Okino Torishima (沖ノ鳥島), formerly called Parece Vela (Spanish for "it looks like a sail") is the southernmost island of Japan, at 22°49′ N 136°07′ E, 1 740 km south of Tokyo, or 534 km Southeast of Oki Daito, the closest Japanese island, or 567 km WSE of Minami Iōjima, the closest of the Ogasawara Islands, to which it administratively belongs. The Japanese meaning of the name is "remote bird island". It is second most remote island of Japan, after Minami Torishima. It consists of three tiny individual islets: The modern skyline of Tokyo is highly decentralized. ... Daito Islands (大東諸島 Daitō Shotō) are three eastern islands of Okinawa Islands. ... The Ogasawara Islands (小笠原諸島) are an archipelago of over 30 subtropical islands some 1000 km directly south of central Tokyo, Japan. ... Minami Torishima (南鳥島) or Marcus Island is a small isolated island in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, located at 24°18′ N 153°58′ E. It is only 1. ... This page is a candidate to be moved to Wiktionary. ...

• Higashikojima (東小島, "Eastern Islet", area 1.6 m²)
• Kitakojima (北小島, "Northern Islet", nevertheless rather in the West, area 6.4 m²)
• Minamikojima (南小島, "Southern Islet", an artificial islet)

The islets, which rise only 0.1 to 0.2 m above high tide, are in the western part of a lagoon that is surrounded by an atoll-like submerged coral reef, over which the waves break, and that extends 4.6 km East-West and 1.7 km North-South, with an area of roughly 5 km² within the rim of the reef. A fourth, even smaller rock is located at the eastern end of the lagoon. There is an entrance into the lagoon from the south. A lagoon is a body of comparatively shallow salt water separated from the deeper sea by a shallow or exposed sandbank, coral reef, or similar feature. ... Fanning Atoll (Tabuaeran) is a typical, small to moderate-sized atoll located in the central Pacific Ocean. ... Orders see Anthozoa Corals are gastrovascular marine cnidarians (phylum Cnidaria; class Anthozoa) existing as small sea anemone-like polyps, typically forming colonies of many individuals. ... A reef surrounding an islet. ...

The status as an island (instead of an uninhabitable rock) under International Law is debated by China and other nations, since it would give Japan a huge Exclusive Economic Zone around it, with an area of more than 430 000 km². This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... In international maritime law, an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is a seazone extending from a states coast over which the state has special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources. ...

In order to prevent the island from submersion caused by erosion, an embankment building project was launched in 1987, and Higashikojima and Kitakojima were surrounded by concrete. Currently, Japan carries out research and observation of the island, as well as repair work on the embankment of the islets. A platform on stilts, with a helicopter landing pad has been erected in a shallow part of the lagoon between Higashikojima and Minamikojima. In mathematics, a differentiable map f from an m-manifold M to an n-manifold N is called a submersion if its differential df is an onto map at every point p of M: rk df(p) = dim N. Examples include the projections in smooth vector bundles; and more general... Look up Erosion in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Severe soil erosion in a wheat field near Washington State University, USA. Erosion is the displacement of solids (soil, mud, rock, and so forth) by the agents of wind, water, ice, movement in response to gravity, or living organisms (in the case... 1987 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... † See also Avocet The stilts are waders in the same bird family as the Avocets. ... A helicopter is an aircraft which is lifted and propelled by one or more large horizontal rotors (propellers). ...

Administratively, the island is considered part of Ogasawara village, Tokyo. In 1939, the construction of a Naval Base was started by Japan, but suspended in 1941, at the start of the World War II hostilities in the Pacific. The Ogasawara Islands (小笠原諸島) are an archipelago of over 30 subtropical islands some 1000 km directly south of central Tokyo, Japan. ... The modern skyline of Tokyo is highly decentralized. ... 1939 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1941 was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons like the atom bomb. ... there is no such thing as a southern ocean. ...

External Link

• Italian page with history in English and photograph of Okino Torishima
• page with photograph of platform
• Political background