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Sand Island, Midway Atoll, Pacific Ocean, 1998

Site of a famed World War II battle, the U.S. naval base on Midway is now a peaceful refuge for albatrosses and other wildlife. On June 4, 1942, six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. forces defended Sand Island and smaller Eastern Island from Japanese bombers.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Ghosts and Survivors Return to the Battle of Midway," April 1999, National Geographic magazine)

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Photograph by David Doubilet