Banana is a
village
A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...
in
Kiribati
Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, and more than half live on Tarawa. The st ...
, located in the northeast of the island of
Kiritimati
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 phonol ...
, within the
archipelago
An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...
of
Line Islands
The Line Islands, Teraina Islands or Equatorial Islands () are a chain of 11 atolls (with partly or fully enclosed lagoons, except Vostok and Jarvis) and coral islands (with a surrounding reef) in the central Pacific Ocean, south of the Hawa ...
. It is located close to
Cassidy International Airport.
Name
In 1962, when over 4,000 American servicemen were on the island as part of
Operation Dominic
Operation Dominic was a series of 31 nuclear test explosions ("shots") with a total yield conducted in 1962 by the United States in the Pacific. This test series was scheduled quickly, in order to respond in kind to the Soviet resumption of t ...
, the village became known as Banana for unclear reasons.
[
]
Demographics
According to the 2015 census, Banana was inhabited by 1,209 people, making it the third most populous of the four villages on the island. This includes 567 children aged 0-17, 529 people aged 18-49, and 113 people over 50 years of age.
Social media incident
In 2024, a Twitter account (@KiribatiGov) which had successfully impersonated the Kiribati government for some time went viral after responding, "Fine. You're not invited." to a post making fun of the village's name.
References
{{reflist
Populated places in Kiribati
Kiritimati