The Solomon Islands are a Pacific archipelago of roughly 1,000 islands east of Papua New Guinea. They observe UTC+11 year-round, no daylight saving. The IANA identifier is Pacific/Guadalcanal, named for the largest island in the chain.

The capital, Honiara, sits on Guadalcanal’s northern coast.

Guadalcanal

From August 1942 to February 1943, Guadalcanal was the site of the first major Allied offensive in the Pacific War. The Japanese had been constructing an airfield on the island; the United States Marines landed to seize it on August 7, 1942.

What followed was six months of grinding combat in jungle heat and malaria-saturated terrain. The fighting was not just on land: the waters around Guadalcanal, now called Iron Bottom Sound, contain the wrecks of dozens of warships from both sides, sunk in a series of night battles that the Japanese navy won repeatedly in the early months before American naval power overwhelmed them.

Approximately 7,100 American soldiers and Marines were killed in the Guadalcanal campaign. Japanese losses were higher, including deaths from disease and starvation that outnumbered combat deaths. It was the campaign that decisively shifted the Pacific War in the Allies’ favor.

Iron Bottom Sound still holds those wrecks. They are dive sites now.

Independence and the Tensions

The Solomon Islands gained independence from Britain in 1978. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the islands experienced a period of ethnic conflict between people from Guadalcanal and migrants from the island of Malaita who had settled on Guadalcanal, called “the Tensions.” The conflict involved armed militias and effectively paralyzed the national government.

In 2003, a regional intervention force led by Australia and New Zealand, the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), deployed to restore order. RAMSI remained until 2017.

Pacific island time

The IANA identifier being Pacific/Guadalcanal rather than Pacific/Honiara is an artifact of the database’s early organization. Honiara is the capital city and is on Guadalcanal. The practical meaning is the same.

UTC+11 places the Solomon Islands roughly in alignment with their longitude of 158 degrees East: solar noon occurs around 11:32 UTC, which at UTC+11 is 22:32 minus 12, or 10:32 local time. The clock is slightly behind the sun, meaning local noon is actually around 10:30 AM by the sun’s position. This is slightly unusual, but not dramatically misaligned.

For developers

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