Butaritari

Butaritari gets about four metres of rain a year, twice what falls on Tarawa, and it shows: bananas, breadfruit and papaya do well, and families grow babai, the giant swamp taro, in pits dug down to the water. About 3,200 people (2015 census) live in a dozen villages, Taubukinmeang the largest, beside a lagoon deep enough for big ships. Little Makin is only 3 km across the water.

Robert Louis Stevenson landed in July 1889 with Fanny and Lloyd Osbourne, and wrote of the ruler, Nakaeia, as a powerful and violent man. The war came twice. Marine raiders landed from submarines in August 1942; on 20 November 1943 American troops came ashore and declared the island taken three days later, at a cost of 66 American and some 395 Japanese and Korean lives, and 687 sailors died when the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay was lost offshore.

• The Makin battlefield Guided tours of the ground fought over in 1942 and 1943, and commemorations on 20 and 21 November that can be arranged.
• The lagoon Deep water inside the reef, reached from the ocean through narrow passes.
• Babai pits Giant swamp taro in dug pits, now at risk from seeping salt water.