The Marshall Islands experienced 67 known atmospheric nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, resulting in an ongoing legacy of death, illness, and contamination. Photo: Marshall Islands Journal/RNZ Pacific
The Marshall Islands marked 71 years since the most powerful nuclear weapons tests ever conducted were unleashed over the weekend.
The Micronesian nation experienced 67 known atmospheric nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, resulting in an ongoing legacy of death, illness, and contamination.
The country's President Hilda Heine says her people continue to face the impacts of US nuclear weapons testing seven decades after the last bomb was detonated.
The Pacific Islands have a complex history of nuclear weapons testing, but the impacts are very much a present-day challenge, Heine said at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders' meeting in Tonga last year.
She said that the consequences of nuclear weapons testing "in our own home" are "expensive" and "cross-cutting".
"When I was just a young girl, our islands were turned into a big laboratory to test the capabilities of weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare agents, and unexploded ordinance," she said.
"The impacts are not just historical facts, but contemporary challenges," she added, noting that "the health consequences for the Marshallese people are severe and persistent through generations."
"We are now working to reshape the narrative from that of being victims to one of active agencies in helping to shape our own future and that of the world around us," she told Pacific leaders, where the United Nations secretary-general António Guterres was a special guest.
President Hilda Heine and UNSG António Guterres at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders meeting in Nuku'alofa, Tonga. August 2024 Photo: RNZ Pacific / Lydia Lewis
She said the displacement of communities from ancestral lands has resulted in grave cultural impacts, hindering traditional knowledge from being passed down to younger generations.
"As well as certain traditional practices, customs, ceremonies and even a navigational school once defining our very identity and become a distant memory, memorialised through chance and storytelling.
"The environmental legacy is contamination and destruction: craters, radiation, toxic remnants, and a dome containing radioactive waste with a half-life of 24,000 years have rendered significant areas uninhabitable.
"Key ecosystems, once full of life and providing sustenance to our people, are now compromised."
Heine said cancer and thyroid diseases are among a list of presumed radiation-induced medical conditions that are particularly prevalent in the Marshallese community.
Displacement, loss of land, and psychological trauma are also contributing factors to high rates of non-communicable diseases, she said.
Containment of nuclear waste in the Marshall Islands. Photo: Supplied
"Despite these immense challenges, the Marshallese people have shown remarkable resilience and strength. Our journey has been one of survival, advocacy, and an unyielding pursuit of justice.
"We have fought tirelessly to have our voices heard on the international stage, seeking recognition."
In 2017, the Marshall Islands government created the National Nuclear Commission to coordinate efforts to address testing impacts.
"We are a unique and important moral compass in the global movement for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation," Heine said.
Kurt Campbell at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nuku'alofa, Tonga. August 2024 Photo: RNZ Pacific / Lydia Lewis
The US deputy secretary of state in the Biden-Harris administration Kurt Cambell said that Washington, over decades, had committed billions of dollars to the damages and the rebuilding of the Marshall Islands.
"I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden, and we are doing what we can to support the people in the [Compact of Free Association] states, including the Marshall Islands," he said.
"This is not a legacy that we seek to avoid. We have attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment," he told reporters in Nuku'alofa.
A shared nuclear legacy
The National Nuclear Commission chairperson Ariana Tibon-Kilma, a direct descendant of survivors of the nuclear weapons testing program Project 4.1 - which was the top-secret medical lab study on the effects of radiation on human bodies - told RNZ Pacific that what occured in Marshall Islands should not happen to any country.
"This program was conducted without consent from any of the Marshallese people," she said.
"For a number of years, they were studied and monitored, and sometimes even flown out to the US and displayed as a showcase.
"The history and trauma associated with what happened to my family, as well as many other families in the Marshall Islands, was barely spoken of.
"What happened to the Marshallese people is something that we would not wish upon any other Pacific island country or any other person in humanity."
She said the nuclear legacy is a shared one.
"We all share one Pacific Ocean and what happened to the Marshall Islands, I am, sure resonates throughout the Pacific," Tibon-Kilma said.
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Pacific head Heike Alefsen at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nuku'alofa, Tonga. August 2024 Photo: RNZ Pacific / Lydia Lewis
Billions in compensation
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the Pacific head Heike Alefsen told RNZ Pacific in Nuku'alofa that "we understand that there are communities that have been displaced for a long time to other islands".
"I think compensation for survivors is key," she said.
"It is part of a transitional justice approach. I can't really speak to the breadth and the depth of the compensation that would need to be provided, but it is certainly an ongoing issue for discussion."
