{"id":130533,"date":"2026-10-25T12:44:38","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T07:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=130533"},"modified":"2026-10-25T15:31:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T10:01:06","slug":"bonin-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/bonin-islands\/","title":{"rendered":"Bonin Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><b>Bonin Islands Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A magnitude 6.5 earthquake recently struck the Bonin Islands region of Japan.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>About Bonin Islands<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Bonin Islands, also known as the <\/span><b>Ogasawara Islands,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are some <\/span><b>30 volcanic islands <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and islets in the<\/span><b> central Pacific Ocean<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, about <\/span><b>800 km southeast of Japan.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The islands command a <\/span><b>strategic position astride<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the <\/span><b>Pacific approaches to East Asia<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>History:<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The islands were <\/span><b>claimed by Japan from the British<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in <\/span><b>1875 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and placed under the Tokyo prefecture in 1880.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In <\/span><b>World War II <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">the islands formed a <\/span><b>major Japanese military stronghold<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> until they were<\/span><b> occupied by the U.S. Navy in 1945.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The islands were administered by the U.S. military until <\/span><b>1968, <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">when they were <\/span><b>returned to Japan.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Only a fraction <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of their total land area\u201473 sq.km.\u2014is <\/span><b>arable<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the <\/span><b>remainder being hilly and forested.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>largest and principal island <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is <\/span><b>Chichi <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(formerly Peel Island), the <\/span><b>site of Omura<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the <\/span><b>capital of the group<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and <\/span><b>Futami-ko (Port Lloyd)<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the <\/span><b>chief harbor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They have <\/span><b>never been connected to a continental land mass<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: the island chain emerged from the sea floor as submarine volcanoes and has always been oceanic.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This origin makes the archipelago a <\/span><b>laboratory for evolutionary divergence in isolation<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>195 endemic plant species (15% of all plant species<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> known from the islands)<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and<\/span><b> 100+ endemic land snail species <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">represent separate evolutionary lineages from any continental ancestor.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The<\/span><b> 440 species of fish <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">recorded in the <\/span><b>surrounding reefs<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> include species first described from Ogasawara that are<\/span><b> not found anywhere else<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Bonin flying fox: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A threatened <\/span><b>fruit bat <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">and the<\/span><b> only endemic mammal of the Ogasawara Islands.\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They have been dubbed the <\/span><b>\u201cGalapagos of the Orient\u201d <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">due to the presence of many flora and fauna species that have evolved there independently.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Ogasawara Islands were added to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/unesco-world-heritage-list\/\" target=\"_blank\"><b>UNESCO&#8217;s list of World Natural Heritage sites <\/b><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in July 2011. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>News: <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/world\/rest-of-world\/6-3-magnitude-earthquake-strikes-bonin-islands-region-of-japan\/articleshow\/135182116.cms\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><b>TOI<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bonin Islands are some 30 volcanic islands and islets in the central Pacific Ocean, about 800 km southeast of Japan. Read more about Bonin Islands, History, Latest News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":130566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11151,21,22,23],"class_list":["post-130533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","tag-bonin-islands","tag-prelims-pointers","tag-upsc-current-affairs","tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","no-featured-image-padding"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130533"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130565,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130533\/revisions\/130565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}