Gilbert and Ellice Islands around $250 million for revenue they had not received and for environmental destruction caused by phosphate mining practices similar to those on Nauru. The British authorities had relocated most of the population to Rabi Island, Fiji after 1945, but by the 1970s many were returning to Banaba. The British rejected the Banaban independence proposal, and the island remained under the jurisdiction of Kiribati. The Gilbert and Ellice Islands used their own postage stamps from 1911. Gilbert and Ellice Islands The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were a British protectorate from 1892 and colony from 1916 until 1 January 1976, when the
High Commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands High Commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands The High Commissioner of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands was an official who ruled the American Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a United Nations trusteeship in the Pacific Ocean under the administration of the United States, between 1947 and 1994. The territory consisted of islands captured by America during World War II, prior to which they had been part of the Empire of Japan as the South Pacific Mandate. After World War II, the United Nations placed the territory under the United States trusteeship as the Trust