All events · The War's Long Shadow

Removal of the Banabans to Rabi Island

c. 1945–1947 · Oceania

Displacement Territory Seized

Displaced

1,000

About 1,000 Banabans were resettled on Rabi from December 1945, with further movement in waves into the 1980s; the Rabi community grew from roughly 1,000 in 1945 to about 5,000 by 1995 and around 4,000 by the early 2000s. Banaba itself had only about 300 residents by 2005.

Share of the population affected

100%

of the Banaban population of Ocean Island at the time of the removal, 1945

Territory

6 km²

Banaba (Ocean Island), about 6 km², annexed by Britain in 1900 and leased to phosphate interests; roughly 90 per cent of its surface, some 22 million tonnes of rock, was stripped and exported between 1900 and 1979, leaving most of the island uninhabitable.

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What happened

Banaba, a small raised-coral island in the western Pacific, was annexed by Britain in 1900 after high-grade phosphate was found there, and the British Phosphate Commissioners obtained exclusive rights to occupy and mine it. Japanese forces occupied the island from 1942 to 1945, deporting most inhabitants and massacring the remaining Gilbertese labourers in August 1945. Rather than returning the Banabans after the war, the colonial authorities declared Banaba uninhabitable and moved them to Rabi Island in Fiji, some 2,000 km away, which had been bought with royalties from the Banabans' own phosphate; about 1,000 people landed there from December 1945 to find an undeveloped island without housing or services. Mining continued on Banaba until the deposits were exhausted in 1979, by which time roughly 90 per cent of the island's surface had been removed. The Banabans sued Britain and the phosphate commissioners in the English courts from 1965; the litigation ended in 1979 without the damages sought, and in 1981 they accepted an ex gratia settlement of A$10 million. The Rabi community, now Fijian citizens with a distinct legal status, continues to press claims over the destruction of their homeland.

Parties

The British colonial administration and the British Phosphate Commissioners moved the Banaban people to Rabi Island in Fiji and continued mining their island

Disputed

Whether the move was consensual is disputed: British records describe agreement by Banaban leaders and the purchase of Rabi on their behalf, while Banaban accounts and later legal claims characterise the relocation as coerced, conducted without informed consent and on the false premise that the island was uninhabitable, and the amount of phosphate revenue actually paid to Banabans remains contested.

The denominator

About 1,000 Banabans were landed on Rabi in December 1945, together with some 300 Gilbertese. The prewar community numbered roughly 1,000-1,300; it had been dispersed by the Japanese occupation to Nauru, Tarawa and Kosrae, and the survivors were gathered and shipped to Fiji rather than returned home.

Effectively the whole community was moved, so the ratio is 100% by construction rather than by measurement.

Where the baseline comes from

Banaba Islandopen-edited
Rabi Islandopen-edited

On the death toll

The 1945 relocation itself caused no significant death toll; hardship on arrival at an undeveloped Rabi was severe but no count of deaths exists. Separately, Britannica records that Japanese occupying forces massacred the Gilbertese labourers remaining on Banaba in August 1945, an act by a different actor in the immediately preceding period and not part of the British relocation.

Documented forms of violence

Destruction of Property

Minority Rights Group and ICAAD document that phosphate mining stripped roughly 90 per cent of Banaba's surface between 1900 and 1979, destroying the village lands and cultivable ground of the removed population.