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This photo, of reconstruction under way on Tinian Island, a US commonwealth in the western Pacific Ocean, was released by the US Air Force on September 30. The military says the current status of Tinian’s historic North Field airfield is “considered confidential information,” but two locals RFE/RL spoke to by telephone confirmed work is under way to rebuild the air base. “They’re still stripping the airfields,” one local hotelier on the small Pacific island said on November 6.
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US military engineers building a road on Tinian Island. The rehabilitation of Tinian’s North Field is the latest phase of the small island’s outsized role in military history.
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U.S. Marines after arriving at the Japanese airfield on Tinian Island in July 1944. Tinian was captured from Japanese control in August 1944 as the US battled through the Pacific toward the Japanese mainland in the final phase of World War II.
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Military engineers working on Tinian Island after its capture by US forces in July 1944. The island was a crucial military staging point for American war planners due to its location, putting Japan within range of America’s newest strategic bomber, the B-29.
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Airfields on Tinian Island seen in 1945. After Tinian’s capture, a massive construction campaign began that included laying kilometers of runway made from crushed coral.
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The atomic bomb dubbed “Little Boy” being inspected after assembly on Tinian Island in August 1945. Amid strict secrecy, parts for the first nuclear weapon to be used in combat were separately shipped and flown to Tinian in July 1945 where the bomb was assembled.
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"Little Boy" being loaded aboard the Enola Gay on Tinian Island. The assembled bomb was loaded onto the Enola Gay, a B-29 named after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, on August 5, 1945, from a special pit built into Tinian’s North Airfield. The plane took off for Japan the following morning.
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The aftermath of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima. The "Little Boy" bomb struck Hiroshima with enough explosive power to wipe out around 70 percent of all buildings in the city of 345,000. Tens of thousands of people were killed instantly from the blast.
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A mushroom cloud rises over Nagasaki after the second US nuclear bomb attack on Japan. Soon after the Nagasaki strike on August 9, which was also launched from Tinian, Japan surrendered, bringing World War II to a close.
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Tinian’s North Field photographed in 2017. In 1947, Tinian’s North Field was abandoned and over the following decades was largely reclaimed by the jungle.
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An airfield on Tinian being reconstructed by military engineers in a photo released on September 30. Today, amid tensions between the US and China over Beijing’s threats toward Taiwan, Tinian has been picked as one of several World War II-era military bases to be refurbished as part of a strategy of “force dispersal” in the Pacific.
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A Dongfeng-26D missile being paraded in Beijing in September. China has developed missiles, including the nuclear-capable Dongfeng-26, that are reportedly able to reach Guam, another island in the Pacific close to Tinian where America has large naval and air bases. An array of widely dispersed military sites would enable the US to transfer its air power throughout a network of bases.
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Military engineers restoring infrastructure on Tinian in a photo released on September 30. “Building new is not the way to go and it’s very expensive,” Lieutenant Frank Blaz said in an Air Force video describing the Tinian project to rebuild World War II-era infrastructure. “Repairing and rehabilitating what exists is a much better economic solution.”
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A US Air Force B-52 bomber flanked by fighter jets over Tinian Island in February 2024. The US Air Force says the rebuild of Tinian will give it the "theater posture" to respond to an attack, "anytime, anywhere in the Indo-Pacific." Some $409 million has been earmarked for the reconstruction project.
