Kainan Bay is an iceport

Iceport

An iceport is a a more-or-less permanent indentation in the front of an ice shelf, that can serve as a natural ice harbor. Though useful, they are not always reliable, as calving of surrounding ice shelves can render an iceport temporarily unstable and unusable.-Historical and present use of...

 which indents the front of Ross Ice Shelf

Ross Ice Shelf

The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica . It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 km long, and between 15 and 50 metres high above the water surface...

 about 37 miles NE of the NW end of Roosevelt Island

Roosevelt Island, Antarctica

Roosevelt Island is an ice-covered island, about long in a NW-SE direction, wide and about in area, lying in the eastern part of the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica...

. Discovered in January 1902 by the British National Antarctic Expedition (BrNAE) under Robert Falcon Scott

Robert Falcon Scott

Captain Robert Falcon Scott, CVO was a Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, and the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–13...

. It was named by the Japanese expedition under Lieutenant Nobu Shirase which, in January 1912, effected a landing on the ice shelf here from the ship Kainan Maru. Operation Deep Freeze

Operation Deep Freeze

Operation Deep Freeze is the codename for a series of United States missions to Antarctica, beginning with "Operation Deep Freeze I" in 1955–56, followed by "Operation Deep Freeze II", "Operation Deep Freeze III", and so on...

, 1955–56, was established at this site in late December 1955.