I run a small archive on a little known Pacific atoll (Palmyra), and there are mentions of Japanese bird poachers regularly visiting until WW2. I’ve always been curious how (or if) I could find sources for what the Japanese may have called it or any historical references to its history within Japan. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
Japanese Wikipedia entry of Palmyra Atoll (パルミラ環礁) is just a meh (It is apparently based on the translation of old version of English wikipedia, without almost any mention of possible Japanese visits).
"Islands studies" (translated as "島嶼学"), dealing with the Japanese interaction and integration of the Pacific Islands, has been a really new field of research in Japan, mainly since the last decade of the 20th century.
Shun Ishihara's two socio-historical monographs are now seminal works of this field, but even his scope of research is largely limited to Ogasawara/ Bonin Islands and volcano islands (Iwo Jima Islands), and his fruit of research has apparently been little known out of Japan/ in English.
Anyway, the following are the links to his books (in Japanese) in National Library [of Australia......]:
On the other hand, David Chapman writes The Bonin Islanders, 1830 to the Present: Narrating Japanese Nationality, n. p.: Lexinton Books, 2016 in English, so you might be able to something interesting by checking this book.
The following online articles in English are introduction of the history of Ogasawara/ Bonin Islands respectively by Chapman and by Ishihara, but neither of them allude to Pacific Islands beyond the volcano Islands:
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[Added]: OK, I also identified another monograph (of course in Japanese......) on the Japanese bird poachers' activity in the Pacific Islands, called Albatross and the Imperial Japan, Akashi Shoten, 2012 (『アホウドリと帝国』（明石書店，2012年））(linked to the publisher's official site in Japanese), authored by Akitoshi HIRAOKA. Its part II mentions the "albatross (poachers' rush" on the Hawaii and their neighboring Islands.