. I don't know what we're going to do now because all bits are off with the current federal government, but I don't think we're going to go to war over that.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's fascinating to me is on the Sarnia Bank is a 100 foot tall metal lighthouse that flashes every 20 seconds.
N. Rodgers: Don't hit this reef, it's going to tear up your boat. Don't hit this reef, basically, is what that says.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's been built and rebuilt twice, 1982 in 2008. I'm like, what the hell's going on down there?
N. Rodgers: Well, the thing we should keep in mind is that some of these places are probably prone enormous amount of hurricane damage. Hence maybe that's the reason they're not occupied, is if they are low lying and there's no way that you can build a structure that will protect you, you're just a sitting duck out there if a hurricane comes.
J. Aughenbaugh: Those are the three on the, if you will, the Atlantic side of the United States. The other, how many? Six.
N. Rodgers: Six.
J. Aughenbaugh: Do math, Aughie.
N. Rodgers: It's early.
J. Aughenbaugh: Are in the Pacific. We have the Johnston Atoll which is isolated and unoccupied. Two small islands, 3,100 miles from the coast of the continental United States, 700 miles southwest of Hawaiian Islands.
N. Rodgers: That is pretty far gone.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. This is almost the definition of in the middle of nowhere.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Although a couple of these top it, but still the whole point of an atoll, I think, geologically is that it's just from ridges of the bottom of the ocean. There's uneven bumps, and that causes some parts to rise up a little bit. But there's no such thing as a big atoll. The point of an atoll is that it's not a huge. .
J. Aughenbaugh: The fascinating thing about Johnston is the fact that it was mined for bird guano, but by 18 90, most of that had been removed. But it becomes important again in the 1930s. Again, this takes us back to one of the themes of our previous episodes. The Navy developed a seaplane base on one of the islands. Starting in 1941, the main island was actually enlarged from 45 acres to 600 with a large airstrip which allows American ships and planes to refuel there. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Can I just say, though, that the environmental destruction that was done in order to get, the whole dredging of the reefs, my heart just cried because I was like, oh no, we don't need fewer reefs. We need more of them? No. If you are that far gone from any place, that's how you "build land." Is that you dredge out the coral reefs underneath where that spot is, and you throw that stuff onto the land, and then it creates bigger edges, but yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. But the next one is really important for our World War 2 buffs, and this is Midway. This is located in the Northern Pacific Ocean, about 1,300 miles west of Honolulu, and it's at the edge of a volcanic arc of islands that include the Hawaiians.
N. Rodgers: That's how big the Hawaiian Islands are. It's 1,300 miles west still included in the Hawaiian arc .
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, Midway was claimed as part of the Guano Islands Act in 1859. I could not find any evidence that guano was ever mined there. But Midway was important because it was one of the sites of the construction of the first Trans Pacific telegraph cable.
N. Rodgers: Communication.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Because you can't just lay cables that go for thousands and thousands of miles without having some way to maintenance those.
J. Aughenbaugh: Basically, it went from San Francisco to Honolulu to the Philippines, to China, and then Japan,
N. Rodgers: It went through Midway.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it went through Midway.
N. Rodgers: Is that why the Japanese attacked it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, in part, But the two islands, it was the outlying base to protect the nation's West Coast. You basically had the Hawaiian Islands, including Pearl Harbor, but then you had Midway. The thinking was there would be no Asian Pacific nation that could travel that far without us then being able to get warning that they were coming for the West Coast of the United States. Does that make sense? .
N. Rodgers: Right. I not being particularly knowledgeable. I don't think that the Japanese planes expected to return.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's correct. Yes.
N. Rodgers: That was a one way trip to Pearl Harbor.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Was Midway bombed?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Then the Japanese came back after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and constructed, if you will, a defense base there.
N. Rodgers: The Japanese did?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, because in part, their thinking was, we didn't destroy the US Naval forces at Pearl Harbor. The United States recovered much more quickly, so we could go ahead and head off the United States. Nia is giving me this strange look. But think about it.
N. Rodgers: No. They came to attack Midway because they wanted a closer point to get to Pearl Harbor or to get to the West Coast of the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, no. The first attack was Pearl Harbor. But they also destroyed Midway because they knew the United States Navy had ships there, personnel, etc. But then they went back to Midway, Japan did. Japan came back several months later and constructed an even larger defense. First, you got to destroy, then you set up a defense base at Midway.
N. Rodgers: Well, I misunderstood. I thought that they lost. For some reason, historically, I thought that they lost to an American defense. I didn't realize that we lost to them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Midway was bombed just like Pearl Harbor was. Then Japan came back several months later. There's the infamous Battle of Midway. Japan had already set up a base there. That's why it was important for us to retake Midway.
N. Rodgers: Got you. Which we did.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It was a major turning point in the war because again, Midway was closer to Japan than the Hawaiian Islands.
N. Rodgers: Physically. I see.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's why it became so important to us.
N. Rodgers: Why it's named that, probably.
J. Aughenbaugh: Midway.
N. Rodgers: Midway.
J. Aughenbaugh: Whoa. Hey, hello. Ding ding ding. Common sense.
N. Rodgers: Can I just say that some people, at least in the South, name things very, very straightforwardly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In North Carolina, we have a river called the Deep River. I love my people. They just name stuff what it is. That river's deep, we should just call that the Deep River. Midway is North Pacific, but then you get into a bunch of stuff that's in the southern part of the Pacific. By Southern, I mean, I am sorry, when I'm trying to visualize this, listeners, and I'm hoping that you get the same cue is that what we're talking is south of Hawaii. That's how we get South Pacific is south of Hawaii.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There's a bunch of those, aren't there?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You're talking about, for instance, you have Kingman Reef, which is 1,000 miles south of Hawaii. You have the Palmyra Atoll.
N. Rodgers: Those are part of the lying islands. Those are all part of the same archipelago.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it's a very remote island chain in the Pacific.
N. Rodgers: If you're wondering where Kiribati is, it's nestled in that little group. The little nation of Kiribati is nestled in that group.
J. Aughenbaugh: You have the Jarvis Island. Again, this is a somewhat large island. It's got 1,000 acres, but it's 3,600 miles from the shore of Continental United States.
N. Rodgers: Getting anything brought there is going to cost you an enormous amount of money. Because I was thinking to myself, I'm going to build a house on Jarvis Island. Then I thought, if I built a one room shack on Jarvis Island, it would cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars because I would have to have all the stuff imported to do that. People are like, I'll just go live on some unoccupied island, and it'll be great. I'm like, yeah, but every time somebody brings you a can of beans, that can of beans is going to cost you $15. It's like Alaska, where Alaskans are just used to paying $12 for a head of lettuce because it's got to come all the way from the Continental United States, all the way from California. My ambitions for building on Jarvis Island have been dimmed by the notes in your preference because I'm like, oh, that's 3,600 miles. While I think I might like the separation, the distance, oh, no people, I'm like, except never any people. I'm a person who wants low people, not no people. That would be a no people thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The thing that's very unusual about the Jarvis Island, this is classic colonial behavior. Military occupation was not permitted by international law.
N. Rodgers: Well, yeah, it would look like you were building a military base somewhere.
J. Aughenbaugh: So the US government secretly hired civilians, and they paid them $3 a day to reside on the islands.
N. Rodgers: See, they could pay me $3 a day to live there. I would do that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Most of these civilians were recruited from Hawaii. They were educated Native Hawaiians that were recruited to again, not occupy, but to go there and make inhabitable for US military if we ever needed to use the Jarvis Islands.
N. Rodgers: Or be inhibited so that America could say, oh, no, it's inhabited. We've got people there. But what I think is interesting, the name of that project is the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project. Not sure we should be calling anything a colonization project.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm thinking that the title betrayed the actual project.
N. Rodgers: It's like the Deep River. Sometimes you just call a thing what it is, in this instance, colonization. But I love this one and the Baker Island, which is the next island 4,300 miles, so 3,600 miles, then 4,300 miles. These things are 1,300 miles apart, these two islands. Did the same thing. They stashed some people there and they wanted them to do things like weather observations and nature and wildlife observations and stuff like that. Basically, so they could say, oh, no, it's a scientific outpost. It's not military. We're not being scary over here. We're just watching the wildlife.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. They only brought teams of four people at a time.
N. Rodgers: They only switched out every three months, because that's how long it would take you, I would assume to sail all the way there. Especially probably with Jarvis and with Baker, you're probably doing a round, you're not just going to one and coming home. You're going to a bunch of them dropping off some canned goods, dropping off the next four people, picking up those four people and taking them wherever.
J. Aughenbaugh: Imagine if you got assigned.
N. Rodgers: It would either be awesome or it would be horrible.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It's not in between. There's nothing in between.
J. Aughenbaugh: Imagine your boss comes to your office and says, I got a job for you. Oh, really? What is it? What's this opportunity?
N. Rodgers: What's this opportunity?
J. Aughenbaugh: We're going to send you to the Baker Islands. You're going to be one of a four person team. By the way, we're just going to drop you off and every three months or so, we'll send you relief supplies.
N. Rodgers: And switch you out with other people, so you're going to be on a rotation. Doesn't that sound great? You're like, okay, that sounds fine until, oh, I don't know, World War 2 starts. Then you're like, whoa, this is bad. I am 4,300 miles from home.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There's nothing out here to protect me.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, to give you a sense of how isolated the Baker Island is, it is halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
N. Rodgers: That is the definition of nowhere. That is absolutely the definition of nowhere. Where are you? I am nowhere.
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm halfway between Hawaii and Australia. There's something halfway between.
N. Rodgers: Now, only 42 miles north of Baker Island is Howland Island.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's close. You could, theoretically, get in a boat and go visit.
J. Aughenbaugh: But once again, the Bird Guano was basically depleted in 1878. However, once again, teams from the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project arrived. In the next five years, they built a runway. This was part of the Works Progress Administration during the New Deal, YWPA ad because they basically went ahead.
N. Rodgers: Said to four people, I'm going to give you a job. But it is, in fact, and there is a phrase in the South, and I think it is appropriate to hear, it is hell and gone from everything else.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Now, for some listeners, you may be familiar with the Howland Island, because this was supposed to be one of the stopping points for Amelia Earhart's around the world flight.
N. Rodgers: It was one of her refueling stations, wasn't it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it was.
N. Rodgers: Her around the world flight wasn't supposed to be continuous. She was stopping at various places, spending the night resting because flying the kind of planes she was flying was physically hard to do, so she was taking rest breaks. But basically, what she was trying to do was circumnavigate the globe. This is one of the places where she was supposed to stop and refuel and they went all out. Can I tell this part, Aughie?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: They went all out to get this ready for her. They gave her the only room on the island with curtains.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I'm just saying there's one room on the entire island that has curtains, and they were gracious and they were going to give it to her and make sure that she had a place to sleep, and she was going to get an outdoor shower. They built her an outdoor shower. They fancied it up. Unfortunately.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, the Howland Island was the destination that she was found for when she left New Guinea on July 2nd of 1937, and she never arrived. They did an extensive search. I think it was almost two months they searched for her, and they never found her.
N. Rodgers: Sad for the people because they're all excited. She's doing at any time. She's probably been delayed by weather, but it's going to be fine. You know what I mean? That would probably have been really hard because they were the first people to realize she wasn't going to arrive. They also got kicked around during the whole attack in Pearl Harbor or within the same time frame, not the same attack, but the same time frame.
J. Aughenbaugh: When I was doing research on this, researchers are mixed on whether or not the Japanese intended to bomb the Howland Island, or they just got off course, like we're going to bomb it.
N. Rodgers: They saw lights.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're going to bomb it anyways. But nevertheless, two of the four person colonist team were trapped there until they were evacuated two months later. They were marooned for 53 days, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Sadly, two of them were killed. It took years for their bodies to be repatriated back to a military cemetery in Hawaii. But for two months, if you were expecting a food delivery, at that point, you're eating a lot of fish. You're trying to make it. But scary. What's our last island?
J. Aughenbaugh: The last one is Wake Island, and it's halfway between Midway and Guam. It's also just a short distance away from Continental United States, 4,300 miles. It is one of the most remote islands in the world. It is 600 miles away from the nearest inhabited island.
N. Rodgers: It's amazing. It's the furthest one out.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it is the furthest one out. It was claimed by the United States in 1898 and it was placed under the control of the United States Navy. What was fascinating to me was at one point, they built an airstrip to permit Pan American airways for island hopping commercial air travel between the United States and China.
N. Rodgers: Which was a thing back in the day. Was a thing in the 1830s, a lot of people wanted to go and see China and all these other places in the South China, all that kind of stuff. What I think is interesting is they built a 48 room hotel.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they did.
N. Rodgers: They were thinking Wake Island was going to be a huge tourist spot. I'm not entirely certain that that went the way they thought because they did all that in 1936, and then in 1941, the United States gets attacked at Pearl Harbor. Pretty much at that point, nobody's going on tourist trips to any of these islands. Like, that's just not happening.
J. Aughenbaugh: Japan ended up occupying Wake Island basically for the duration of the war.
N. Rodgers: All that infrastructure, I guess, housed Japanese soldiers.
J. Aughenbaugh: In planes, Wake is the only unincorporated US territory that's fully militarized, meaning basically, the inhabitants are completely comprised by government and military personnel and contractors.
N. Rodgers: I can't go there unless I'm president. Maybe that's where I'll make my Camp David. How badly do you want to come see me, President of whatever? Because you're going to have to do it on Wake Island. It has got a really long runway.
J. Aughenbaugh: The runway is nearly 10,000 feet long, and it is an important emergency landing field for both civilians and military.
N. Rodgers: You could land an airbus on that thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you're going to relocate Camp David, that's the point.
N. Rodgers: Airforce 1 can land on that. I'm just saying. Then when I say don't bug me, you know I mean it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, because in the private jets of the other foreign dignitaries. Sure. Not a problem. But also know that if I don't want you to come visit, there's about 100 personnel there to go ahead and shoot you down.
N. Rodgers: Well, but more importantly, it's so far away unless you have an invitation. You're not going.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nobody's going to go ahead and say, Hey, Wow I'm enroute.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Or I'm going to pop over to Wake Island. That's not what you're going to do. You're not going to pop over to Baker or Wake or Howland, none of those.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let me just slide on over.
N. Rodgers: Which makes them ideal for Gen X. Everybody who lives on these islands should be Gen X because we're okay with nobody popping in on us. We're all right with that. Hey, thanks, Aughie. It's fascinating to me that when we want something, we just make up a rule, and then we go do it. We have this Guano Act where we're like, Oh, no, if there's Guano on the island, we can claim it. Who says? We say? We're the Congress and we say that, and therefore, that's how it's going to happen. Similarly, the colonization project. They just said, we're just going to have a thing where we have the American Equatorial Islands Colonization Project, which pretty much is exactly what it says on the tin. It is a colonization project, although technically, they're not colonizing because they're not bringing lots of other people there. It's more like an occupational project.
J. Aughenbaugh: But that particular project, it's title. At no point I wondered if anybody, a congressional staffer said Mr. or Madam Congress person, don't you think we're like giving away what we're actually doing here with the name?
N. Rodgers: Shouldn't it be the American Equatorial Islands Exploration Project?
J. Aughenbaugh: Or do we even have to go ahead and put this into law? Why don't we just like, send teams down there? It's not like those islands are being monitored by other nations. Nobody wants to go there.
N. Rodgers: Except apparently the Japanese.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, apparently.
N. Rodgers: But it's pretty funny. Well, of course, in 1939, and listeners, it's good for us to mention this before we wrap up. In 1939, colonization was not considered a bad thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Because in 1935, 1939, all those time periods, many nations in Europe had colonies, still.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was a significant issue during World War 2. It was a significant issue after World War 2, even when the United Nations was created. How do you go ahead and address the.
N. Rodgers: The occupation of other people.
J. Aughenbaugh: We have all these colonies. How do we go ahead and fit this into the Geneva Conventions?
N. Rodgers: Exactly. World history, it's complicated. Just saying.
J. Aughenbaugh: How many times did we hear that from Twig, Newman, Burdett, Saladino?
N. Rodgers: All time. Anybody who deals with international relations, when you ask them a question, what you think is a straightforward question, their first response always is, well, it's complicated. Of course, you Americanist, whenever I ask questions about the Constitution, you say the same thing. I say, Is this in the Constitution? You're like, Well, kind of, but it's complicated. And I go, Okay. Then I settling with my glass of water because it's going to be a little while.
J. Aughenbaugh: Prop your feet up.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Hang on. I got to get some carbs. Okay, let's go. Thank you, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, thanks, Nia.
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