BUKA ISLAND

one of the northern Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, in the southwestern Pacific. It lies northwest of Bougainville Island, from which it is separated by the deep Buka Passage (5 miles wide). A volcanic formation measuring 35 miles by 9 miles (56 km by 14 km), Buka has a total land area of 190 square miles (492 square km). Rising to 1,634 feet (498 m) in hills on the southwest, the island is densely forested in the interior. Rainfall is abundant, with more than 100 inches (2,500 mm) annually. Coral reefs fringe the south and west coasts, the latter deeply indented by Queen Carola Harbour. Buka was visited in 1767 by a British navigator, Philip Carteret, who named it Winchelsea. Placed under a German protectorate in 1885, the island remained under that administration by virtue of a British-American-German agreement reached just before the turn of the century. The island was taken by Australian troops in 1914 and mandated to Australia in 1920. Held by the Japanese from 1942 to 1945, it was included in the UN Trust Territory of New Guinea after World War II and became part of Papua New Guinea when that country achieved its independence in 1975. Pop. (1984 est.) Buka and adjacent small islands, 40,000.