Banaba, formerly Ocean Island, an island of the nation of Kiribati in the western Pacific Ocean, near the equator and Nauru. Banaba, the only island of Kiribati that is not a coral atoll, lies in the Gilbert Islands group. It formerly contained rich deposits of high-grade phosphate, but these were exhausted by the early 1980s. Banaba was sighted by a British ship in 1804 and annexed by the British to the Gilbert and Ellice islands in 1900. It was the administrative center of the dependency before World War II began in 1939. During the war the indigenous Banabans were exiled to a forced-labor camp by the Japanese. After the war ended in 1945, the British resettled the Banabans on one of the Fiji Islands. Banabans began returning to Banaba during the 1970s. In 1979 the island became independent of the United Kingdom as part of Kiribati. In 1981 the Banabans won compensation in a British court for phosphates mined over the previous 50 years by outside interests. Area, 5.7 sq km (2.2 sq mi); population (1990) 284.