Pacific islands vie
to greet millennium

‘They're hoping this will attract
masses of tourists so it will be
a big economic shot in the arm’

By Susan Kreifels
Star-Bulletin

Almost every day, Bill Paupe gets calls from tourists wanting to book rooms on "Millennium Island" in Kiribati.

Problem is, "there are no hotels there," said Paupe, the Pacific nation's honorary consul general here. If fact, there are no people.

Big-spending tourists around the world are searching out the perfect party place, where they can claim they were first to toast the new millennium. And with around 17,000 hours left in the countdown, the race is heating up.

Among the competitors: Kiribati, Fiji, Tonga and the New Zealand town of Gisborne.

"They'd like to be the first to put themselves on the map," said Robert Kiste, director of the Center for Pacific Island Studies at the University of Hawaii. "They're hoping this will attract masses of tourists so it will be a big economic shot in the arm."

Who will be first to officially celebrate Jan. 1, 2000, is debatable. The international date line, which can be arbitrarily fixed by nations, meanders through the Pacific Ocean on either side of the line marking 180 degrees longitude. Each claimant lies near or on that line.

Kiribati got a jump-start in the race. The date line used to cut through the nation's 33 islands, so Kiribati marked two calendar dates. Two years ago, the new government, on a political promise to ease administrative headaches, shifted the date line so that it would deal with only one date. That moved Kiribati's tourist center, Christmas Island, and Caroline Island a day ahead.

Since moving its date line east, Kiribati now claims its easternmost island, Caroline Island, will see the first dawn of 2000. Last spring the government changed the name of Caroline Island to Millennium Island to attract attention. But the island is uninhabited and unable to accommodate visitors. Tourists instead will be put up on Christmas Island to celebrate the "first" New Year, and officials hope boats will anchor off Caroline Island.

Karibaiti Taoaba, chairwoman of Kiribati's Millennium Committee, is hoping the moves will boost tourism there. But Kiribati has stiff competition, and the government is hiring foreign promoters to help market events.

"There's some secrecy," said a chuckling Taoaba about events Kiribati is planning. "We don't want to give out everything. Otherwise Tonga will know."

Although there was talk that Tonga would introduce daylight-saving time to jump it an hour ahead of other islands, that will not happen. Instead the kingdom will rest on historic claims that it is "the place where time began," said Annie Kaneshiro with the Honolulu-based Tonga Consular Agency.

That claim is based on an international meeting in Washington, D.C., in 1884. To standardize global navigation, a prime meridian was established at Greenwich, England, at zero degrees longitude.

The date line was positioned halfway around the globe at the 180th meridian in the Pacific Ocean.

"The new millennium committee agreed not to get into a battle with other Pacific nations on who is first to greet the millennium, but rather go for a regional effort to celebrate," Kaneshiro said.

Fiji straddles the 180th meridian and thus claims it will see the first sunrise of 2000.

And there's also Gisborne, New Zealand, which is advertising to be "the first city to see the light of the new millennium."

Bernadette Rounds Ganilau, of the South Pacific Millennium Consortium based in Fiji, said the consortium was developed to prevent competition among member nations.

Ganilau said bad feelings are more media hype than reality.

"We want to be sure that everybody does their bit to bring people into the region," Ganilau said.

For every first, there's usually a last, and there doesn't appear to be any competition for that spot. Ganilau said the title belongs to the Samoan islands.

American Samoa is playing its last spot big in conjunction with another celebration. The year 2000 marks its 100th anniversary as an American territory, and officials hope to have Hillary Rodham Clinton visit.

"They're going over the moon with their celebration," Ganilau said.

Most major hotels in American Samoa and Fiji's western side are booked and paid for during the millennium celebrations, she said.

Ship companies are also scheduling millennium cruises through the islands -- within a week one cruise had booked 105 passengers at $64,000 each.

Melvin Lonokaiolohia Kalahiki, a native Hawaiian, doesn't want to see Pacific islanders racing each other to the millennium.

He prefers that islanders be "one in spirit" as they watch the dawn cast light, island-by-island, on the year 2000.

Kalahiki is president of the Council of Hawaiian Organizations and is planning a Pacific-wide celebration to commemorate the next millennium.

For Christmas he received a "millennium watch" that counts down the time until the big event.

"I don't see any competition for who will be first," said Kalahiki.

"We will stand together on each island to see the new dawn."