Kiritimati, or Christmas Island, is a Pacific Ocean raised coral atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. The name Kiritimati is a respelling of the English word Christmas in the Kiribati language, in which the combination ti is pronounced s, and the name is thus pronounced . The island has the greatest land area of any coral atoll in the world, about 388 square kilometres ; its lagoon is roughly the same size. The atoll is about 150 km in perimeter, while the lagoon shoreline extends for over 48 km . Kiritimati comprises over 70% of the total land area of Kiribati, a country encompassing 33 Pacific atolls and islands.It lies 232 km north of the Equator, 2,160 km south of Honolulu, and 5,360 km from San Francisco. Kiritimati Island is in the world's farthest forward time zone, UTC+14, and is one of the first inhabited places on Earth to experience the New Year . Despite being 2,460 km east of the 180 meridian, a 1995 realignment of the International Date Line by the Republic of Kiribati moved Kiritimati to west of the dateline. Nuclear tests were conducted on and around Kiritimati by the United Kingdom in the late 1950s, and by the United States in 1962. During these tests islanders were not evacuated. Subsequently, British, New Zealand, and Fijian servicemen as well as local islanders have suffered from exposure to the radiation from these blasts. The entire island is a Wildlife Sanctuary; access to five particularly sensitive areas is restricted.
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