IT has been 73 years since Japanese planes flew over Banaba (once known as Ocean Island), marking the start of a brutal, three-year invasion as troops stormed the island in 1942, reducing it to wasteland and forcing its inhabitants to scramble for survival.
“Bombs dropping from planes and guns — the things you see in movies — that was real for us,” Tein recalled.
Through a daughter who facilitated as a translator, Tein spoke vigorously about her people, and the hurried fear and trauma that swooned over their daily lives.
“Bukenterike was the first place to be bombed. We didn’t really know what these things were, and we were scared. Our villages were destroyed, our people were killed and there was no food. We had to look for our own food. That’s what we had to live with,” she recalled.
“We hid in caves to stay safe. It was like that for a while. We didn’t go to school or anything, just tried to keep safe because the Japanese had taken over.”
The island had been a prosperous mining site for the British Phosphate Commission (BPC) and its administration officers and labourers were shipped to the Kiribati capital of Tarawa before the Japanese invasion. Only a handful of Europeans were left behind with Banaban natives, and as rations dipped, even the fish they caught were confiscated by Japanese soldiers.
“There were four villages — Tabiang, Buakonikai, Tabwewa and Uma. We moved around as villages, and families were responsible for feeding their own.”
In October, 1945, the Japanese invaders surrendered to Australian forces, after which, the survivors on the island were shipped to Tarawa.
It wouldn’t be the end of their disruptive existence, though.
“On our way to Tarawa, we saw submarines for the first time. I was five years old,” Tein remembered.
She was the third child in a family of four children, and has for a long time, been the only survivor, as two brothers died in Banaba as children, while her sister died in Rabi after the move there.
Leaving Banaba
It was in Tarawa where Banaban natives were urged to resettle in Rabi, off the coast of Vanua Levu, Fiji.
The crowd of eager Banabans who wanted to return home included Tein’s own mother, Rateisi, who came from Bokanikai Village, and her father, Kareaiti, a Tabwewa villager.
“My parents wanted to go back to Banaba, but they were all told that Fiji was much better.
The Banabans were told by British officials that Rabi would be a better alternative than returning to Banaba, which had been overly minded and not good for resettlement.
Accounts also note that the people were shown photographs of Levuka and told their comfortable house were what awaited them on Rabi.
“We were deceived. Many were not educated. The people were also told that they could return to Banaba if they wanted after two-years, but it never really happened.”
Touted as an awaiting gem of an island, Rabi was purchased for £25,000 ($F82,000), and paid for by the Banaban’s own phosphate royalties in the Banaban Provident Fund.
“I was very young but I remember the boat, the Triona, being really crowded when it took us all to Rabi,” Tein said.
“A woman on board delivered a baby during the voyage. It was a very uncomfortable trip and when we reached Rabi, we were given tents to sleep in. There were no houses, even though our people were told that there would be homes waiting for us.”
Rabi had previously been owned by the Lever’s Pacific Plantations Pty Ltd, and it was their residential block that was the only building on the island when over 700 Banaban natives arrived on December 15, 1945.
Among these was eight-year-old Tein, alongside her parents and grand parents, who all died in Rabi with her sister.
“We reached Rabi during the hurricane season. There was only about one building and our elderly were taken to sleep there because of the cold. It was a sad time. The rest of us slept in the tents.”
Tein remembers that there were also several native Fijian and Solomon Islander labourers on Rabi when the BPC vessel, Triona arrived.
Thoughts had also lingered for those who had died in Banaba, which included hand-bound and blind-folded men who were left to fall into jagged rocks by Japanese troops. The sole survivor of this massacre, Kabunare Koura, provided a painful account of this experience in Swimming with Sharks, (Michael Field, 2010).
He was among 160 Kiribati natives (formerly known as Gilbert islanders) on Banaba and one of the hordes of defenceless men pushed off a cliff by Japanese bayonets, for supposedly having too much knowledge of the Japanese defence lay out on the island.
Settling on Rabi
This resettlement was no easy fete for a people whose land had been plundered by the BPC and further ravaged by Japanese invaders. In further anguish, they had to pay for an island many were reluctant to move to, with a further scattering of its people to Kiribati and Nauru reducing them to a small minority when they arrived on Rabi.
“My parents didn’t like Rabi at first, but they were forced to get used to it.”
It was a painful reconciliation of acceptance and adaptation.
“The people were split up into their own villages and the areas they settled were named after our four villages back home.”
Tein also recalled that after some time, several went back to Banaba to survey the land’s capability of phosphate, which they hoped to restart mining for.
“In 1947, I went back to Banaba with some family members, and that was my last trip there.”
Life goes on
Following the years spent in a dizzying spate of evacuations and resettlements, life on Rabi assumed some degree of normalcy for its new residents.
“We had school studies conducted by Banaban teachers, so it provided some education.
In Banaban culture, we do not have chiefs, just elders, and so the island we were governed by a council of elders. It usually consists of an elder from each family or village. Because we don’t have a chiefly system, everybody is regarded as equals.”
Tein says that despite being uprooted and transplanted to Fiji, she is pleased that her people have been able to retain their own customs and language, which form the basis of their identity.
She also noted that while the Banaban were originally distinct — in ethnic makeup and speak — from Kiribati — their assimilation and mixed marriages have resulted in their language now largely consisting of Kiribati words.
Her husband, Bone Temasita, was an i-Kiribati and together they had a son and four daughters, among whom is Teri, who Tein resides with in Lautoka.
“We still pass on stories and what we know of from our homeland, to our children.
We were a small group, and what’s interesting is that when we first arrived on Rabi, the young men and women were not allowed to marry outside their own. They had to marry fellow Banabans.”
Tein also noted that the value placed on their women was dictated by traditional Banaban culture, for practical reasons. With the island being a solitary raised coral platform — and at 266ft, home to the highest point in Kiribati — access to fresh water was a consternation that natives handled by appeasing the Gods with beautifully — groomed girls.
“Young women would be dressed up nicely and sent down to draw water from a rock deep in the island,” Tein said.
“Drinking water was always hard to find, and young ladies were used for fetching, so for our people, it was really a celebration when girls were born.”
She smiles now, proud to share a unique facet of her people against other Pacific Islanders.
She may be far removed from Banaba, but still considers it home, and any reference to this precious homeland is done so with passion and reverence, despite the fragmented journey of its people.
