Talk:Amchitka

WWII source
Here is an excellent source that would be useful for the article's WWII section. Pages 272-276 cover Amchitka's role well. Jakew 20:13, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Japanese source in 1783 to 1787
I know it does not sound traceable for English speakers, putting Japanese source. However I think, about Amchitka around 1783, they're mostly written in Japanese and very few in Deutch and Russian, both are about the castaways. The story is well known in Japan as you can see if you search the castaway's name on Amazon.co.jp, there are 18 books and 1 compact disk. Even Russian-Japanese movie was made about 15 years ago. As a clue, I would put this. Here's auto-translation of a site that describes Kodayu's life in summary. Amchitka(アムチトカ) starts from chapter 3, which start at 3rd chapter fog and island [amuchitoka] of wind I would say the translation is 70 to 80% right.(just like translating person's name "三五郎(Sagorou; meaning three-five-man) who is sick" to "35 of the sick people 郎" or "Half Japanese mile" to "Semi-village" because of the meaning of Kanji, Chinese charactors".) It actually mess whole sentence up, though....it translate Kodayu to "Light-thick-husband" and the software seems to be trying the senteces making sence, but....--Orcano 06:50, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

ROTHR, 1988-1993
I was one of approx 300 (civilian) workers who spent time on Amchitka between 1988 and 1993. We were there in support of the US Navy's Relocatable Over The Horizon Radar project (mentioned in the Over-the-horizon_radar article). I worked for Piquniq Management Company (PMC) which had the maintenance and operations contract for the Navy. The ROTHR itself was only operational for the last year or two of this time period, as there was much construction and renovation necessary prior to bringing the system online.

During my time there, we maintained a 144-man base camp at the southeast end of the island - ROTHR's receiver array and our main runway was here as well. The receiver array was a 2-mile long line of poles. At the northwest end of the island, approximately 40 miles away via a difficult and little-used road was a smaller camp, normally manned by 12 people if I remember right. Here is where the transmitter antenna was located; it was much smaller, perhaps 300 meters long and 10-20 meters tall. It looked like a very tall mesh fence; a small picture of it is here. Things I remember from my time there:


 * Lt. Commander D.J. Louk of the US Navy was in command of Fleet Surveillance Support Command Detachment 1 (FSSC Det 1), approx 15 petty officers who oversaw the project. They had one (!!) regular seaman to order around. I wish I could remember that kid's name. Everyone else on the island was a civilian.
 * Fish and Wildlife Service had one person on the island (it is a national refuge); her name was Donna, and she lived outside the base camp in a small cabin.
 * I recall seeing puffins, eagles, foxes, otters, killer whales, and seals. There are no trees on the island. Oh, and we had so many rats that one person had a fulltime job keeping them down.
 * The typical contractor (like myself) spent 2 months on the island, then had a 1-month vacation.
 * During my time there, the Navy burned down the North Hangar, a huge WWI-era building. They wanted to clear space for airplane parking during a military excercise. The resulting smoke cloud was visible from Adak, about 180 miles away.
 * I visited all three of the atomic test sites. Very little remains to mark them and the sites look completely natural. For a short time I collected weekly water samples from them for the Department of Energy; these were mailed to DOE and (I was told) tested for tritium levels.
 * The weather? Fog, and a lot of it, year round. And winds so strong that opening a door could be a hazardous experience. Rain often, and snow in winter (both fell nearly horizontally in the strong winds). A very raw place, but beautiful nonetheless.

I'm not sure how or even if the ROTHR period should be fit into the main Amchitka article. But I thought I would toss this in here for benefit of future editors.


 * Except for the atomic test sites, sounds like the sights and experiences that most of us have had living in the Aleutians. Nice memories, for me (1980-1984).  Un  sch  ool  05:43, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Other Aleutian islands were test sites?
So an anonymous over on the Snow Crash article was asking about one of the main characters, whose motivation is revenge against America for using his people's lands for nuclear testing (he's an Aleut); he was asking on the topic of Nuclear testing on the Aleutians. I found this article, but I hesitate to just redirect it to Amchitka. Was Amchitka the only Aleutian nuclear test site? --Gwern (contribs) 16:59 18 September 2007 (GMT)

Layout/Infobox Military Test Site
Shouldn't the infobox go further down, to the relevant section, e.g. #Plans_for_nuclear_testing ? --User:Docu

Split article?
I feel that the material about the nuclear testing at Amchitka should be split off into its own article. Anyone who lived at that time remembers how huge a news story it was for weeks in advance. It was arguably the genesis of the anti-nuclear movement. Would anyone object to this plan? Un sch  ool  05:39, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't see the point. Without the Nuke story and WW2 story, there's not much left. I'm not sure how it detracts, what real benifit would result from a split. Proxy User (talk) 17:38, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Is there a kodayu reference?
/* Early history */ Removed tag, produces error message. --DThomsen8 (talk) 00:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Who is 'he' under Controversy section
Refer to the following line under "Controversy" heading the main article. "As he was leaving, one man gave the traditional farewell of the peace-activist movement, "Peace." "Make it a green peace,"" Who is "he" who was leaving the committee meeting when the farewell message Make it a Greenpeace? Any help!--Sumir 12:48, 7 September 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sumir Sharma (talk • contribs)

Techtonic instability
[It] "varies from 3 to 6 km (2–4 mi) in width." Dictionaries have "vary" to mean "change" or "alter".--SilasW (talk) 14:40, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

videos
Is there any reason not to shift them over to wikipedia?©Geni 20:43, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Geohack links wrong?
Both of the coordinates given under the geography section (51°21′N 178°37′E and 51°39′N 179°29′E) take me to points in the ocean near the island rather than the island itself (using Google Maps). Kevink707 (talk) 21:28, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Better video
Maybe a better video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp6aZIhHiRE --Moala (talk) 02:40, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * It's taken from a commercial video. We can't use it unless the copyright owners license it freely, which seems unlikely to happen. -- Avenue (talk) 03:53, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * It's two years later, but I challenge that, partially. The footage presumably came from the US government and hence is in the public domain, so it is usable.  The music presumably is copyrighted and was added by someone else, so that's presumably not usable.  It is possible that the editing of the bits of footage makes the entire video copyrightable to whoever did the editing; so (a) at best, the latter is untrue and we would get to use the entire video if it were made silent; (b) at worst, the latter is true and we could use individual clips from the video, also silent.  To be absolutely safe, the individual clips would not have any edits.  (Of course even safer would be to locate the original footage.)  Comet Tuttle (talk) 07:00, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Article focus
This article appears to focus on the nuclear weapons test and the related "controversy"; there is little information about the island itself, the climate, fora, fauna, geology, people living there now, current history, etc. Regards, — mattisse  (Talk) 18:28, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Extinct?
Is this volcano extinct? Alaska Volcano Observatory and GVP don't have any pages on Amchitka. -- Guan long   wucaii  15:32, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Jarvis
I am removing this paragraph from the section 1973 and beyond on the grounds that:
 * It is not sourced.
 * It is opinionated.
 * It is out of character for the rest of the section's content.
 * It doesn't add anything about Amchitka -- it is more about the crew and command of the Jarvis than about it is this island.
 * Drunken sailors... what's noteworthy about that?

"In 1994 or 1995, the U.S. Coast guard Cutter Jarvis (WHEC-725) docked at Amchitka Island for a day of liberty. The ship's crew was served numerous cases of beer. Many crew members drank more than their allotted 2 beers per person and became intoxicated. These crew members proceeded to do a lot of damage to the abandoned Naval Base. Runway lights were vandalized as were several abandoned barracks. Vehicles left behind on the Island were 'hot-wired' and wrecked by drunken Jarvis crewmembers. Several bottles of alcohol were found, apparently left on the island by former personnel. (More likely these bottles of alcohol had been brought by the Jarvis crewmembers and passed off as having been “found.”) The entire incident was of great embarassment to the Unted States Coast Guard and especially the commanding officer of the USCGC Jarvis."

--Kbh3rd talk 19:32, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Mile-wide crater?
The article states that after the Cannikin shot: "Subsidence and faulting at the site created a new lake, over a mile wide."

No such subsidence crater or lake is visible on Google Maps images. Given that the width of the entire island at the Cannikin site is about 1 mile, it is inconceivable that such a crater or lake would not be evident, indeed, obvious, on Amchitka.

NGPurves (talk) 06:43, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I was the Resident Officer in Charge on Amchitka 1990-1994 and I can assure you that Lake Cannikan did exist and it was about a mile long. I understand that the Energy Department came to the island in about 2000 and did some work around the lake, including possibly re-grading the area. When I look at Goog;e earth it looks like it has disappeared, at least from my memory of its location. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.251.178.22 (talk) 20:10, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

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Total bomb yield
What was the total yield of the bombs dropped on Amchitka? - Poydoo (talk) 16:52, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

FA concerns
This article has not been formally reviewed since its promotion in 2006 and I am concerned that it does not meet the featured article criteria anymore. Some of my concerns are outlined below: Is anyone interested in helping to bring this article back to FA standards? Z1720 (talk) 02:19, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The article contains lots of very short paragraphs. I think the prose needs to be reformatted.
 * The history section contains many gaps, with pre-WWII information being scarce and no information about the island post-1993.
 * Many citations are just links to the US census (refs 24 & 25).
 * Some citations do not give the specific page number to verify the information.