Kiritimati

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Coordinates: 1°53′00″N, 157°24′00″W

For the island in the Indian Ocean, see Christmas Island.

NASA photograph of Kiritimati Island, taken from the International Space Station.

Kiritimati map

Kiritimati—also called Christmas Island—is a Pacific Ocean atoll in the northern Line Islands and part of the Republic of Kiribati. The island has the greatest land area of any coral atoll in the world: 642 square kilometres (248 sq mi). Indeed, it comprises over 70% of the total land area of Kiribati, a nation encompassing 33 Pacific atolls.

Kiritimati is about 150 km in perimeter. Parts of its lagoon are dried out. In addition to the main island, there are several smaller ones. Cook Island has a size of 19 ha and a large seabird colony. Other islands are Motu Upua (> 19 ha), Ngaontetaake (27 ha), and Motu Tabu (3.5 ha).

[edit] History

Kiritimati was discovered by Europeans on December 24, 1777 by Captain James Cook. Kiritimati is the Gilbertese spelling of Christmas (in Gilbertese, the ti combination is pronounced s; thus kee-rees-mass). Gilbertese is the only language spoken on the island.

This island was once claimed under the Guano Islands Act of 1856 for the United States. This claim has been formally ceded by a treaty between US and Kiribati signed in 1979 (ratified in 1983).

During World War II, the U. S. Army Air Forces maintained a weather station and a communications center on the atoll. They were serviced by an airstrip which also provided rest and refueling facilities for planes traveling between Hawaii and the South Pacific. There was also a small civilian radio-meteorological research station. ^[1]

Presently, there are four villages on the island:

All villages are listed in the following table, with the preliminary census results of 2005:

No.	Village	Population (Census 2005)
1	London	1829
2	Tabwakea	1881
3	Banana (Banana Wells)	1170
4	Poland	235
5	Paris (ruins)	-
	Kiritimati	5115

London is the main village and port facility. Banana is near Cassidy Airport but may be relocated closer to London to prevent contamination of the groundwater. The abandoned village of Paris is not listed in census reports anymore. Many of the place names in the island date from Father Emmanuel Rougier, a French priest who leased the island from 1917 to 1939 and planted some 800,000 coconut trees there. He lived in his Paris house (now, only small ruins) located across the Burgle Channel (main entrance to the lagoon) from Londres (or London, which he established as a port). La colline de Joe (Joe's Hill) is the highest point on the atoll (less than 12 m or 40 ft above sea level) near Artemia Corners.

The British tested their first H-Bomb here in May 1957, and the United States conducted Operation Dominic here in 1962. Some toponyms come from the nuclear test period (like Banana and Main Camp).

There is a Japanese JAXA satellite tracking station and an abandoned airfield (Aeon Field) proposed for reuse by the Japanese for their now-canceled HOPE-X project (a space shuttle).

The island has about 5,000 inhabitants and 2 representatives in the Maneaba ni Maungatabu. The ministry of the Line and Phoenix islands is located in London. There are also two new high schools on the road between Tabwakea and Banana: one Catholic and one Protestant.

Previously (ended on April 26, 2004) a charter flight by Air Kiribati (done by Aloha Airlines) connected Christmas to Honolulu every week with a Boeing 737. Provisional jets shortly replaced it. Since October 2005, Air Pacific makes a weekly stop between Honolulu and Nadi in Fiji. Cassidy Airport (IATA-code CXI) has a paved runway with a length of 6900 ft/2103 m. A large and modern jetty, handling some cargo, was built by the Japanese.

Rainfall is low except during El Niño years. The flora and the fauna are unique, but the island is affected by regular, severe droughts. Most of the atoll's food supplies have to be imported, although marine fish are plentiful. Exports of the atoll include aquarium fish, coconuts, and seaweed. Additionally, there is a small amount of tourism, mainly associated with anglers interested in lagoon bonefish fishing or offshore fishing.

[edit] Trivia

Kiritimati is the first inhabited place on Earth to experience the New Year each year (see Caroline Atoll, Kiribati).
In the early 1950s, Wernher von Braun proposed using this island as a launch site for manned spacecraft.
Kiritimati is also located very close to the Boeing-led Sea Launch satellite launching spot