sentences:  During World War II, the United States Army Air Forces Air Transport Command used the airport as a refuelling stop on its Pacific transport route from Hawaii to Kanton Island for flights to Australia and New Zealand as well as a staging point for attacks on the Gilbert Islands, then occupied by Japan.The airport was expanded considerably during the war, and the World War II runway configuration can still be seen as abandoned runways and aircraft parking areas in aerial photography.Cassidy International Airport was originally named after a United States Army World War II pilot, Wilbur Layton Casady, whose plane crashed near the island on 23 March 1942.