The Delights and Dangers of Childhood on Midway Island during the Cold War

There is something about living on a teensy island a billion miles from anywhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that fosters a sense of detachment from the world.  Although we weren’t separated from the dangers of the Cold War and politics on Midway Island, my two brothers and I delighted in living on this seemingly idyllic island. We loved Daddy taking us to the beach after work or on the weekend, and couldn’t hop on our bikes fast enough when he said the word. 

The sugar white sands at the beach, although pristine to look at, were actually dead coral, and were rough on the feet, so we tried to protect our feet by wearing flip flops.  This made it worse, as the rough white coral sand got caught between the toes and made us bleed.  One just put up with such things, much as we put up with disgusting canned milk, brackish water coming out of our house plumbing, and mosquitos.

The turquoise waters were warm and a delight to swim in, but only my older brother was much of a swimmer.  My younger brother, who was in kindergarten, and I who was in third grade, could not “swim” without the aid of snorkel, mask and fins.  Without the mask and snorkel, the crawl stroke was beyond me, as was the breast stroke’s complicated timing.  I could sorta do sidestroke.  But one the mask and snorkel were on, we were freed from breathing problems and used the flippers to propel us up and down the beach looking for shells.  Dad and Mom watched us and set reasonable limits.

The grand prize for us to find in the shallow water we were permitted to traverse was an auger shell.  I still have a good sized one we found.  It sits to this day on a shelf in my living room. 

In spite of the pristine look of the lagoon, dangers lurked.  The most common peril for wee swimmers was the man o’war jelly fish.  They stung like fire, I still clutch my right arm when talking about them.  We had swimming lessons at the beach in the summer, and the man o’ war’s blue stingers were nearly invisible in the turquoise water.  I got stung one day, as did many other swimming lesson pupils.  They found a delivery truck somewhere and took us to the dispensary, then called our mothers.  I don’t know why they took us to the dispensary.  They merely looked at us and said, “Yep, you’ve been stung by a man o’war, all right. Go home.”

Mom came to fetch me and I walked beside her going home.  Wasn’t far.  A block.  Nothing is far on an island that is only a mile or so long.  Mom let me lie down on her bed and I stared at the huge welts on my arm.  She read to me, but it didn’t help much and I probably cried a lot, but I got over it in a day or two.  From then on, I kept a wary eye around me when I went swimming.

The birds by the thousands came to Midway to mate and lay eggs.  Very few people can live on an island full of birds and not get pooped upon.  It happened to me when I was riding to school.  Plop—right on the side of my head, streaming down into my ear and on my dress.  The culprit in this crime was a fairy tern.  Fairy terns are alabaster birds with jet black beaks and eyes.  They swooped and launched attacks on interlopers of their nesting areas.  “Nesting areas” is a misnomer, as they didn’t build nests.  They laid their sticky eggs in the crotch of a tree, then the chick was reputed to hatch feet first and cling to the first thing it could latch onto.  They would sway and bob in the breezes, never falling from their perch.  Third graders who went whizzing by on their bikes better watch out for fairy tern parents who carry a load like the Enola Gay.

Bosun birds, also called tropic birds, did not nest in trees, they just found a spot on the ground and laid an egg.  Bosun birds had shriveled little feet which did not allow them to walk.  In those days, dogs were allowed on the island, and when one threatened, the birds would screech a cacophony, actually turning pink.  It was a strange site, but it seemed to dissuade attacks.  I’ve come across quizzes that ask which is the only bird that can fly backwards.  The answer claims it to be hummingbirds. Ha!  Bosun birds can too.  The bosun had a long, thin red tail that they would drag in the water as a lure while flying backwards, then plunge upon the unsuspecting nibbling fish to gulp it up for dinner.  The fish must have never known what hit them. The poor bosuns faced a peril of their own.  They were nearly wiped out as a species during the 1800’s when the millinery trade fancied their thin red tailfeather.  I don’t think turning pink did much to scare off someone intent on making a hat out of them.

We had baby gooney birds (Laysan albatross) by the thousands, fluffy little balls of charcoal gray, with tiny little hooked beaks like their parents.  It was a delight to watch the parents build a nest, lay their eggs and tenderly nuture their young.  When for some reason an egg did not hatch, and the perplexed and disappointed parents were sometimes given a tennis ball, for the rotten eggs were prone to breaking and smelled foul.  Occasionally a gooney died, and I learned for the first time what a dead animal smells like when left in the heat for a week.  Death came to the birds in senseless lottery, and  we rode our bikes past it quickly, holding our noses and taking a different route next time.

Once the babies fledged, they made their way down to the beach, where the jaws of tiger sharks waited.  The adolescent birds flailed and flapped in the water, trying to learn how to fly, plopping back down in the water to rest.  It was a siren call to the sharks. When sharks were spotted in the lagoon, a red flag was hoisted, but we children whispered horror stories about a supposed two year old child that was eaten when no red flag had been posted.

That was the nature of things on Midway Island.  Hidden dangers lurked.  The pristine waters held peril, birds lived on the edge of death and extinction, and the so-called Camelot days of the Kennedy administration stood ready to launch atom bombs.  

Yet bosun birds have made a good comeback from near extinction.  Thousands upon thousands of beautiful goonies made it maturity, to grow their magnificent twelve foot wingspan and discover the art of soaring for years at a time.  And we kids made it through jelly fish stings, sharks and even canned milk.  We swam, found shells, and grew up through the Cold War to one day discover magnificence in our own time, when the Berlin Wall come down. 

Were you alive during the Cold War?  Was your childhood filled with fun and dangers?