Kiribati at the Center of the World

Rex Rowley, Associate Professor of Geography, Illinois State University

DOI: 10.21690/foge/2019.62.4p

Kiribati is the only country in the world to straddle all four hemispheres. A remote Pacific island nation, it is a place unknown to most people I meet, and the vast majority of my American students. If they happen to have seen it on a map they will pronounce its name incorrectly — it is pronounced Kiribaas and its people and language are known as i-Kiribati (ee-Kiribaas). It’s better known in the eastern hemisphere and shares close historical and contemporary Commonwealth ties with New Zealand and Australia, who provide the country with aid, humanitarian outreach, and tourism dollars. Kiribati is one of the least visited countries in the world, yet, as its cultural landscape shows, it is now and has long been, part of a globalized system.

Kiribati is made up of 21 inhabited islands on 33 atolls (and one phosphate rock island) spread over a wide swath of the Pacific Ocean. It includes three distinct island groups: the Gilbert, Line, and Phoenix Islands. The majority of the country’s population lives on several atolls in the Gilberts. There is only one permanently inhabited island in the Phoenix chain and three in the Line Islands. More than half of the country’s 110,000 people live on the densely populated islets in the southern portion of Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Group, which is the focus of this essay.

Despite its remoteness Kiribati is a place linked to the rest of the world. The most evident connections appear in landscapes and material culture. Access to ideas, items, and income though global networks of missionaries, shipping, and global humanitarian outreach frame many of the cultural landscapes in Tarawa. In addition, the country’s infrastructure is as oriented to allow goods entry as it is to distribute them across the country. Even the name indicates foreign influence. Although Kiribati was originally called Tungaru, its current name is a transliteration, into the indigenous tongue, of the word “Gilberts,” for Thomas Gilbert, a British Pacific explorer. Sovereign since 1979, it became part of the British Empire in 1892 and connections to the British Commonwealth of Nations continue to affect everyday lives in Tarawa. A short stint under Japanese imperial rule during World War II, followed by American victory in a major Pacific Theater battle at Tarawa, also left a deep and lasting impression on the atoll. Furthermore, Kiribati has a front seat to climate change and its impacts on vulnerable, low-lying island places and populations with few resources to combat its harm. Indeed, the fact that Kiribati literally touches all four hemispheres of the earth is a metaphor for a country with deep and global connections.

Although Tarawa is only one of the many islands in this Pacific nation, it is a good microcosm of the broader country as its center of population, government, tourism, and economy. Global influences found in Tarawa are also visible on the outer atolls, including evidence of World War II battles (e.g., the Battle of Makin at Butaritari), tourism, copra production, and climate change mitigation efforts.

Kiribati’s most direct and tangible connections to the rest of the world are, of course, via plane and boat. Bonriki International Airport on the southeastern most islet in the Tarawa Atoll is where most people come and go from the country. The small terminal echoes the architectural style of i-Kiribati maneaba, traditional meeting houses found in every village and neighborhood in the country. Bonriki International receives regular airline flights from Fiji Airlines (tail fin shown here) and Nauru Airlines, which connect residents, visitors, outreach workers, and business and government leaders to other islands in the Pacific and, thereby, to the rest of the planet. Air Kiribati offers shorter flights to other Kiribati islands and a handful of nearby Pacific nations. On most days, the parking lot is empty, but at select times during a week, when a major flight arrives or departs, the parking lot at Bonriki fills up with cars and minivans to shuttle passengers to their destination. Minivans are the busses in this country, the primary form of public transportation along the roughly 20-mile-long island road that is the only major thruway in the country.

I noticed a pattern in the cars parked at the airport and throughout my travels in Tarawa: most vehicles are used cars from Japan. As seen here along the island road in Bairiki, an SUV’s spare tire cover advertises a company offering inexpensive access to used, but relatively late model Japanese cars and vans available for shipment across the world. With stickers, wheel covers, and other markings, this connection to the most developed of Pacific Island nations is obvious to a passerby. These vehicles represent a crucial resource for the people of Kiribati. Cars that most westerners would deem too high in miles or unreliable for long-distance travel are just fine for the i-Kiribati running a minivan bus service or the more well-to-do who can afford their own transportation, given the very limited road network on these islands. Such cars are a common sight in other developing Pacific countries as well and signal an important reuse market for the constant churn of new cars so desirable among the Japanese population.

The cars and most other goods arrive in Kiribati at the main port at Betio. Most of the country’s foodstuffs and nearly all of its textiles come by boat. Trading companies near the port take in and distribute items throughout the country. This roadside shop in Betio is one such marketplace. Its rice, crackers, clothing, and flip-flops are their clearly labeled with brands from Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. A few products that are harvested in Kiribati - coconut/copra, pandanus, breadfruit, pigs raised locally, and fish from the lagoon are also available throughout the atoll.

Market signage commonly includes messages indicative of the ebb and flow of goods by boat; the cadence of consumerism on the island. One construction materials outlet had a chalkboard sign out front that said: “New Stock: Roofing Sheet, Flat Sheet, Deformed rod, Strain Wire, etc.” The chalkboard at the entrance to Target Enterprises, a variety store in Betio pictured here, similarly noted: “New Stock: Ladies top, skirt, tight pant, ladies vest, mens vest . . . Bundle second hand clothes, Plywood All Sizes, Milk Powder.”

Further evidence of oceanic connection is the ubiquity and multiple uses of the shipping container. The metal boxes are found everywhere on Tarawa. They are often used for long-term storage and sometimes as markers of property boundaries. This image in a Betio neighborhood shows containers converted into residential space.

On Tarawa, an island with population density numbers similar to Hong Kong, the availability of goods from all over the world, and the consumerist tendencies that follow, inevitably lead to a lot of trash. This landfill on Nanikai is intended to receive the waste. It is the most recent space for mass refuse. Evidence of former landfills can be seen near the airport at Bonriki and adjacent the shipping port in Betio.

Unfortunately, much of the trash never makes it to the landfill. Instead, it is found on the ground all over the most populated islets on Tarawa. Plastic litters most beaches, as shown here at a beach on the lagoon side of Betio islet. The abundance of refuse on Tarawa raises the question of how sustainable a modern, consumerist lifestyle is on a such a limited piece of dry ground in the middle of the world’s largest ocean.

A convergence of traditional roofing over prefabricated fiberglass walls adjacent to tin-roof-topped structures (on the building in the rear portion of the picture) is common in Tarawa. Much of the material, again, is reliant on what can be brought in on the boats. The rusty metal sheets marking a parcel boundary, apparently recycled from an oil company boat or shipping container, further emblematize connection to the outside world.

Signs along Tarawa’s main island road reveal the impact of aid from several countries in the region. The sign in front of this complex of prefabricated multi-family homes states: “Bairiki New Houses, funded by New Zealand 3 June 2016.” The ubiquitous rainwater tanks to store that most precious resource in the islands stand out. This is a more formal, less traditional housing option for the i-Kiribati able to get into one of the units. One resident of this complex told me he chose to endure a long waiting list and a longer commute to work (longer by Kiribati standards . . . the island road is only around 20 miles long after all) in order to have a home here. Much of the aid for similar projects originates in other countries in the British Commonwealth of Nations, namely Australia and New Zealand. Such connections are abundant. On my flight to Tarawa, for example, I met an Australian working with the government of Kiribati on mitigation plans for tsunamis and other disasters. I shared an airport shuttle with two New Zealanders who come to recruit seasonal i-Kiribati workers for jobs in their country. Such examples highlight the notion that bonds between Kiribati and its international friends are more than simply that; Kiribati is not simply connected other countries but is, in fact, reliant on their aid for basic necessities such as housing and water.

In Tarawa, I met another Australian, Mike Savins, with longtime connections to Kiribati. Savins had a career in high-end boat building in New South Wales and started coming to Kiribati 30 years ago to do volunteer work. Now he builds boats at Abatao in North Tarawa to supply his customers in Australia. Savins operates several other businesses on both Abatao and Nabeina islets. He prefabricates panels for use in school rehabilitations in more urban parts of Tarawa. He runs an aquaculture farm on both islets (part of the Abatao operation is in the structures onshore visible in this image). Here he raises colorful and decorative clams, imported from Fiji and raised for the US, German, and other salt-water aquarium markets around the world. He also grows a unique species of sea cucumber that, when fully grown, is dried and sold as a powder considered to have medicinal qualities in the Chinese market.

Savins and his wife also run ecolodges, one on the southern tip of Abatao (pictured here) and another on Nabeina. Beach huts sit atop the picturesque and sheltered turquoise lagoon waters. Although Kiritimati (Christmas) Island is a more popular destination for tourists to Kiribati who seek beaches and sun, an ecolodge in North Tarawa is another option that is not far away but stands apart from the urban life and crowds on Betio and Bairiki.

Amalgamated Telecom Holdings, or ATH, is a Fiji-based telecom company that holds the communication monopoly in Kiribati, yet another tie between this and another Commonwealth nation. At the K-Mart Convenient Center in Betio, the small ATH sign atop the refueling canopy uniquely labels the store, but also advertises for the telecommunications company. Similar yellow and red banners with shop name and the ATH logo are ubiquitous throughout Tarawa, including on the Target Enterprises sign pictured earlier. From market stalls to trading company shops to hotels, these markers are a source of inexpensive signage for dozens of businesses.

The strength of the Catholic faith in Kiribati is easily recognizable in the church buildings that dot the Tarawa atoll, like this one on Bairiki islet. Note the roofing style here that, like the airport terminal, mimics the style of the traditional maneaba. In one Catholic church I was able to enter, the pews that a westerner would expect were absent. Instead, an empty hall, not unlike the maneaba, served as the worship hall. Such dominance of this and several other Christian faith traditions underscore a long legacy of colonization and missionary work in the Pacific Islands.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is another common denomination in this largely Christian country. Several chapels (many more per capita than most similar sized American cities outside of Utah and Idaho), an administrative building, and the private high school pictured here in Bikenibeu are evidence of the strength that other Christian faiths have in this country. Similar patterns of Latter-day Saint chapel density and church sponsored schools can be found throughout the Pacific, in Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga.

A Japanese curry restaurant is nestled in a neighborhood on the Betio islet, and repre-sents a longstanding interaction with that Pacific neighbor. Kiribati became part of the Japanese Empire following invasions on several islands in late 1941 and 1942. Although returned to British protection after World War II, Kiribati has maintained friendly and strong economic ties to Japan up to the present, including allowing some fishing rights in Kiribati waters. Furthermore, Japan has contributed its share of aid to Kiribati, including construction and recent re-habilitation of the Dai Nippon Causeway. This road connects the islets of Bairiki, the country’s administrative capital, and Betio, the atoll’s commercial core, which together represent the most populated sections in the country.

For World War II history buffs, Kiribati has yet another distinction. It was site of one of the Pacific Theater’s bloodiest battles, the Battle of Tarawa. War artifacts like the bunkers, pill-boxes, and gunnery pictured here remain in plain sight on Betio. Taiwan Park here in the Takoronga Area of the islet is one of the primary tourist attractions on Tarawa. In fact, war tourism is one of the only reasons a typical tourist spends time in the urban parts of the atoll since most visitors to Kiribati seek a more idyllic “island escape.”

Not long after their attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese took several islands in Kiribati in late 1941 and early 1942. Tarawa was taken just days after the attack at Hawaii. By the time the US forces laid siege to the Japanese during the Battle of Tarawa on November 20-24, 1943, Betio was defended by nearly 5,000 Japanese men (including many Korean servant-laborers). The Command Bunker pictured here was headquarters to the Japanese occupying forces.

The Japanese defenses on Betio were strong. Four Vickers eight-inch guns on the west and south shores of the islet were a major threat to an overthrow of the Japanese, but ended up not being much of a factor in Battle of Tarawa. The Americans’ strategy was to take the atoll by a landing and ground assault on the north shores, from the lagoon side of the atoll. Three of the four guns remain largely intact today, including two in Betio’s Takoronga area, and this one on the islet’s western shores at Temakin on Betio’s western coastline. A destroyed and decaying fourth gun is visible in the water on the right of the image. In an interesting twist of globally intertwined fates, the Japanese had originally purchased the weapons from the British in the early 1900s to assist them in a war with Russia, and were eventually used to defend the island the Japanese took from British hands forty years later.

The Battle of Tarawa was a defining moment in the push against the Japanese in the Pacific. It took place largely on three beaches on Betio’s north coast, which US strategists labeled Red Beach 1 (shown here), Red Beach 2, and Red Beach 3. More than 1100 US Marines were killed and over 2200 injured on these shores in the five days of fighting. By comparison, Guadalcanal had a similar number of casualties, but over a six-month period. Nearly all of the Japanese defenders were killed; more than 100 Korean and a handful of Japanese survivors had been taken prisoner when the battle ended on November 24. Around 750 i-Kiribati died over the course of World War II. Today, life goes on at these shores. Fishing boats are beached up and down this stretch and people bathe in the lagoon waters. It isn’t the beach paradise that some westerners might perceive all Pacific islands to be. Note the rusting barges and litter in the sand.

Literature provided by the Kiribati National Tourism Office notes that war artifacts can still be found on the Red Beaches. Some are clearly visible even at high tide, like this turret of a stranded Sherman tank from the Battle of Tarawa at Red Beach 2. At low tide, a Type 95 Ha-Go Tank is visible off the shore from Red Beach 3.

Other artifacts from World War II are never far from residential life in Betio. In the background of this photograph a family takes residence in a makeshift hut on the ocean side of Betio, just a short distance from a cluster of bunkers and pillboxes and adjacent to two of the islet’s eight-inch Vickers guns.

Just inland from Red Beach 1, a bunker is encompassed by a densely packed residential area in western Betio.

Near Red Beach 3, the painted walls of a concrete bunker serve as the boundary of another residence. These unique and historically significant structures are part of ordinary, everyday life in Betio.

When I visited one of the generator bunkers near Red Beach 3, I witnessed just how close the War still can be to everyday life in Betio 70 years later. After passing by a police station and an officer standing guard, I watched for several minutes as an explosive ordinance team removed shells from the bunker using hand trucks and push carts. Note the shell sitting vertically on the hand truck at the entrance to the bunker.

The ordinance was then laid on pallets for future removal. This work was occurring in an area as densely populated as some Asian cities. Understandably, the removal team asked me to leave. I was surprised the police officer hadn’t asked me to do so sooner. I was even more shocked that this was happening in plain sight, with low-tech implements, and without any protective gear for the workers or a safety perimeter for the adjacent residents. This bunker is surrounded by homes and businesses (one such structure is visible in the upper left of the image behind the trees). Indeed, history can be uncomfortably close on Tarawa.

A number of monuments and memorials to the war dead can be found in Tarawa. This one is the New Zealand Coastwatchers Monument, located at the Betio Cemetery on the islet’s south shore. It is dedicated to the “memory of twenty two British subjects murdered by the Japanese at Betio on the 15th of October 1942.” A mix of New Zealanders, Australians, and British, the men were captured by the Japanese in various locations in Kiribati and brought to Betio, where they were executed. The inscription lists the names of the men and notes: “Standing unarmed by their posts, they matched brutality with gallantry and met their death with fortitude.”

The US Marines War Memorial to the Battle of Tarawa is located on the grounds of the Betio Sports Complex. On one side of the granite marker is a dedication to the Marines who fought and died in the battle, and on the other a message of gratitude to the Navy men who supported their mission. Another plaque admonishes the people of Kiribati to remember that the independence they gained from Britain in 1979 “would have been difficult to achieve without the gallantry and the blood of these most remarkable men of the United States Marines.” Another nearby monument in a park at Red Beach 2 was dedicated by the New Zealand High Commission to Kiribati in 2013 recognizing the sacrifice of US servicemen at Tarawa.

Two other war memorials commemorate Japanese and Korean losses, along with a commitment to cooperation and peace. The Japanese Memorial Garden (pictured here) is on Betio near Red Beach 2 and the Japanese Memorial Shrine is on Buariki islet, on the far northern end of Tarawa. (When I visited, the garden on Betio was closed and could only be seen through the fences.) Commemoration ceremonies are often held at Betio’s memorial sites, foreign dignitaries flying in to recognize the events that took place here. As far as I have found, no memorial exists to the i-Kiribati who suffered and died during the war.

Made up of low-lying atolls less than a mile wide and with average maximum elevations less than 6 meters above sea level, the threat of sea level rise has received serious attention by climate change scholars and activists, both for its inundation potential and for a greater incursion of sea water into freshwater aquifers. Some observers point to more damaging high and king tides as evidence of that threat. Sea walls and barriers, as seen here in this image of a beach on Betio (Red Beach 2), are ways islanders work to mitigate such affects.

The geometric lines of baby trees in Tarawa’s lagoon indicate intentional planting of mangroves along the atoll’s shores in the last several years, a project that also extended to four other atolls in Kiribati. In addition to their carbon sequestration, pollution mitigation, and wildlife habitat benefits, these growing mangroves represent another climate change mitigation strategy to stave off, or at least minimize the impacts of sea level rise and coastal erosion. Alt-hough the project contributes to the Kiribati national government’s official development and biodiversity plans and sought to involve local people in the planting, it has been supported by outside groups such as World Bank, the Global Environmental Facility, and the governments of Australia and New Zealand. Here again is an example where the ties between Kiribati and oth-er countries blurs the line between simple connection and reliance.

While Kiribati’s president, Anote Tong made addressing climate change one of his most important concerns. He successfully negotiated a deal in 2014 to acquire several acres surrounding Naviavia, a village on the large and rocky island of Vanua Levu in Fiji. This image shows the edge of Naviavia and the valley below that could potentially be used as an actual place of refuge, should the i-Kiribati be required to leave their home. Or, perhaps the move was a political statement to bring the world’s attention to the plight of Tong’s tiny country and encourage ongoing support from other countries. Outreach groups in Australia have offered specialized training to i-Kiribati young people in professional trades so that climate refugees from this nation may have a trade when they migrate to neighboring countries. Such efforts have lead to increased international attention on Kiribati for its vulnerability to global climate change. Major news outlets across the globe covered the purchase of Fijian village and a number of other journalists have profiled Kiribati as a nation facing significant potential impacts from climate change (see further reading for one good example from National Public Radio). According to some local residents, however, much of the global media’s attention to the threat of sea level rise here is overblown. They look to other points of view: that natural processes will lead to growth in coral atolls as the seas rise or that God will simply not allow their home-land to disappear.