It is commendable for the Bishop Museum to acknowledge phosphate mining and its further impacts on Banaba Island (“Bishop Museum exhibit exposes devastation by mining on South Pacific island,” Star-Advertiser, Nov. 13).

There are other factors to the devastation of Banaba and its populace.

After a three-year drought that started in 1873, most of the populace departed. Three-quarters of the trees and other vegetation died.

In 1945, at the end of World War II under Japanese occupation, 199 of 200 people on Banaba were executed.

Tragic in all respects, this history must be told to the fullest.

Greg Casler

Kailua

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