Tulagi (less commonly known as Tulaghi) is a small island in Solomon Islands, just off the south coast of Ngella Sule. The town of Tulagi is the capital of the Central Province.
From 1896 to 1942, the town of Tulagi was the capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. This island was favored as better isolated and healthier than the disease-ridden larger islands of the archipelago.
Allied forces, primarily the 1st Marine Raiders, landed on August 7 and captured Tulagi as part of Operation Watchtower after a day of hard fighting.
After its capture by United States Navy and Marine Corps forces, the island hosted a squadron of PT boats for a year (including John F. Kennedy's PT-109) and other ancillary facilities. A small 20-bed dispensary was operated on Tulagi until its closure in 1946. The island also formed part of Purvis Bay, which hosted many US Navy ships through 1942 and 1943.
In October 2019, the government of Central Province signed a deal to grant the 75-year lease of the entire island of Tulagi to a Chinese company China Sam Enterprise Group.[3] However, this was declared unconstitutional by the Solomon Islands parliament after a week and, consequently, the deal was cancelled.
Scuba diving
Tulagi offers numerous scuba diving locations. The wrecks of USS Aaron Ward, USS Kanawha, and HMNZS Moa are close by, and the wrecks of Ironbottom Sound are not much further off, to the south and west. These three ships were all sunk in the same Japanese naval air raid, part of the Operation "I" on April 7, 1943. The Ward lies upright and intact, its deck replete with artifacts, on a sandy bottom at 70 metres (230 feet).
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