Life and Death in a Radioactive Nation: Lessons from Rongelap

Free Public Lecture by Barbara Rose Johnston of the Center for Political Ecology

This presentation explores the history and human environmental impacts of nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands, with specific focus on the experience of the people of Rongelap, Marshall Islands and their continuing efforts to secure meaningful remedy.

In 1946, the United States detonated two atomic weapons in the Marshall Islands. In 1947, the United Nations designated the Marshall Islands a United States Trust Territory, and over the next 11 years the territory hosted another sixty-five atmospheric atomic and thermonuclear tests. The largest of these tests, code named "Bravo," was detonated on March 1, 1954, melting huge quantities of coral atoll and depositing radioactive ash on inhabited atolls, including Rongelap and Utrik, some 100 and 300 miles from the test site at Bikini. Some communities and Japanese fishermen aboard the Daigo-Fukuuryumaru (Lucky Dragon, a tuna ship working in near-by waters) received near lethal doses of radiation.

What does it mean to host the largest and dirtiest nuclear weapons ever detonated by the United States?

Johnston is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Political Ecology, Santa Cruz, editor of "Half lives and Half Truths: Confronting the Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War" (2007) and co-author with Holly Barker of "Life and Death in a Radioactive Nation: Lessons from Rongelap", to be released this year.

Event Sponsor
UH Hilo Pacific Islands Studies Program, Anthropology Department and the Anthropology Club

More Information
Fiona McCormack, 974-7472, Fionam@hawaii.edu

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