Before the construction of Haneda, the area was a prosperous resort centered around Anamori Inari Shrine, and Tokyo's primary airport was Tachikawa Airfield. It was the main operating base of Japan Air Transport, then the country's flag carrier. But as it was a military base and 35 kilometres (22 mi) away from central Tokyo, aviators in Tokyo used various beaches of Tokyo Bay as airstrips, including beaches near the current site of Haneda (Haneda was a town located on Tokyo Bay, which merged into the Tokyo ward of Kamata in 1932). In 1930, the Japanese postal ministry purchased a 53-hectare (130-acre) portion of reclaimed land from a private individual to construct an airport. Haneda Airfield (?????, Haneda Hik?j?) first opened in 1931 on a small piece of reclaimed land at the west end of today's airport complex. A 300-metre (980 ft) concrete runway, a small airport terminal, and 2 hangars were constructed. The first flight from the airport on 25 August 1931, carried a load of insects to Dairen in the Kwantung Leased Territory (now part of China). During the 1930s, Haneda handled flights to destinations in Japan mainland, Taiwan, Korea (both under Japanese rule) and Manchuria (ruled as the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo). The major Japanese newspapers also built their first flight departments at Haneda during this time, and Manchukuo National Airways began service between Haneda and Hsingking, the capital of Manchukuo. JAT was renamed Imperial Japanese Airways following its nationalization in 1938. Passenger and freight traffic grew dramatically in these early years. In 1939, Haneda's first runway was extended to 800 metres (2,600 ft) in length, and a second 800-metre (2,600 ft) runway was completed. The airport's size grew to 72.8 hectares (180 acres) using land purchased by the postal ministry from a nearby exercise ground. During World War II, both the IJA and Haneda Airport shifted to almost exclusively military transport services. Haneda Airport was also used by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service for flight training during the war. In the late 1930s, the Tokyo government planned a new Tokyo Municipal Airport on an artificial island in Koto Ward. At 251 hectares (620 acres), the airport would have been five times the size of Haneda at the time, and significantly larger than Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, which was said to be the largest airport in the world at the time. The airport plan was finalized in 1938, and work on the island began in 1939, with completion scheduled for 1941. However, the project fell behind schedule due to resource constraints during World War II. This plan was officially abandoned following the war, as the Allied occupation authorities favored expanding Haneda rather than building a new airport; the island was later expanded by dumping garbage into the bay, and is now known as Yumenoshima. On 12 September 1945, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers and head of the Occupation of Japan following World War II, ordered that Haneda be handed over to the occupation forces. On the following day, he took delivery of the airport, which was renamed Haneda Army Air Base, and ordered the eviction of many nearby residents to make room for various construction projects, including extending one runway to 1,650 metres (5,413 ft) and the other to 2,100 metres (6,890 ft). On the 21st, Anamori Inari Shrine and over 3,000 residents received orders to leave their homes within 48 hours. Many were resettled on the other side of a river in the Haneda district of Ota, surrounding Anamoriinari Station, and some still live in the area today. The expansion work commenced in October 1945 and was completed in June 1946, at which point the airport covered 257.4 hectares (636 acres). Haneda AAF was designated as a port of entry to Japan. Haneda was mainly a military and civilian transportation base used by the U.S.