is a one runway airport serving the island of

Minami Torishima , also known as Marcus Island, is an isolated Japanese coral atoll in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, located some southeast of Tokyo and east of the closest Japanese island, South Iwo Jima of the Ogasawara Islands, and nearly on a straight li ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. The aerodrome used to be a military

airstrip An aerodrome (Commonwealth English) or airdrome (American English) is a location from which aircraft flight operations take place, regardless of whether they involve air cargo, passengers, or neither, and regardless of whether it is for publ ...

and according to the Japanese

Aeronautical Information Service The Aeronautical Information Service (AIS) is a service established in support of international civil aviation, whose objective is to ensure the flow of information necessary for the safety, regularity, and efficiency of international air navigatio ...

, is still operated by the

Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force , abbreviated , also simply known as the Japanese Navy, is the maritime warfare branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, tasked with the naval defense of Japan. The JMSDF was formed following the dissolution of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJ ...

The airstrip existence dates to 1935 when the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

built one to serve a meteorological station. The original airfield consisted of two airstrips (cleared area of 4000' and 4500', but only shorter sections used as landing area) in a v-shaped formation. The airstrips facilities were damaged by US bombing of the island during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, and was re-built with a single runway by the United States Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 9 in 1964.NMCB 9 Cruisebook, 1964, p. 11/151, Seabee Museum, Port Hueneme, Ca
/ref> Until 1993, the airstrip was used and controlled by the

United States Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, m ...

to service the nearby

LORAN-C Loran-C is a hyperbolic radio navigation system that allows a receiver to determine its position by listening to low frequency radio signals that are transmitted by fixed land-based radio beacons. Loran-C combined two different techniques to ...

station. In 2009 the airstrip was transferred to the

which currently retains control of the airstrip and is used by the

Japan Meteorological Agency The , abbreviated JMA, is an agency of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. It is charged with gathering and providing results for the public in Japan that are obtained from data based on daily scientific observation an ...

to service and staff their operations on the island.

References

Airports in Tokyo Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force bases Transport in the Greater Tokyo Area {{Tokyo-geo-stub