The United States Minor Outlying Islands, a statistical designation defined by ISO 3166-1, consists of nine insular United States possessions. Palmyra Atoll is the only incorporated territory of the United States. Currently, none of the islands have any permanent residents. Most recently, the census of population of 1980 gives population figures for three of the islands: Johnston Atoll (327), Midway Atoll (453), and Wake Island (302). The following censuses of 1990 and 2000 only note that there was no indigenous population, which was also true for all previous censuses except that of 1940. The Baker, Howland and Jarvis Colonization Scheme attempted to settle Americans on those three islands beginning in 1935, but all three islands were evacuated in 1942 as a result of World War II.
The islands are grouped together entirely as a statistical convenience. They are not administered collectively, nor do they share a single cultural or political history beyond being currently uninhabited islands under the sovereignty of the United States.
They are collectively represented by the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code UM. The individual islands have ISO 3166-2 numerical codes, see ISO 3166-2:UM. The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) ".um" has historically been assigned to the islands; however, the .um ccTLD was retired in January of 2007.
The term "United States Minor Outlying Islands" was introduced in 1986. From 1974 until 1986, five of the islands (Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Palmyra Atoll and Kingman Reef) were grouped under the term US Miscellaneous Pacific Islands, with ISO 3166 code PU (the code of Midway Atoll was MI, and the code of Johnston Atoll JT). N/A |
