Six Months In The South Seas
- lloydgretton
- Jul 13, 2024
- 47 min read
Updated: Mar 24
I Was Born On A Coral Atoll
Merriam-Webster
“ATOLL DEFINITION & MEANING
Synonyms of atoll: a coral island consisting of a reef surrounding a lagoon.”
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“An atoll is a ring-shaped coral atoll or reef that surrounds a lagoon. Atolls are found in tropical and subtropical oceans, and are made up of coral that grows around the top of an underwater volcano.”
Tarawa Atoll is in the Republic of Kiribati. Before its independence in 1979, Kiribati was the British Colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands. I was born in Tarawa in the Gilberts in 1953, the son of the New Zealand headteacher of King George V boarding school. My family and I left the Gilberts in 1955. Never to return, until my planned return in 20025, seventy years later.
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"The first colonisation of Tarawa was via coconuts. Coconuts are natural travellers. They float and survive journeys across the ocean. Seafarers, settlers and birds carry coconuts as a source of food and water, planting them on the islands they settle.
Once a coconut washes up on a beach, it can take root in the sandy soil, which may be the right conditions for it to grow into a coconut tree. These trees thrive in tropical conditions, making Tarawa an ideal environment for them to flourish.
The first human beings to reach Tarawa were part of the great Austronesian migration. These seafaring people originated from Southeast Asia and spread across the Pacific Ocean, settling on various islands. They used sophisticated navigation techniques, relying on stars, ocean currents, and wind patterns to guide their voyages.
Tarawa itself was likely settled around 1,000 years ago, with the Gilbertese people being the indigenous inhabitants. Their remarkable navigational skills and deep understanding of the ocean allowed them to establish communities on these remote islands.
Kiribati is in Micronesia, in the western Pacific Ocean. The term "Micronesia" comes from the Greek words "mikros," meaning small, and "nesos," meaning islands.
Kiribati is an island nation in the central Pacific Ocean. It consists of 33 atolls and reef islands, spread over a vast area near the equator. Kiribati is situated to the northeast of Australia, with its islands dispersed across both the eastern and western hemispheres, making it the only country that crosses all four hemispheres.
The people of Kiribati have their own unique heritage and identity, shaped by their history and geography.
When the Gilbertese people were first encountered by Europeans, the reports mainly focused on exploration and mapping of the islands. Early European visitors documented their voyages and the atolls and islands they sighted.
The first detailed written accounts came from missionaries in the 19th century. Missionaries played significant roles in documenting the culture, language, and daily life of the Gilbertese people. These early reports were often aimed at religion and colonisation with a focus on translating religious texts and creating educational materials.
It wasn't until the early 20th century that more comprehensive cultural documentation began, thanks to the efforts of missionaries who recorded the rich oral traditions and myths of the Gilbertese people."
Nareau, often referred to as "Narau the Wise," is the origin story in the mythology of Kiribati. He is the creator deity who fashioned the world from the body parts of primeval beings. According to the myth, Nareau created the sun, moon, stars, and land from these beings, bringing the world into existence.
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"The Gilbert Islands are sixteen coral atolls in that part of the Pacific known as Micronesia (the region of “small islands”). Lying across the equator, they form the middle of a long chain which includes the Marshall Islands to the northwest and the Ellice Islands to the southeast. They are typical atolls, with few notable features: 'the low horizon, the expanse of the lagoon, the sedge-like rim of palm-tops, the sameness and smallness of the land, the hugely superior size and interest of sea and sky' (Stevenson 1891). Natural resources are extremely limited, and before European contact, materials for the manufacture of objects for daily living came largely from the pandanus and the coconut palm, and from the sea.
After Spanish sightings in 1537 and 1606, most of the islands in the group were discovered by Europeans between 1765 and 1824, the last two being reported by whalers in 1826.
Admiral Pedro Fernández de Quirós was a Portuguese navigator sailing under the Spanish flag. He sighted the islands in 1606 during his expedition to the South Pacific.
He named some of the islands in the Gilberts during his 1606 expedition. He named Butaritari Atoll as Buen Viaje (meaning "Good Journey").
The first recorded sighting of Tarawa was by the British mariner Captain Thomas Gilbert who sighted Tarawa in 1788.
Captain Gilbert is best known for his role in the First Fleet, which was the group of ships that carried convicts from Britain to Australia in 1788. Gilbert was the captain of the Charlotte, one of the ships in the fleet. During the voyage, Gilbert and his crew sailed through the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands were later named after him, and the modern country of Kiribati takes its name from his surname pronounced in the Gilbertese language.
"Exploitation of 'on-the-line' (i.e. equatorial) whaling grounds began in the 1820s, and at that point “the isolation of the Central Pacific Islands was effectively ended: from being the least known region of the ocean, with a sail in sight scarce once in a decade, it became almost overnight the most frequented of all, visited each year by several hundred vessels."
"Traders sought bêche-de-mer (an edible sea-slug, used as a luxury food in China) and turtle-shell in the Gilberts in the 1830s, and a profitable trade in coconut oil got under way by the mid-1840s. There were beachcombers and castaways living on various islands of the group by 1835, and Protestant missionaries arrived from Hawaii in 1852. The recruiting of labor from the Gilberts began in earnest in the 1860s. In the early 1870s, the major export changed from coconut oil to copra (dried coconut meat from which oil is extracted)."
Adria Holmes Katz 1996 .
Captain E.H.M. Davis proclaimed the Gilberts a British protectorate in 1892
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"Early European visitors often described the Gilbertese as a seafaring people with a rich oral tradition, skilled in navigation and fishing. They noted the importance of community and family ties, as well as the traditional customs and ceremonies that were integral to their way of life.
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands became a British colony on January 12,1916. The colony continued until 1976, when the Gilbert Islands and the Ellice Islands, separated into two different entities. The Gilbert Islands later became part of the Republic of Kiribati.
Reverend Hiram Bingham II, was a missionary and linguist who focused on translating the Bible into Gilbertese (the language spoken in the Gilbert Islands, now known as Kiribati)1. His work was instrumental in spreading Christianity and education in the region
King George V School (KGV) was a government high school for boys in the Gilbert Islands, which are now part of Kiribati. It was established in 1922 in Bairiki, South Tarawa, and later moved to Bikenibeu, South Tarawa in 1953. The school served as a boarding school and played a significant role in training future government workers and teachers.
Throughout its history, KGV was known for its notable alumni, many of whom contributed to the independence movement of Kiribati.
The 1950s were a significant decade for the Gilbert Islands, now part of the Republic of Kiribati. The Gilbert Islands were part of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony during this time. Its economy was primarily based on subsistence agriculture, fishing, and the export of copra (dried coconut meat). Phosphate mining on Ocean Island (now Banaba) also played a significant role in the region's economy. Despite the challenges of resettlement and colonial rule, the Gilbertese people worked to preserve their cultural heritage, including traditional dances, songs, and community structures like the maneaba (large meeting houses).
Michael Louis Bernacchi was the Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands from 1952 to 1961. He was a British colonial administrator and also served as a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy. Before his role in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, he was involved in the Colonial Office in British Malaya during the Malayan Emergency."
In 1953 my father, mother and my brother departed from New Zealand by a steamer tramp boat to the Gilbert Islands. In that same year, October 31 Halloween Day, I was born. The circumstances of my conception remain a mystery. Was I conceived on the steamer? I had always known my late parents as very cautious and responsible people. 1953 predated the hippy era. My grandmother once said to me, “Your mother used to get into such trouble. Having a baby in those conditions in the Gilbert Islands.” I once asked my father. “What did you think you were doing, having a baby in those conditions?” My father answered cryptically, “It wasn’t my idea.” There seems to be a family secret that in isolated moments emerges to my hearing. My parents and I were having a restaurant meal with old friends. The atmosphere was wine infused and congenial. I said to our old friends. “Mum and Dad always eventually tell me everything.” Mr Spencer said. “There is one thing your parents will never tell you.” We all laughed good humouredly. I took that to mean my conception. Maybe it was just a throwaway remark. But raising one’s conception is not table etiquette for pious Christians nor normally known about even often by the parents.
I have always been the odd one out in my family. I only slightly resemble my four siblings. I did not grow up resembling my father. In late life, I have a resemblance, both being old Jews. My mother has always had an infatuation with Jews. She married one after all. My mother sometimes told me I was Polish Jewish. She never said that about any other of my family. When I would ask more about my Polish heritage, she would immediately clam up. Nor have they ever taken further my profession of interest in my Scottish ancestry. My mother once asked me, “Where is my husband?” This might be considered my paranoia or over fervent imagination. But there is one incident hard to explain except for a family secret. My mother was once joking about my father’s English family. My father overheard and objected. To pacify a family quarrel, I said innocently,”They are also my family.” My mother went silent and very red. In surprise I repeated those words. That drew the same conspiratorial response from my mother. I thought nothing about that at the time but I was expecting my mother to say. “Yes as Lloyd said, They are his family too.”
What I have written here, dear reader is unedited before my DNA test. Did my mother look sideways at a seagull? I will announce the result of my DNA test before my departure to Kiribati in 2025. This visit will be exactly seventy years after my departure from Tarawa, the Gilbert Islands.
There are other cryptic hints from my parents. But I won’t divulge them. I find them troubling but this is not an Oedipus nor Portnoy’s Complaint story
My father had been appointed the head teacher of the King George V high school in Tarawa. This school was the first high school in the Gilbert Islands and is very prestigious in Kiribati history. The political leadership of Kiribati has been mostly drawn from it. My father had previously been a sole charge teacher in Taranaki New Zealand. He was thirty five years old. My mother was a housewife. She was twenty six years old. My brother was four years old.
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony was known to the insiders of its administration as The Gilbert and Sullivan Islands. Its bureaucracy that mirrored British colonies in their vast domains was confined to one islet in Tarawa. That was called unofficially God’s Little Acre in reference to its Resident Commissioner Michael Bernacchi.
All my youth I heard Dad’s references to “old Bernacchi” as the quintessential bumbling British senior official. My father’s favourite story was when a boat skippered by Bernacchi capsized. Bernacchi said to his pilot. ‘You fool. When I said go left, I meant go right.” He was standing opposite his pilot.
Another chuckling story of my father’s was when Bernacchi took on the encroaching American navy to assert British sovereignty.
My father had the easy contempt of New Zealanders for the British senior ranks, in particular their sycophancy and lack of much practical initiative. However Bernacchi ran a tight effective regime. Showing the British flag got the desired result against the Yankees. The colony was a benign autocracy that ran without scandals and little fuss.
My father was too busy and cautious running a high school to give time to publicly reflect about the colony. My mother, however confined to leisure having handed me over to a nursemaid Monica, gave much vent in her diary about her dislike of the British colonial rule in the Gilberts. Bernacchi’s educational policies were to train the Gilbertese elite for professional careers in the colonial service. Independence before the 1956 Suez crisis was not even a tremble on the colonial officers’ lips. My father quoted colonial officers’ saying the Gilbertese could not run a hen house. The Gilbertese kept poultry as an important part of their diet and culture. My mother railed against confining the youth male elite in a boarding school instead of a native practical education in their villages. The students studying English literary classics got her scorn. My mother was a romantic for the South Sea islands. She considered it all an imposition on a people who had successfully built their own governance and economy.
Monica was fifteen years old. After a few days of nursemaiding, she disappeared. My mother, unperturbed, put out a notice for a new nursemaid. The next day, there was a knock on the door. There was Monica, tears streaming down her face, and her entire village gathered behind her. A village elder said solemnly. “Monica, she very sad. She wants to be with Lloyd.”
That was a repeated family joke. In that far off era, we never thought the village elder was ahead of us. He was bilingual. We were monolingual.
Back in New Zealand she read out in the newspaper the Gilbertese plans for their new independence in the 1980s. International aid was paramount. A shipping company was going to teach the Gilbertese how to fish. Both she and my father burst out laughing.
On October 31 2010, My father emailed me from New Zealand to China.
“It doesn’t seem 56 years ago that Tatup and I set off in the dark across the lagoon with our bikes on the outrigger of our canoe.
We had a boy climb to the top of a coconut tree and hang a kerosene lamp there to guide us across the lagoon to the hospital island where you were about to appear, which you did at 5.30 next morning.”
In 1954, my father got Sabbatical Leave. My parents, my brother and I took a tramp steamer back to New Zealand. I cried and cried. They concluded I was too hot. So they put an ice cube on my forehead. I licked the trickling water. They now realised I was perishing from dehydration.
In the Gilberts, my Monica used to take me during the day to her islet. She would lie me in the shade and spend the day with her family. I did not acquire any language. Instead in the night, I would cry out bow wow. I was being reared as a wolf boy. Back in New Zealand I spoke no language until I was four years old. Now I would be sent to medical specialists and possibly develop a stutter. But in that era, children were left to themselves. Instead, I startled my father by suddenly saying. “Gee Dad, dass is cold. I wish I had my dumboots.” I insist I remember the event and wondered what the fuss was all about. I have never stopped learnedly talking since.
While this is a fascinating story on child development, there was neurological damage. Except for a savant skill in long term memory and conceptual thinking, I have asperger syndrome and am maladroit.
In 2005, I nearly caused an incident in Los Angeles international airport. I slowly pulled out of my pocket a docket. The property warden panicked. Later when my passport was stamped, the Customs officer narrated to me the American invasion of Tarawa during World War Two. The moon setting over the lagoon while the marines slaughtered the Japanese soldiers.
Did Irish coconut eaters stowaway in the Gilbert Islands in the sixth century A.D. ?
Wikipedia - "Kiribati has been inhabited by Austronesian peoples speaking the same Oceanic language, from north to south, including the southernmost Nui, since sometime between 3000 BC and 1300 AD.The area was not completely isolated; later, voyagers from Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji introduced some Polynesian and Melanesian cultural aspects, respectively. Intermarriage and intense navigation between the islands tended to blur cultural differences and resulted in a significant degree of cultural homogenization. Local oral historians chiefly in the form of lore keepers suggest that the area was first inhabited by a group of seafaring people from Melanesia, who were described as being dark-skinned, frizzy-haired, and short in stature. These indigenous peoples were then visited by early Austronesian seafarers from the west, a place called Matang, orally described as being tall and fair-skinned. Eventually, both groups intermittently clashed and intermingled until they slowly became a uniform population.
Around AD 1300, a mass departure occurred from Samoa leading to the addition of Polynesian ancestry into the mix of most Gilbertese people. These Samoans later brought strong features of Polynesian languages and culture, creating clans based on their own Samoan traditions and slowly intertwining with the indigenous clans and powers already dominant in Kiribati. Around the 15th century, starkly contrasting systems of governance arose between the northern islands, primarily under chiefly rule (uea), and the central and southern islands, primarily under the rule of their council of elders (unimwaane). Tabiteuea could be an exception as the sole island that is known as maintaining a traditional egalitarian society. The name Tabiteuea stems from the root phrase Tabu-te-Uea, meaning "chiefs are forbidden". Civil war soon became a factor, with acquisition of land being the main form of conquest. Clans and chiefs began fighting over resources, stimulated by hatred and reignited blood feuds, which had their origins months, years, or even decades before.
The turmoil lasted well into the European visitation and colonial era, which led to certain islands decimating their foes with the help of guns and cannon-equipped ships that Europeans provided to some I-Kiribati leaders. The typical military arms of the I-Kiribati at this time were shark tooth-embedded wooden spears, knives, and swords, and garbs of armour fashioned from dense coconut fibre. They chiefly used these instead of the gunpowder and weapons of steel available at the time, because of the strong sentimental value of the equipment handed down through generations. Ranged weapons, such as bows, slings, and javelins, were seldom used; hand-to-hand combat was a prominent skill still practised today, though seldom mentioned because of various taboos associated with it, secrecy being the primary one. Abemama's High Chief Tembinok' was the last of the dozens of expansionist chiefs of Gilbert Islands of this period, despite Abemama historically conforming to the traditional southern islands' governance of their respective unimwaane. He was immortalised in Robert Louis Stevenson's book In the South Seas, which delved into the high chief's character and method of rule during Stevenson's stay in Abemama. The 90th anniversary of his arrival in the Gilbert Islands was chosen to celebrate the independence of Kiribati on 12 July 1979."
Sir Arthur Grimble was a British official in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands from 1916 to 1933. To his great regret, he missed military service in World War One. He was a nice chap and a scholar. His linguistic and ethnographic studies brought the Gilbert Islands to world attention. He translated the Gilbertese beautiful sentimental songs.
"Small is the life of a man
(Not too sad, not too happy):
I shall find my songs in a man's small life. Behold them soaring
Very low on earth are the frigate- birds hatched,
Yet they soar as hight as the sun."
In his memoir A Pattern of Islands, Arthur wrote. " The loving kindness of the Banabans, in common with the whole Gilbertese race, towards Europeans sprang from a most gracious sense of kinship. Their chief ancestral heroes had been, according to tradition, fair-skinned like ourselves. These heroic beings, sprung from the branches and roots of a single ancestral tree, were of the red-complexioned, blue-eyed strain called "The Company of the Tree, the Breed of Matang', from which the race claimed descent in the male line. The Land of Matang, where they dwelt eternally, was the land of heart's desire, the original fatherland, the paradise sweeter than all the other paradises, never to be found again by the children of men. Sometimes its forests and mountains might be glimpsed in dreams, but when the dreamer strove to land upon its smiling shores, they faded away before him and he was alone on the empty waters. Yet, though Matang was lost forever, a cherished tradition said that Au of the Rising Sun, (the chief ancestral hero) promised to return to his children one day wherever they might be, with all the heroic Company of Matang around him. So when white men were first seen in the Gilbert islands nearly two hundred year ago, the people said ( I quote words of old Tearia of Tabiang, which themselves had become traditional)< 'Behold the Breed of Matang is returned to us. The folks are also of the Company of the Tree. Let us receive them as chiefs and brothers among us, lest the Ancestors be shamed.' Europeans have been called I-Matang -Inhabitants of Matang- ever since, and treated always, whatever their faults with the proud brotherliness due to kinsmen.
"Movement of Clouds, the little girl of Tabiang had a grandmother, Nei Tearia, renowned for her authority as a teller of histories. When I had known her for about a year, she told me the myth of man's expulsion from the Happy Land of Matang. Fifteen years later, when she was well over seventy, I took the script back to her for checking. She repeated the story at that second sitting word for word as she had given it before and I complimented her on the feat. Her austere face was lit by a smile, but she replied soberly, 'Sir, and shall it be otherwise? Each karaki (history) has its own body from the generations of old. These are the words of our grandfathers' fathers, and thus we pass them on to our children's children. How should I change the words that my grandfather gave me as the contents of my mouth?'
"Her story of the expulsion from Matang is the myth of a dread being called Nakaa the Judge, the keeper of the gate of death, the law-giver, whose sentence of old drove men forth from the Happy Land and first brought death among them. It is in parts, astonishingly like the tale of man's fall in Eden; but the grandfather from whom she had it was never Christianised , and for the rest, I found its main elements widely enough known among pagans up and down the Gilbert group to put its native purity beyond doubt. Its moral teaching and the competition of Nakaa as a judge were basic to the ancestor-cult of the Gilbertese theogony.
"The god-like beings who sprang with Au of the Rising Sun from the branches and roots of the Tree of Matang were democratic deities; there was no competition for supremacy among them. But this had not always been so. Far back in the history of the Gilbertese forefathers, Au had been the head of a theocracy.
"Traces of the sun-god's former glory were still easy to see in my day. His clan enjoyed sacred privileges of every ceremony held in the community speak-house called the Maneaba. Under the shade of that roof, the first portion of every communal feast, the firt word and the last word in every debate, belonged to its members. Although, in ordinary life, the men of Royal Karongoa might be reduced anywhere, by the accidents of faction warfare to a state of indigence and even bondage, custom still preserved their ritual pre-eminence intact within the precincts of their own maneaba .
"The picture reflected from these stubborn remnants of power outworn, backed by the proud name of ths clan, is that of a caste of royal priests who enjoyed secret privileges and dictated final wisdom in whispers from before an altar-stone in the temple of a sun god named Au.
"In Matang of old dwelt Nakaa the Judge, and he had lordship over all the people. The spirits of Matang also bowed before him for they feared to look into his eyes. But no land ever seen by man was as beautiful as that land. It was great, it was high: many were its mountains; all manner of trees were there, and rivers of fresh water. The trees were heavy with fruit; there were lakes also with abundance of fish. No hunger, no thirst were in that place, never an ill wind visited it, and the people knew not of death.
"Nakaa planted two pandamus trees, there, very wide and tall. One tree stood in the north, the other in the south. He said, 'The men shall be gathered under the tree in the north and the women shall be gathered under the tree in the south.' And so it was; the men turned north, the women turned south; each company turned away from its own happiness; and there was neither death nor grey hair among them.
"But there came a day when Nakaa was to go on a journey. He gathered the men and the women together in the midst between the trees, and behold! they looked at each other's bodies.
"And Nakaa said to all of them,'I go on a journey. See that ye turn away from each other when I am gone, the men to north, the women to south.' He said again, 'There is a mark that I shall know when I return, if perchance the men play together with the women.' Those three commands spake Nakaa before he went on his journey.
"And after that, time was not long ere Nakaa returned. He lifted the hairs of their heads with his fingers, he searched here, he searched there; and alas! he found his mark upon them; he saw grey hairs among the black, and he knew they had not hearkened to his word. He said, 'Ye have played together under the women's tree' and the people answered nothing.
"And Nakaa said again, 'because ye could not hearken to my word, ye shall leave the land of Matang for ever.'
"Alas there is no return to the shores of Matang, no, not even in dreams. But Au of the Rising Sun will return to us one day with his Company of Matang, for this he has promised. And the gate of Nakaa is not shut for us when we die, for if we obey his words it will open before us. And there we shall be gathered with them for ever." Text abridged.
So who were the I-Matang before recorded history? Stories of "red-complexioned, blue eyed" peoples proliferate throughout the south seas. In New Zealand, the Maori called them the Patupaiarehe. To this day, Maori with red complexions claim to be descended from the Patupaiarehe. Their culture and language was made extinct by the war-like Maoris. But artefacts survive in New Zealand that are pre modern but not of Maori designs.
In Our Islands' Stories that is available in this blog, I wrote a scenario.
"Evidence for pre Maori settlement
"These Maori legends have brought about much alternate scholarly speculation the Patupaiarehe were of Celtic descent who arrived in New Zealand 3000 years ago. If one tries to examine this more realistically when did Celtic populations acquire maritime skills that might in a pre Abel Tasman era have got them to New Zealand? I would suggest via the Irish currachin in the sixth century A.D. The curragh was made of a wicker-work frame covered with hides which were stitched together with throngs. By the sixth century, Ireland was converted to Christianity and there were thriving monasteries and scripture study. Saint Brendan in the early sixth century is legendary for his Irish voyage with fellow monks to the Isle of the Blessed in a currach. In recent history, theories arose that these Irish monks were the first Europeans to reach the Americas. An adventurer Tim Severin in the 1970s demonstrated that it is possible for a currah to reach North America from Ireland.
"Could a sixth century currach sail from Ireland in the sixth century to New Zealand? If its seafarers were determined, skilled and lucky enough over a period of years, I suppose they might. In 2013, an Irish couple completed a 15,000 miles sailing expedition from New Zealand to Ireland in a five foot cruising yacht.
"What reason would motivate a curragh voyage to New Zealand in the sixth century? To take part in a sea voyage without hope of return. Did something of an environmental nature happen in that century for such a drastic undertaking and who might have done so? In 2018, a medieval scholar Michael M McCormick nominated 536 as “the worst year to be alive” because of the extreme weather events caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland early in the year, causing, average temperatures in Europe and China to decline and resulting in crop failures and famine for well over a year. This was the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. The Chronicle of Ireland, ecclesiastical records of Irish events from 432-911 AD, record “a failure of bread from the years 536-539”. The Icelandic volcanic eruption spread ash across the Northern Hemisphere, blocking out the sunlight for over a year. ‘For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote the contemporary Byzantine historian Procopius. The world endured a decade of famine and the Plague of Justinian, the Byzantine Emperor. In Ireland without bread, where was there to go except as in Ireland thirteen hundred years later, out to the ocean? Did a flotilla of curragh led by a millenarian prophet embark to find the Isle of the Blessed? Saint Brendan was in his eighties when he sailed to the Isle. That was the 560s. However Saint Brendan’s voyage was not the first voyage to the Isle of the Bless. Another Saint had done the voyage and told him about it. Saint Brendan’s curragh was in the tradition filled with eighteen monks. So half a dozen curraghs would make up about over a hundred men, women and children refugees. The curragh seafarers were simple fishermen. Only their prophet might have been literate in Latin. His followers knew weaving for their fish netting and their boats. Some were skilled in metal work for their tools. Metal weapons they did not know, having always relied on their Irish Lords and Abbots to protect them. But they were well versed in sailing, fishing and singing Christian psalms in Gaelic. They sing them accompanied with the Irish bagpipes.
"In the original tenth century manuscript of the Voyage of Saint Brendan, it is recorded thus.” Brendan and his companions, using iron implements prepared a light vessel, with wicker sides and ribs such as is usually made in that country, and covered it with cowhide, tanned in oak bark, tarring the joins hereof, and put on board provisions for forty days, with butter enough to dress hides for covering the boat and all utensils need for the use of the crew.” This report does not mention a sail. Later the report mentions that with breeze a sail was employed. Otherwise under the commands of their Saint, the monks heaved with the oars.
"They sailed looking for the Isle of the Blessed. But every land they encountered was occupied and the sun remained gloomy. Darkness still settled over the world as at the beginning of Genesis. It seemed this was end times as prophesied in the Book of Revelation. They sailed around Cape Horn. As they sailed out into the Pacific, they took with them sturdy roots of the kumara and rats. They learnt in their longest voyages to catch rainwater, and drink their urine, and eat fish, rats and semen as fresh food. Then when they were in near complete despair, and the winds were driving them back down into a chilly environment, they sighted a bountiful land empty of people and even of large animals. At the same time as they landed, the sun began to regain its lustre and light returned to the earth. Their prophet announced a miracle. They embarked and sang their Christian psalms to the accompaniment of their pipes. Here, announced their prophet would be their Canaan, their land not of milk and honey but of teeming bird life, rich vegetation and its seas filled with marine life. They built their huts and their stockades. Their smiths fashioned out of fire their tools. Weapons they did not make. There seemed to be no human enemies and their prophet had taught them to live in peace as like their Irish Saints. They took their currachin out to fish in the sea and the rivers and streams. They were master fishermen. The birds were so plentiful and tame they could kill with stones, wooden implements and traps. They planted their kumara and learnt to eat the edible vegetation. They found out many plump birds could not fly. One flightless bird was larger than a man. As pilgrims, they had traded with the peoples they had encountered but had never fought with, enslaved nor raped them. When they were threatened, they promptly took to their boats and the ocean. Their encountered peoples they traded with their fish and their kumara roots. But their metal implements they never traded. Their prophet made them take a vow to always hide them from the native peoples and to never let them see their manufacturing. If the natives acquired these implements and learnt how to manufacture them, they would be exterminated, said their prophet. They also vowed not to teach the natives how to weave their boats and nets. This skill would take away their fishing resource and trade. Each evening, they gathered together and sang their psalms to the accompaniment of their pipes. The native peoples learnt how to cultivate the newcomers’ kumara and preserved legends of fairy white people who arrived in peace, and spoke a strange language in a hissing sound. That sibilant sound they had only heard before from the reptiles.
"Generations passed in their new settled islands that were empty of any other people. When their populations grew beyond their resources, groups departed to the next fertile land. Their prophet died. As only he was literate, his bible was neglected and lost in the bush. Gradually over the centuries, Christianity was lost except for their psalms still sung in their Gaelic. Their Gaelic became more primitive and most of the meanings of their psalms were lost. Eventually their psalms only sang of the sky and earth, and life and death. They carved abstract images of flora and fauna, and non tattooed people."
Did some stowaways of the Irish travellers settle in Tarawa, and other Gilbert Islands? Gilbertese legends say the I-Matang were descended from patriarchal lines. Like the mutineers that stowed away on Pitcairn island, they came in peace and married the Gilbertese girls? They formed the traditional elite class that still survives in Gilbertese customary culture? Because of the distance of time of fifteen centuries and genetic drift, their Irish DNA has been lost?
I admit this all sounds very fanciful. But the reliefs above do look like leprechauns.
Tearia, the story teller, said to Arthur Grimble. "'No land ever seen by man was as beautiful as that land. It was great, it was high; many were its mountains; all manner of trees were there, and rivers of fresh water.. The trees were heavy with fruit; there were lakes also with abundance of fish. No hunger, no thirst were in that place, never an ill wind visited it."
That is not the topography the Gilbertese were familiar with. But it does recall Irish tales of old Ireland, and of the Garden of Eden. Also perhaps, a geographical magazine that had found it way to Tearia in Tarawa.
In September 1891, several tribesmen killed a European trader operating in the Solomon Islands. HMS Royalist launched an attack against the village responsible, killing several of the tribesmen who were involved in the murder along with burning the village and destroying several of its canoes. On 27 May 1892, Captain Davis of the Royalist proclaimed the Gilbert Islands to be a British Protectorate. On Tarawa, this proclamation averted a massacre of a local faction, the House of Auatubu, badly beaten in battle the day before by their enemies, the House of Teabike.
A protectorate is different from a colony as it has local rulers and is not directly possessed."
Such was the nature of the British Empire. The high officials in London, mostly in the civil service, laid down on paper, decrees that determined the fates of millions of lesser mortals in non European lands. A "gun boat diplomacy" here, an humanitarian Christian act there. Eight months in the South Seas seperate the Royalist from being "white devils" in the Solomons and saviours from a genocide in the Gilberts.
The Royalist also visited the Ellice Islands in 1892. Captain Davis reported on trading activities and traders on each of the Ellice islands. He reported that the islanders wanted him to hoist the British flag on the islands, however Captain Davis did not have any orders regarding such a constitutional act.
"Happy Old Lady
"The Gilbertese had few waterside villages before the British Protectorate. The only buildings ordinarily near the sea then were the canoe-sheds. In the savage land-wars that forever racked the islands, every major activity of the private household had to be subordinated to the defence of the settlement. The darkness of the times was reflected in the family homes. The lodges were not the companionable mwenga of today, but uma-toro-literally, squatting roofs-which is to say thatches resting on the ground, closed at both gables, under whose eaves no spying eye could penetrate.
"Except on the islands where dynasties of High Chiefs had managed to remain paramount, a state of faction warfare was the normal condition of Gilbertese life of old. There were wars that involved only two or three villages at a time, and wars that split whole islands into opposing camps. The feuds on whatever scale, were deathless. in Tarawa, the struggle for supremacy between two factions that called themselves the House of Teabike and the House of Auatabu kept nine generations of the people almost continuously fighting or peparing to fight again to the coming of the Flag in 1892.
"Exactly twenty five years after the house of Auatabu's escape from annihilation , I was talking about the outcome to a vivid old lady of perhaps ninety-five, who had been one of the survivors.
"She herself, up to the coming of the flag had never known what it was maid or wife, to stray outside the village settlement of her menfolk.
" 'In those days,' she continued, 'death was on the right hand and on the left. If we wandered north, we were killed or raped. If we returned alive from walking abroad, our husbands themselves killed us, for they said we had gone forth seeking to be raped. That was indeed just, for a woman who disobeys her husband is a woman of no account, and it matters not how she dies. Yet how beautiful is life in our villages, now that there is no killing and war is no more.'
" 'We live because the Government of Kuinie Kabitoria (Queen Victoria) brought peace to us, and here I sit plaiting this mat to be buried in because of the kindness of that woman, with all my generations around me to wrap me in it when I die.' " A Pattern of Islands. Text abridged
They are the apparently honest sentiments of an old lady looking back through her life. The establishment of the British Protectorate and later colony of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands brought in in place of terror and warfare, the British nabobs. Arthur Grimble was a rare exception as was earlier, Robert Louis Stevenson. They to quote the common adage, "went native".These men and their wives were small fish in England. In the British territories, they became big fish. Resident Commissioner Bernacchi was recorded to kick over earth ovens in his "God's Acre." Boredom and the hot climate intensified their innate sense of entitlement and superiority. My mother remembered an event when she found herself slipping into the icy tones of the English colonial upper class. My father sometimes mentioned a clerk's furious words, "My house servant asked me if I liked tennis." My father was biased. So perhaps the clerk was merely amused. Another favourite story of my father was. A Gilbertese policeman turned up at George V school with a police document of guilty confessions by some of his students. My father recognised these signed confessions were not the words of his students. My father promptly ripped up the document. The policeman got onto his bicycle and that was the last my father heard about the alleged event. My father was either an overbearing white official or saved his students from false convictions.
But as the old lady said. "She had found the body of her husband eyeless after the battle. it was the Gilbertese warrior's gesture of triumph in the field to pluck out the eyes of a stricken foeman and bite Them in two while straddling his corpse. But she was just to her husband's killer. 'It was the custom,' she said' and I found his eyes beside him.' " Pattern of Islands Grimble. Text abridged.
The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were proclaimed a British colony in 1916 to strengthen British control and administration over the islands. The transition to a colony allowed for direct governance and oversight. This change was driven by the strategic importance of these islands and their resources, particularly as regards phosphate mining on the British colony of Ocean Island (now Banaba). The new Gilbert and Ellice colony became part of the British Western Pacific Territories. The Resident Commissioners of the Gilbert and Ellice colony deferred to their superior the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific. My father would chortle about tyrant "old Bernacchi"'s sycophancy to the High Commissioner. The new colony began in the full fury of World War One. The German navy was hovering about in the South China sea and the South Seas. Two years before a gallant navy ship of Kiwis had seized German Samoa.
Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 -1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer.
Wikipedia- "Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles.
"Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco and set sail with his family from San Francisco. The sea air and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health, and for nearly three years he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, where he became a good friend of King Kalākaua. He befriended the king's niece Princess Victoria Kaiulani, who also had Scottish heritage. He spent time at the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand and the Samoan Islands. During this period, he composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wrote The Bottle Imp. He preserved the experience of these years in his various letters and in his In the South Seas (which was published posthumously).[78] He made a voyage in 1889 with Lloyd, his stepson, on the trading schooner Equator, visiting Butaritari, Mariki, Apaiang and Abemama in the Gilbert Islands.[79] They spent several months on Abemama with tyrant-chief Tem Binoka, whom Stevenson described in In the South Seas.
"Political engagement in Samoa
Wikipedia- "In 1889, Stevenson and his extended family arrived at the port of Apia in the Samoan islands and there he and Fanny decided to settle. In January 1890 they purchased 314+1⁄4 acres (127.2 ha) at Vailima, some miles inland from Apia the capital, on which they built the islands' first two-storey house. Fanny's sister, Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez, wrote that "it was in Samoa that the word 'home' first began to have a real meaning for these gypsy wanderers".[85] In May 1891, they were joined by Stevenson's mother, Margaret. While his wife set about managing and working the estate, 40-year-old Stevenson took the native name Tusitala (Samoan for "Teller of Tales"), and began collecting local stories. Often he would exchange these for his own tales. The first work of literature in Samoan was his translation of The Bottle Imp (1891), which presents a Pacific-wide community as the setting for a moral fable.
"Immersing himself in the islands' culture, occasioned a 'political awakening', it placed Stevenson 'at an angle' to the rival great powers, Britain, Germany and the United States whose warships were common sights in Samoan harbours. He understood that, as in the Scottish Highlands (comparisons with his homeland 'came readily), an indigenous clan society was unprepared for the arrival of foreigners who played upon its existing rivalries and divisions. As the external pressures upon Samoan society grew, tensions soon descended into several inter-clan wars.
"No longer content to be a "romancer", Stevenson became a reporter and an agitator, firing off letters to The Times which "rehearsed with an ironic twist that surely owed something to his Edinburgh legal training", a tale of European and American misconduct. His concern for the Polynesians is also found in the South Sea Letters, published in magazines in 1891 (and then in book form as In the South Seas in 1896). In an effort he feared might result in his own deportation, Stevenson helped secure the recall of two European officials. A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892) was a detailed chronicle of the intersection of rivalries between the great powers and the first Samoan Civil War.
"As much as he said he disdained politics—"I used to think meanly of the plumber", he wrote to his friend Sidney Colvin, "but how he shines beside the politician!"—Stevenson felt himself obliged to take sides. He openly allied himself with chief Mataafa, whose rival Malietoa was backed by the Germans whose firms were beginning to monopolise copra and cocoa bean processing.
"Stevenson was alarmed above all by what he perceived as the Samoans' economic innocence—their failure to secure their claim to proprietorship of the land (in a Lockean sense) through improving management and labour. In 1894 just months before his death, he addressed the island chiefs:
"There is but one way to defend Samoa. Hear it before it is too late. It is to make roads, and gardens, and care for your trees, and sell their produce wisely, and, in one word, to occupy and use your country... if you do not occupy and use your country, others will. It will not continue to be yours or your children's, if you occupy it for nothing. You and your children will, in that case, be cast out into outer darkness.
" I have seen these judgments of God, not only in Hawaii where abandoned native churches stood like tombstones "over a grave, in the midst of the white men's sugar fields", but also in Ireland and "in the mountains of my own country Scotland.These were a fine people in the past brave, gay, faithful, and very much like Samoans, except in one particular, that they were much wiser and better at that business of fighting of which you think so much. But the time came to them as it now comes to you, and it did not find them ready...
"After his death, the Samoans insisted on surrounding his body with a watch-guard during the night and on bearing him on their shoulders to nearby Mount Vaea, where they buried him on a spot overlooking the sea. Based on Stevenson's poem "Requiem", the following epitaph is inscribed on his tomb:
"Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie Glad did I live and gladly die And I laid me down with a will This be the verse you grave for me Here he lies where he longed to be Home is the sailor home from the sea. And the hunter home from the hill
"Stevenson was loved by the Samoans, and his tombstone epitaph was translated to a Samoan song of grief.
"Five years after Stevenson's death, the Samoan Islands were partitioned between Germany and the United States.
Why is King Binoka so obese? He seems an omen for our contemporary obese age. Did he exchange the traditional Gilbertese meat, coconut and taro diet for traders' copra After Western meat and veges breakfasts were replaced by cereals i.e. milk and mostly sugar, obesity has become a normal even prevalent condition.
Wikipedia- "Binoka was the third uea ("monarch") of Abemama. He controlled the Gilbert Islands of Abemama, Aranuka, and Kuria from 1878 until his death in 1891. Robert Louis Stevenson featured Binoka, whom he called Tembinok', in the pages of In The South Seas (1896) after the uea hosted his party on Abemama for nine months.
"Contemporary accounts depicted Binoka as an oft-oppressive autocrat who derived his wealth from copra, maintained a trade monopoly with the Europeans, and hoarded foreign items. He harboured ambitions to conquer the Gilbert Islands, but they never materialised. Binoka is said to be the last independent Gilbertese ruler. The year after he died, Captain Edward Davis moored at Abemama to proclaim the Gilbert Islands a British protectorate.
"Binoka was part of a Gilbert Islands dynasty that, according to oral tradition, had ruled Abemama for five to seven generations before him. It also conquered the nearby islands of Kuria and Aranuka. His father, Baiteke, was the second member to hold the title of uea, which was used by other islands for their own hereditary monarchs. In Baiteke's time, foreign traders, whalers, beachcombers, and missionaries, mainly from Europe, were increasing their presence and control on the Gilbert Islands. Baiteke was one of the last independent rulers there. He responded in 1851 by ordering the executions of every non-Indigenous person living on the three islands. Then, Baiteke closed his borders and established a monopoly on foreign trade, which he limited to one port. He mainly bartered off coconut oil or copra. Thus, Baiteke became his realm's only supplier of foreign goods, including firearms and cannons, which he used to solidify his autocratic reign. It was this power Binoka, his son, would inherit.
"Binoka was probably born around the 1840s. He had a younger brother, Timon and two sisters. Binoka was raised in privilege by his father's female consorts and "palace favourites". He practiced using firearms and became a fair marksman.
"In 1878, Baiteke abdicated as was customary at his age, in favour of Binoka.
"Binoka was the last truly independent and influential king of parts of the Gilbert Islands, at a time when the Gilberts were being increasingly influenced by white settlers and traders. Binoka resided on Abemama, and, unlike the rulers of neighbouring islands, did not allow outsiders to establish a permanent presence there. Binoka controlled access to the atolls under his control and jealously guarded his revenue and his prerogatives as monarch. He briefly accepted the presence on Abemama of Tuppoti, a Christian missionary, then deported him for attempting to set up a copra trading business.
"In 1888, he granted Robert Louis Stevenson, his wife Fanny and his stepson Lloyd the right to live temporarily on Abemama, on the condition that they did not give or sell money, liquor or tobacco to his subjects. They returned to Abemama in July 1890 during their cruise on the trading steamer the Janet Nicoll.
"Binoka was immortalised by Stevenson's description of him in his book In the South Seas. Stevenson spent two months on Abemama in 1889. Stevenson described Binoka as the "one great personage in the Gilberts … and the last tyrant. Stevenson described the ambitions of Binoka as an embryonic 'empire of the archipelago' and established his importance in the Gilbert Islands as 'Binoka figures in the patriotic war-songs of the Gilberts like Napoleon in those of our grandfathers'.
"Stevenson describes Binoka, in the years before his visit, as attempting to extend his rule over a number of islands and atolls; he compelled Maiana to pay tribute, and seized Nonouti, before being driven out by a British warship and being forbidden to expand his kingdom further.
"Binoka owned trade ships which would travel to Australia and New Zealand. His commercial ventures, however, ended in failure with the loss of his ship the Coronet. He found a Scotsman, George McGhee Murdoch, who organised production and marketing on Binoka's several thousand acres of heritable land. Murdoch also maintained good relationships with English whalers who used Abemama as a base, and he persuaded Binoka to allow Stevenson's party to settle ashore.
"Binoka was also a merchant king, controlling his kingdom's commerce. He enforced the allocation of produce; such that the taro went to the chiefs of each village to allocate among their various subjects; certain fish and turtles and the whole of the produce of the coco-palm, the source of copra belonged to Binoka. He would trade the copra with visiting trading ships. He was, according to Stevenson:greedy of things new and foreign. House after house, chest after chest, in the palace precinct, is already crammed with clocks, musical boxes, blue spectacles, umbrellas, knitted waistcoats, bolts of stuff, tools, rifles, fowling-pieces, medicines, European foods, sewing-machines, and, what is more extraordinary, stoves.[5]
"While the captains and supercargos of trading ships could expect to sell such novelties at a great profit, Binoka controlled access to his islands and would refuse to deal with those whom he considered to take advantage of him. Stevenson describes Binoka as classing captains and supercargoes in three categories: "He cheat a little"—"He cheat plenty"—and "I think he cheat too much”.
"Binoka gave his many wives a share of the copra, which they would use to trade for hats, ribbons, dresses and other produce available on the trading ships. However sticks of tobacco were the main product they purchased, which Stevenson described as being "island currency, tantamount to minted gold". Stevenson described a notable feature of life with Binoka as being that evenings were spent with Binoka playing card games with his wives with the currency being tobacco sticks. He had developed his own version of poker in which he could play either of two hands dealt to him. By this strategy Binoka would win most of the tobacco, so that Binoka ended up with effective control of the tobacco, which he would allocate to his wives and other subjects, so that he was, as described by Stevenson the sole fount of all indulgences'.
"While Stevenson refers to Binoka as "the last tyrant", Stevenson's account of his time with Binoka is much more sympathetic that given to Nakaeia, the ruler of Butaritari and Makin atolls in the Gilbert Islands. Nakaeia allowed two San Fransisco trading companies to operate with up to 12 Europeans resident on various of the atolls. The presence of the Europeans, and the alcohol they traded to the islanders, resulted in periodic alcoholic binges that only ended with Nakaeia making tapu (forbidding) the sale of alcohol. During the 15 or so days Stevenson spent on Butaritari the islanders were engaged in a drunken spree that threatened the safety of Stevenson and his family. Stevenson adopted the strategy of describing himself as the son of Queen Victoria so as to ensure that he would be treated as a person who should not be threatened or harmed.
"In 1876 Britain and Germany agreed to divide up their interests in the western and central Pacific, with each claiming a 'sphere of influence'. In 1877 the Governor of Fiji was given the additional title of High Commissioner for the Western Pacific. The British 'sphere of influence' included the Ellice Islands and the Gilbert Islands, but it made little difference to the governance of these islands until after Binoka's death.
"Murdoch is reported as saying that 'I ordered myself a belt with a big crown on the buckle, and I stuck another crown in front of my helmet. Solid silver, they were. I told him the Queen herself had sent them to me for a present. Whenever a new law came out, I invented a special message from the Queen requesting his personal collaboration in the matter. He was impressed and pleased. I made a by-ordinary good citizen of the old reprobate before he died.'
"Binoka was succeeded as uea by his adopted son, Bauro. Timon acted as regent until Bauro came of age and reigned briefly and uneventfully.
"The year after Binoka's death, Captain Edward Davis moored at Abemama to proclaim the Gilbert Islands a British protectorate. Murdoch became the District Agent and Tax Collector, setting up local courts and administration that brought peace and order to the lagoon villages and controlled (often with strong measures) the European beachcombers; he retired as a Resident Commissioner in 1912." Text edited
Binoka and his fellow Gilbertese Kings epitomised the "slave" Kingdoms that ambitious native rulers were able to create in the transition between their traditional pre contact societies and European colonialism. In New Zealand, they were epitomised by Hongi Hikia and Te Rauparaha. They exploited both white people and their native subjects with little mercy. Christianity, if they took notice at all, they wore on their sleeves. However they were great romantic and gothic material for story tellers both native and white.
The Japanese Occupation Of The Gilbert Islands
Wikipedia- "This was the period in the history of Kiribati between 1941 and 1945 when Imperial Japanese forces occupied the Gilbert Islands during World War II, in the Pacific War theatre.
"From 1941 to 1943, Imperial Japanese Navy forces occupied the islands, and from 1942 until 1945 Ocean Island which was home to the headquarters of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony.
"The Japanese occupation of the Northern Gilbert Islands can be divided into three periods:
from 10 December 1941 to 16 August 1942, 71 armed personnel of the Imperial Japanese Navy garrisoned the seaplane base on Butaritari (then called Makin) up to the time of the raid by the Marines on 17–18 August 1942;
from 20 August 1942 to March 1943, with a gradual increase of the expansion towards the south, including Tarawa and Abemama, and also Nauru outside of the Gilberts, to become fortified places with airfields;
the last phase, before the end of occupation, from March to the end of battle of Tarawa and battle of Makin on 23 November 1943.
"On the day of their attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Japanese military forces embarked on board the minelayer Okinoshima which was serving as flagship for Admiral Kiyohide Shima in Operation Gi (the invasion of the Gilbert Islands) and had deployed from Jaluit with a Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF). From 9–10 December, Okinoshima supported the Japanese landings on Makin and on Tarawa, and on 24 December, the seizure of Abaiang.[3] The 51st Guards Force from Jaluit occupied on 10 December 1941 (local time 0045), Makin and on 11 December Little Makin, then later Abaiang and Marakei in the northern Gilbert Islands. Japanese immediately seized the New Zealand Coastwatchers of Makin.[4] Within two days, a seaplane base was built on Makin lagoon by Nagata Maru.
"A few hours before the Makin occupation, on 10 December 1941, the same Japanese landing military (DesDiv 29/Section 1's Asanagi and Yūnagi) also visited Tarawa, where they rounded up the Europeans and informed them that they could not leave the atoll without the permission of the naval commander, Kiyohide Shima. The Japanese destroyed all means of transportation and ransacked the Burns Philp trading station, then departed for Makin.
The Imperial Japanese Navy forces on Makin were part of the Marshall Islands Garrison, and officially titled the 62nd Garrison Force.[5] At the time of the Makin raid on 17–18 August 1942 the total force opposing the American landing consisted of 71 armed personnel of the Japanese seaplane base led by Warrant Officer (Heisouchou) Kyuzaburo Kanemitsu of the Special Naval Landing Force equipped with light weapons. In addition there were also four members of the seaplane tender base and three members of a meteorological unit. Two civilian personnel were attached to the Japanese forces as interpreters and civilian administrators.
"On 31 August 1942, Japanese troops also occupied Abemama. On September, some remote central and southern islands were also briefly visited or occupied (Tamana was the southernmost) especially in order to destroy the Coastwatchers network, headquartered on Beru.[6] On 15 September 1942, Japanese forces occupied Tarawa and began fortifying the atoll, mainly Betio islet where they built Hawkins Field, an airfield.
In response, on 2 October 1942, US forces occupied the Ellice Islands and began constructing airfields on Funafuti, Nukufetau and Nanumea as a base of operations against the Japanese occupation in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.
The first offensive operation from the new American airfield at Funafuti was launched on 20 April 1943 when 22 B-24 Liberator aircraft from 371 and 372 Bombardment Squadrons bombed Nauru. The next day the Japanese made a predawn raid on the strip at Funafuti that destroyed one B-24 and caused damage to five other planes. On 22 April, 12 B-24 aircraft bombed Tarawa.[8]
"On 6 November 1943, the United States Seventh Air Force established its forward headquarters base on Funafuti, to prepare the battle of Tarawa.
Ocean Island
"Wikipedia- Operation RY and Ocean Island (Banaba) massacre
In July 1941, Australia and New Zealand evacuated dependents of British Phosphate Commission employees from Ocean Island.
"On 8 December 1941, a Japanese flying boat Kawanishi H6K dropped six bombs on the Government Headquarters on Ocean Island. In February 1942, the Free French destroyer Le Triomphant evacuated the remaining Europeans and Chinese from Ocean Island. Japanese forces occupied the island from 26 August 1942. Cyril Cartwright, was acting Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony on Ocean Island from December 1941 to August 1942. While he had the opportunity to leave Ocean Island when the personnel of the British Phosphate Commission were evacuated, he choose to stay to safeguard the people who remained on the island.[10] He was subjected to ill-treatment and malnutrition and died on 23 April 1943. All but about 143-160 Banabans were deported to Nauru, Tarawa, Truk or Kosrae, until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. On 20 August 1945, five days after the surrender of Japan, the Japanese troops massacred the 150 Banabans remaining on Ocean Island. Only one person, Kabunare Koura, survived the massacre. He was the chief prosecution witness in the trial of 23 of Japanese soldiers and officers charged with committing the massacre. Twenty-one of them were found guilty, with 8 of them being executed. On 21 August, Australian troops retook Ocean Island from the Japanese. Before the end of the year, the 280 Banabans who survived the war on Nauru, Tarawa, Kosrae or Truk were resettled on Rabi Island in Fiji." Text abridged.
I once asked a Filipino girl what was the experience of her Filipino village during the Japanese occupation. Her reply was "Nothing". The Filipino had endured centuries of occupation by Spanish, American and Japanese. To her it seemed, they were all broadly the same. They came, saw, conquered, and left. I imagine I would get a parallel reply from a Gilbertese girl.
The Kiwi director of my language school in Japan said to me. "While some of the Japanese commanders were war criminals and deserved to be executed, in Japan their executions are called victors' justice." I said to him I considered the executed Japanese in Tarawa were innocent. He replied. "That remark would make some people very happy." That gave me a devious thrill. I had infuriated my father by blandly saying "That didn't happen" about the massacre of New Zealanders on Tarawa. He refused to listen to my explanation and I had to promise him, it did happen." The official version of World War Two has become the next cultic religion in Western countries. So powerful is it that few, although growing numbers of people, are aware. I found out later both my father and I had conflated the massacre in Ocean Island with the Tarawa massacre. In Tarawa, the Japanese commanders confessed to the massacre. Yet curiously, they were allowed to return to Japan and disappear into the Japanese population.
Wikipedia- " In October 1942, seventeen New Zealand coastwatchers and five European (British) civilians were captured by Japanese forces. They were imprisoned in an asylum on the islet of Betio, Tarawa.
"On October 15, 1942, following an American air raid on the island, the Japanese executed all the prisoners by beheading. Unfortunately, they were not placed in a hospital but were instead held in captivity and ultimately killed.
"The coastwatchers played a crucial role in the Pacific War intelligence network, keeping a 24-hour watch for enemy ships and aircraft. Their bravery and sacrifice are remembered and honored through memorials erected in their memory." Text abbreviated.
The bodies with their decapitated heads have never been found. There appears to be official foot dragging about finding them despite strenuous efforts by their families.
A Gilbertese man reported to have witnessed two of the decapitations. He then said he fainted.
There was a saying among Kiwi veterans about World War Two. "When the British bombed the Germans ran. When the Germans bombed, the British ran. When the Americans bombed everyone ran."
A monster created out of radiation invades the peace loving land of Japan. That is the common Japanese perspective on World War Two.
Transition to self-determination
Wikipedia- "The formation of the United Nations Organisation after World War II resulted in the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization (established in 1960) committing to a process of decolonisation; as a consequence the British colonies in the Pacific started on a path to self-determination.
As a consequence of the 1974 Ellice Islands self-determination referendum separation occurred in two stages. The Tuvaluan Order 1975 made by the Privy Council, which took effect on 1 October 1975, recognised Tuvalu as a separate British dependency with its own government. The second stage occurred on 1 January 1976 when separate administrations were created out of the civil service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony.
Independence for Kiribati
The Gilberts obtained internal self-government in 1977 and held general elections in February 1978 which saw Ieremia Tabai elected Chief Minister at only age 27. Kiribati attained independence as a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations on 12 July 1979 by the Kiribati Independence Order 1979 made by the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.
Although the indigenous Gilbertese language name for the Gilbert Islands proper is Tungaru, the new state chose the name 'Kiribati,' the Gilbertese rendition of 'Gilberts,' as an equivalent of the former colony to acknowledge the inclusion of islands which were never considered part of the Gilberts chain. The United States gave up its claims to 14 islands of the Line and Phoenix chains. Text abbreviated
In the traditional Imperial divide and rule, the Gilbert Islands chose to be a Republic, and its smaller neigHbour chose to be a home rule British dependency. My mother attended a Pacific cultural festival in Auckland in the early 1980s. She did not approve of the Gilbertese shirt slogans, The Republic of Kiribati. She considered them a slap in the face to George V school which raised the British flag every school morning.
I met a young Gilbertese man at the Auckland YMCA in 1979, the year of independence. He was a very nice fellow, and a fluent English speaker. He was delighted to find out I was born in his homeland. He is the only Gilbertese I can recall meeting.
Wikipedia-"Politics
"The Constitution of Kiribati, promulgated 12 July 1979, provides for free and open elections in a parliamentary democratic republic.
The executive branch consists of a president (te Beretitenti), a vice-president and a cabinet. The president, who is also chief of the cabinet, is directly elected by the citizens, after the legislature nominates three or four persons from among its members to be candidates in the ensuing presidential election. The president is limited to serving three four-year terms, and remains a member of the assembly. The cabinet is composed of the president, vice-president, and 13 ministers (appointed by the president) who are also members of parliament
The legislative branch is the unicameral Maneaba ni Maungatabu (House of Assembly). Its members are elected, including by constitutional mandate, a nominated representative of a nominated representative of the Banaban people in Rabi Island, Fiji (Banaba, former Ocean Island) in addition to, until 2016, the attorney general, who served as an ex officio member from 1979 to 2016. Legislators serve for a four-year term.
The constitutional provisions governing administration of justice are similar to those in other former British colonies in that the judiciary is free from governmental interference. The judicial branch is made up of the High Court (in Betio) and the Court of Appeal. The president appoints the presiding judges.
Local government is through island councils with elected members. Local affairs are handled in a manner similar to town meetings in colonial America. Island councils make their own estimates of revenue and expenditure and generally are free from central government controls. There are a total of 21 inhabited islands in Kiribati. Each inhabited island has its own council. Kiribati is currently divided into 5 districts: Northern Kiribati, Central Kiribati, Southern Kiribati, South Tarawa, and Line & Phoenix.
Kiribati has formal political parties but their organisation is quite informal. Ad hoc opposition groups tend to coalesce around specific issues. There is universal suffrage at age 18. Today the only recognisable parties are the Boutokaan Kiribati Moa Party, former Boutokaan te Koaua, and Tobwaan Kiribati Party.
In 1995, Kiribati unilaterally moved the International Date Line far to the east to encompass the Line Islands group, so that the country would no longer be divided by the date line. The move, which fulfilled one of President Tito's campaign promises, was intended to allow businesses across the expansive territory to keep the same business week. This also enabled Kiribati to become the first country to see the dawn of the third millennium, an event of significance for tourism. Tito was re-elected in 1998. In 1999, Kiribati became a full member of the United Nations, 20 years after independence. In 2002, Kiribati passed a controversial law that enabled the government to shut down newspaper publishers. The legislation followed the launching of Kiribati's first successful non-government-run newspaper. President Tito was re-elected in 2003 but was removed from office in March 2003 by a no-confidence vote and replaced by a Council of State. Anote Tong of the opposition party Boutokaan Te Koaua was elected to succeed Tito in July 2003. He was re-elected in 2007 and in 2011.
"Environmental Issues In Kiribati
The existence of Kiribati is imperilled by rising sea levels, with the country losing land every year. Many of its islands are currently or becoming inhabitable due to their shrinking size. Thus, the majority of the country's population resides in only a handful of islands, with more than half of its residents living on one island alone, Tarawa. This leads to other issues such as severe overcrowding in such a small area. In 1999, the uninhabited islands of Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea both disappeared underwater. The government's Kiribati Adaptation Program was launched in 2003 to mitigate the country's vulnerability to the issue. In 2008, fresh water supplies began being encroached by seawater, prompting President Anote Tong to request international assistance to begin relocating the country's population elsewhere." Text abridged.
AI Overview
Due to rising sea levels caused by climate change, Kiribati, a low-lying island nation, faces the potential of being largely submerged by the end of the century, with some islands potentially becoming uninhabitable or lost by 2100.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Vulnerability:
Kiribati is particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise because its highest points are only a few meters above sea level.
Sea Level Rise Projections:
NASA's sea level change science team predicts that Kiribati will experience significant sea-level rise, with some regions experiencing an average of 65 flood days annually by the 2050s.
Uninhabitable Islands:
NASA's sea level change science team found that some islands in Kiribati could become uninhabitable, if not completely lost, by the end of the century.
Disappearing Islands:
In 1999, two small uninhabited Kiribati islets, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater.
Mitigation Efforts:
The government of Kiribati is seeking donors to raise islands from the sea and is also working with Australia to increase the supply of drinking water and ensure that schools and communities are climate resilient.
Resettlement:
The president of Kiribati has purchased land in Fiji where he is slowly resettling his people.
Other Pacific Island Nations:
Other Pacific Island nations like Tuvalu and Fiji are also facing similar threats from rising sea levels."
Climate change sceptics such as New Zealand Influencer Cameron Slater have scoffed at rising sea levels submerging Kiribati. They have argued Kiribati is not submerging in sea water. It is submerging in industrial pollution. Resident Commissioner Bernacchi had run a tight ship. The Gilbertese population were not permitted to move to live in Tarawa without official permission. In that way, the Gilbertese way of life and culture had been sustained. After Bernacchi's rule, the younger Gilbertese have sought the "bright lights" of Tarawa. In consequence, Tarawa has become in recent decades, one of Donald Trump's proverbial shit holes. The Gilbertese keep their traditional way of life in their outlying islands. In their souls, they all remain Gilbertese
Sources V.27 Edition UN Population Division
Current population of Kiribati
In Kiribati, the population is 135,936 as of Saturday, March 22, 2025,
Density (P/Km²): | 188 People per km² (117 People per mi²). |
Daily births: | 9 |
Daily deaths: | 3 |
Equivalent world: | 0% of the total world population. |
Growth Rate: | 1.44% |
Median age: | 22 Years and 2 Months. |
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