![]() Although the US government - like the governments of so many colonial powers - has minimized the consequences of its testing, its effects continue to this day. There are no exact numbers regarding how many people across the Marshall Islands were impacted, directly or indirectly, by the nuclear tests. Through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, money was paid to the Marshal Islanders as compensation for their exposure to the testing, but generations later the problem persists. Many Marshall Islands residents were exposed to radiation and nuclear fallout, and many of the islands remain contaminated to this day. While the Marshall Islands testing were only 14 percent of all US nuclear tests, they comprised nearly 80 percent of the total nuclear yields detonated by the US. Just five days after obtaining the agreement with the UN, the US Atomic Energy Commission established what it called the Pacific Proving Grounds and shortly thereafter began testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere and underwater across the region.ġ06 tests over a dozen years were conducted, many of them extremely high yield. In 1947 the US made an agreement with the UN to create a strategic trusteeship territory across islands of Micronesia, an area covering three million square miles comprised of two thousand islands. Adequate healthcare might be a first step toward justice – but so far, that step is far from realized. Trump has also promised to build new nuclear weapons.Īs a deadly reminder of the lingering health impacts from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War, untold numbers of Marshall Islands residents continue to seek healthcare, and justice, for having unwittingly been made human test subjects to nuclear tests.Īccording to Barker, multiple types of cancer continue to beset the Marshallese. The INF had banned all short and mid-rang nuclear and non-nuclear missiles, and helped to eliminate thousands of land-based missiles. ![]() President Donald Trump recently announced plans to remove the US from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, a move which many fear could ignite a new nuclear arms race. “‘Cold’ communicates the privilege of being far from the testing locations and not having to live with firsthand experiences with nuclear weapons.” “The Cold War was not ‘cold’ for the Marshallese…it was hot,” Holly Barker, who is a professor at the University of Washington and a commissioner on the Republic of Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission (a three-person commission with the goal of advancing nuclear justice for the Marshallese people), told Truthout. However, most Americans have little understanding of what the US government has inflicted on the Marshallese people. The injustice of this is not lost on her or on others in her immediate community. It’s really sad to me what we are having to go through just to get health care now, given what happened.” A Marshallese man in our community is undergoing chemo from his cancer that he got from the bombings, and now he has to stop his chemo because he can’t afford to continue the treatment. ![]() “But some of them come to Washington and are told they don’t qualify for health insurance or health care. “People from the Marshall Islands are moving out of there looking for healthcare,” Jally said. She has therefore become an advocate for their right to health care. “And she died of breast cancer, and left three boys and a girl behind.”įor Jally, working as a medical interpreter highlighted the health care disparity her Marshall Islands community faces, even here in the US. “Then my cousin passed a few years ago, who was in her mid-thirties,” she added. But Jally explained that he had a tumor, and believes it was from cancer. Given that he died in the Marshall Islands, which lacks any facilities to diagnose and treat cancer, the cause of his death is unknown. Her brother died in 2012, leaving behind his wife and two young boys. “Everybody I know in the Marshall Islands has stories of cancer in their families,” Jally, who lives in Tumwater, Washington where she works as a court and medical interpreter, told Truthout.
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