Kiritimati (), also known as Christmas Island, is a Pacific Ocean atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. The name is derived from the English word "Christmas" written in Gilbertese according to its phonology, in which the combination is pronounced .
Kiritimati is one of the world's largest atolls in terms of land area, consisting of about land area and a network of lagoons;.
It lies north of the equator, south of Honolulu, and from San Francisco. Kiritimati is in the world's furthest forward time zone, UTC+14, and is therefore one of the first inhabited places on Earth to experience New Year's Day (see also Caroline Atoll, Kiribati). Although it lies east of the 180th meridian, the Republic of Kiribati realigned the International Date Line in 1995, placing Kiritimati to the west of the dateline.
Nuclear tests were conducted on and around Kiritimati by the United Kingdom in the late 1950s, and by the United States in 1962. During these tests, the island was not evacuated, exposing the Kiribati residents and the British, New Zealand, and Fijian servicemen to nuclear radiation.
The entire island is a wildlife sanctuary; access to five particularly sensitive areas is restricted. Permanent human settlement on Kiritimati likely didn't occur until 1882. Stratigraphic layers excavated in fire pits show alternating bands of charcoal indicating heavy use and local soil indicating a lack of use. As such, some researchers have suggested that Kiritimati was used intermittently (likely by people from Tabuaeran to the north) as a place to gather resources such as birds and turtles in a similar fashion to the ethnographically documented use of the five central atolls of the Caroline Islands. This discovery was referred by a contemporary, the Portuguese António Galvão, governor of Ternate, in his book Tratado dos Descubrimientos of 1563. During his third voyage, Captain James Cook visited the island on Christmas Eve (24 December) 1777 and the island was put on a map in 1781 as île des Tortues (Turtles Island) by in Augsburg. Whaling vessels visited the island from at least 1822. and it was claimed by the United States under the Guano Islands Act of 1856, though little actual mining of guano took place.
thumb|View of the village of [[London, Kiribati|London on Kiritimati, from a Handley Page Hastings of the RAF, 1956.]]
Permanent settlement started in 1882, mainly by workers in coconut plantations and fishermen. In 1902, the British Government granted a 99-year lease on the island to Levers Pacific Plantations. The company planted 72,863 coconut palms on the island and introduced silver-lipped pearl oysters into the lagoon. The settlement did not endure: Extreme drought killed 75% of the coconut palms, and the island was abandoned from 1905 to 1912. He lived in his Paris house (now only small ruins) located at Benson Point, across the Burgle Channel from Londres at Bridges Point (today London) where he established the port. He gave the name of Poland to a village where Stanisław (Stanislaus) Pełczyński, his Polish plantation manager then lived.
Joe English, of Medford, Massachusetts, Rougier's plantation manager from 1915 to 1919, named Joe's Hill (some high) after himself. English and two teenagers were marooned on the island for a year and a half (1917–1919) as transport had stopped due to the Spanish flu breaking out in Tahiti and around the world. English was later rescued by British admiral John Jellicoe. English, thinking that the rescue ship was German and the war was still in effect, pulled his revolver on the admiral Jellicoe, causing a short standoff until some explanation defused the situation.
Kiritimati was occupied by the Allies in World War II with the U.S. in control of the island garrison. The atoll was important to hold, since Japanese occupation would allow interdiction of the Hawaii-to-Australia supply route. For the first few months there were next to no recreational facilities on the island, and the men amused themselves by shooting sharks in the lagoon. The island's first airstrip was constructed at this time The United Kingdom conducted its first hydrogen bomb test series, Grapple 1–3, at Malden Island from 15 May to 19 June 1957 and used Kiritimati as the operation's main base. On 8 November 1957, the first H-bomb was detonated over the southeastern tip of Kiritimati in the Grapple X test. Subsequent tests in 1958 (Grapple Y and Z) also took place above or near Kiritimati.
The United Kingdom detonated some of nuclear payload near and directly above Kiritimati in 1957–1958, while the total yield of weapons tested by the United States in the vicinity of the island between 25 April and 11 July 1962 was . During the British Grapple X test, yield was stronger than expected, resulting in the blast demolishing buildings and infrastructure. Islanders were usually not evacuated during the nuclear weapons testing, and data on the environmental and public health impact of these tests remains contested. Servicemen believe that cancer and genetic damage were consequences of their occupational exposure and have sought apologies and compensation without success. A spokesperson for the UK's Ministry of Defence stated in 2018 that "the National Radiological Protection Board has carried out three large studies of nuclear test veterans and found no valid evidence to link participation in these tests to ill health."
The United States also conducted 22 successful nuclear detonations over the island as part of Operation Dominic in 1962. Some toponyms (like Banana and Main Camp) come from the nuclear testing period, during which at times over 4,000 servicemen were present. By 1969, military interest in Kiritimati had ended and the facilities were mostly dismantled. However, some communications, transport, and logistics facilities were converted for civilian use, which Kiritimati uses to serve as the administrative centre for the Line Islands.
London is the main village and hosts the port facility, and the ministry of the Line and Phoenix islands.
Poland hosts a Catholic church, dedicated under the auspices of Saint Stanislaus.
Banana is near Cassidy International Airport but may be relocated closer to London to prevent groundwater contamination.
Paris is an abandoned village and is no longer listed in census reports.
Education
There is a primary school in Poland and two high schools on the road between Tabwakea and Banana: one Catholic, St. Francis High School, The University of Hawaii has a climatological research facility on Kiritimati.
Exports of the atoll are mainly copra (dried coconut pulp); the state-owned coconut plantation covers about . In addition aquarium fish and seaweed are exported. A 1970s project to commercially breed Artemia salina brine shrimp in the salt ponds was abandoned in 1978. In recent years there have been attempts to explore the viability of live crayfish and chilled fish exports and salt production. Aloha Airlines introduced its weekly nonstop jet service between Honolulu and the island in 1986 operated with a Boeing 737-200. Aloha was continuing to serve Kiritimati from 2000 to 2003 with 737 jet service to and from Honolulu nonstop. Air Pacific ran flights to Kiritimati until 2008, when they ceased service over concerns about the condition of the runway. Services resumed in 2010. A monthly air freight service is flown using a chartered from Honolulu operated by Asia Pacific Airlines.
Aeon Field is an abandoned airport, constructed before the British nuclear tests. It is located on the southeastern peninsula.
Communications
The islands' remote location in the Central Pacific has meant that communications with the world has always been challenging.
As of October 2023 all calls and data rely on satellite connection only with very slow internet connection. It now has 3G data towers in June 2025.
In July 2022 The Southern Cross NEXT 15,857 km submarine cable system, entered service, connecting Los Angeles and Sydney with a dedicated 377 kilometres (one fibre pair) branch to Tabwakea, Kiritimati. The cable landing station is located in Tabwakea, owned by Bwebwerikinet Limited. As of October 2023 the landing station was built, but still not commissioned. Apart from Australia and the US, the cable will also provide direct low latency connection to Fiji, New Zealand and Tokelau.
Tourism
There is a small amount of tourism, mainly associated with anglers interested in lagoon fishing (for bonefish in particular) or offshore fishing. Week-long ecotourism packages during which some of the normally closed areas can be visited are also available.
The remote location and relatively low fishing pressure allow for an immersive flats-fishing experience. Improved accessibility through renewed tourism infrastructure has helped establish Kiritimati as one of the premier saltwater fly fishing destinations in the Pacific.
In recent years, surfers have discovered that there are good waves during the Northern Hemisphere's winter season and there are interests developing to service these recreational tourists. There is some tourism-related infrastructure, such as a small hotel, rental facilities, and food services.
Prospective launch sites
In the early 1950s, Wernher von Braun proposed using this island as a launch site for crewed spacecraft, based on its proximity to the equator, and the generally empty ocean down-range (east).
There is a Japanese JAXA satellite tracking station. The abandoned Aeon Field had at one time been proposed for reuse by the Japanese for their now-cancelled HOPE-X space shuttle project.
Kiritimati is also located fairly close to the Sea Launch satellite launching spot at 0° N 154° W, about 370 kilometres (200 nmi) to the east in international waters.
Geography
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Kiritimati's roughly lagoon area opens to the sea in the northwest; Burgle Channel (the entrance to the lagoon) is divided into the northern Cook Island Passage and the southern South Passage. The southeastern part of the lagoon area is partially desiccated. The lagoon area currently consists of a main lagoon at Burgle Channel. Southeast of this, the lagoon gradually transitions into a network of subsidiary lagoons, tidal flats, partially hypersaline brine ponds and salt pans which have a total combined area of about . Thus, the land and lagoon areas can only be given approximately, as no firm boundary exists between the main island body and the salt flats.
In addition to the main island, there are several smaller ones. Cook Island is part of the atoll proper but unconnected to the Kiritimati mainland. It is a sand/coral island of , divides Burgle Channel into the northern and the southern entrance, and has a large seabird colony. Islets (motus) in the lagoon include Motu Tabu () with its Pisonia forest and the shrub-covered Motu Upua (also called Motu Upou or Motu Upoa, ) at the northern side, and Ngaontetaake () at the eastern side. On the northwestern peninsula for example, the land rises only to some ,
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Demography
At the first census done in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony in 1931, there were only 38 inhabitants on the island, most of them workers of the Emmanuel Rougier Company. After WWII in 1947 there were 52 inhabitants. After the nuclear tests, in 1963, this had increased to 477, reducing to 367 by 1967 but increasing again to 674 in 1973, 1,265 in 1978, 1,737 in the 1985 census, 2,537 in 1990, 3,225 in 1995, 3,431 in 2000, 5,115 in 2005, 5,586 in 2010, 6,456 in 2015 and 7,369 in 2020. This was the fastest population growth in Kiribati.
Ecology
The flora and the fauna consist of taxa adapted to drought. Terrestrial fauna is scant; there are no truly native land mammals and only one native land bird – Kiribati's endemic reed-warbler, the bokikokiko (Acrocephalus aequinoctialis). The 1957 attempt to introduce the endangered Rimitara lorikeet (Vini kuhlii) has largely failed; a few birds seem to linger on, but the lack of abundant coconut palm forest, on which this tiny parrot depends, makes Kiritimati a suboptimal habitat for this species.
thumb|left|Flowers of beach naupaka ([[Scaevola taccada), Kiritimati's most typical woody plant.]]
Flora
The natural vegetation on Kiritimati consists mostly of low shrubland and grassland. What little woodland exists is mainly open coconut palm (Cocos nucifera) plantation. There are three small woods of catchbird trees (Pisonia grandis), at Southeast Point, Northwest Point, and on Motu Tabu. The latter was planted there in recent times. About 50 introduced plant species are found on Kiritimati; as most are plentiful around settlements, former military sites and roads, it seems that these only became established in the 20th century.
Other fauna
The only mammals native to the region are the common Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans) and the goats. The rat seems to have been introduced by seafarers many centuries before Cook arrived in 1777 (he mentioned them already being present); goats have been extinct since 14 January 2004. Black rats (Rattus rattus) were present at some time, perhaps introduced by 19th-century sailors or during the nuclear tests. They were not able to gain a foothold between predation by cats and competitive exclusion by Polynesian rats, and no black rat population is found on Kiritimati today.
Green turtles (Chelonia mydas) regularly nest in small numbers on Kiritimati. The lagoon is famous among sea anglers worldwide for its bonefish (Albula glossodonta), and has been stocked with Oreochromis tilapia to decrease overfishing of marine species. Though the tilapias thrive in brackish water of the flats, they will not last long should they escape into the surrounding ocean. claimed that there was negligible radiation hazard; certainly, fallout was successfully minimised. More recently however, a Massey University study of New Zealand found chromosomal translocations to be increased about threefold on average in veterans who participated in the tests;
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