Nuclear Fallout in the Marshall Islands: A Mistake
by I’m a baby boomer so the tales of nuclear devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were an unsettling casualty of war that was etched in the pages of my history textbooks. However, I don’t recall mention of the nuclear tests performed in Operation Castle. Specifically, the Castle Bravo test of 1954, which was intended to be a secret, or the resulting fallout from the accident that occurred there.
An hour after the shot Navy ships 30 miles south of Bikini found themselves being dusted with fallout and deck radiation levels rising to 5 Rads per hour. Navy personnel were forced to retreat below decks and the ships retreated farther from the atoll.
Dangerous levels of radiation spread over an area more than 100 miles, as illustrated above. Some of the area included islands that were inhabited.
Human Casualties
Rongelap Atoll, approximately 150 miles from Bikini Atoll was contaminated by the nuclear fallout Bravo created. 64 inhabitants received 175 rads prior to their evacuation some 44 hours after the detonation. They were forced to leave behind their homes as well as all of their belongings as they relocated to Kwajajlein for medical treatment.
A map of the Marshall Islands
When the US declared the area clean and safe in 1957, three years after the fallout, islanders were allowed to return to the atoll But the contamination was still evident. Exposed natives suffered from cancer and birth defects. Many of the residents developed thyroid tumors and many of the children died of leukemia. The island’s magistrate had lost his own son to leukemia and made an appeal for international help. Not until the intervention of Greenpeace in 1985 did the people of Rongelap receive the help they requested. However, as had happened previously with the residents of Bikini, resettlement presented new challenges. Many of Rongelap’s residents were relocated to Ebeye which is much smaller in size and experienced additional problems such as joblessness, suicide and overcrowding.
The Biggest Mistake
In addition to the error on the part of the United States Department of Energy Los Alamos National Laboratory, another reason may be cited as partially to blame for the enormity of the accident. The weather forecast and weather patterns in the area had not been studied and analyzed. Had they been, they would have indicated that the testing should be postponed. Failure to postpone testing resulted in fallout being carried even further throughout the atoll by the wind.
The worst mistake, however, seems to be the continued testing by the government with such little regard for human life. Following the success of Operation Crossroads at the Bikini Atoll in 1946, the government was well aware of the effect testing had on the local residents. Yet they continued their testing with even more tragic results. In 1996, the United States Department of Interior signed a $45 billion resettlement with the islanders who have tragically paid for our mistake.
Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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