Unea Island is an island in

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

located in the

Vitu Islands The Vitu Islands are a volcanic group with an area of 37 sq mi (96 km²) located in the Bismarck Sea off New Britain, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. They are not technically part of the Bismarck Archipelago. Administratively they are ...

. It was occupied by

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The Uneapa (or Bali) language is natively spoken on this island. In the local language, it is called ''Uniapa'' or ''Uneapa''. The term ''Unea'' comes from the

Vitu language Vitu (also spelled Witu or Vittu, referred by their own speakers as ''pole matotota'' "true speech" or ''pole Vitu'' "Vitu speech") or Muduapa is an Oceanic languages, Oceanic language spoken by about 7,000 people on the islands northwest of the ...

, and they descend from a proto-form ''*Uneap'' or ''*Uniap'', reflecting the addition of an echo vowel in Uneapa and the regular loss of final consonants in Vitu.

References

Islands of Papua New Guinea {{PapuaNewGuinea-island-stub