The biggest nuclear weapon the U.S. detonated wasn't in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
It was in the Marshall Islands.
It was here in these atolls located halfway between Hawaii and Australia
that the U.S. detonated a weapon codenamed Castle Bravo.
And it was...
- about a thousand times the force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The Marshall Islands is mostly made up of atolls,
which are ring-shaped coral reefs with a lagoon in the middle.
And some of these atolls were still inhabited
when the nuclear fallout dropped from the sky onto people's bodies.
- My cousin Iroji, he was on top of a tree whenever the powder fell.
He died when he was a teenager.
In fact, the U.S. tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands,
and the damage they caused was unthinkable.
Malformed babies, jellyfish babies, some people call them.
The long-term side effects are still hurting people to this day.
Cancer rates in the Marshall Islands,
in the Marshallese community, are higher than the general population.
And after testing nuclear weapons on their islands,
the U.S. studied the Marshallese people without their consent.
- The United States chose us to be guinea pigs
to develop their weapons.
The Marshall Islands gained its independence from the United States in 1979,
but when it was a U.S. territory it was abused as a testing ground for nuclear weapons.
The world is afraid of America because of that hydrogen bomb
was created in the Marshall Islands.
I'm still thinking, why?
Why Marshall Islands?
Why us?
Neisen Laukon is a nuclear survivor,
who like many other Marshallese, has now moved from the islands to Arkansas.
She was just a year old when the Castle Bravo explosion detonated.
And she was directly affected by radiation growing up in the contaminated Rongelap Atoll.
- I remember people get really, really sick all the time.
Sick with thyroid, sick with cancer.
I was angry because a lot of my cousins,
like my cousin Lekoj, he went back in a box.
From 1946 to 1958, the U.S. tested 67 atomic weapons in the Marshall Islands,
none more destructive than Castle Bravo, tested in 1954.
The U.S. Army actually wasn't expecting the Castle Bravo explosion to be as big as it was.
The materials used in the weapon actually fissioned in such a way
that the bomb nearly tripled its yield and drastically expanded the blast radius.
- Camera position: 50 miles at 10,000 feet.
And then there was the wind.
It blew in a different direction than what the scientists expected,
and carried nuclear fallout to nearby populated islands.
- Even so, the winds were within the area of acceptable fallout.
That's the word they used: acceptable fallout.
On the atoll's upper islands,
this H+5 to H+50 hour dosage
ran from possibly 1,500 to 3,000 roentgen, well above the lethal human dose.
The devastation was massive.
- The frame size of the picture is 14 by 18 miles.
The film is running at normal speed.
Neisen wasn't on Rongelap that day.
She was on nearby Kwajalein Atoll, where the U.S. Army had set up a base camp.
But Neisen's family was on the exposed island, and she described what her family saw.
My uncle John Anjain, he was having coffee,
5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, and they saw a bright, bright light.
Smoke went up, all the way up to the cloud.
And then when it reached the cloud, it exploded.
It was louder than thunder.
They were so scared that women and children ran into the bush and hid there.
According to her family, that's when the powder started falling.
- Fallout of the radioactive particles now begins, for a period of 10 hours or more.
- My cousin Iroji, he was on top of a tree whenever the powder fell,
and he ran to the ocean because he was burned all over, and it got worse.
Nobody told them anything.
All day long and all night long, the powder fell on the island.
People were sick. Diarrhea, stomach aches.
Aches all over their body. The next day, their hair fell out.
- A majority of those receiving the heaviest radiation
reported some transient nausea on the first or second day.
Some loss of hair was a frequent symptom.
Most of the Marshallese in this category developed multiple skin lesions,
predominantly on the scalp, back of the neck, and feet.
On the third day, a ship came and a seaplane came,
and this guy named Oscar DeBrum said, “Everybody get on board.
If you're thinking about staying back, you're going to die.”
So everybody got on board.
- Two hundred twenty-nine Marshall Islanders and 28 American service personnel
were evacuated to Kwajalein for survey and treatment.
Hundreds of lives were harmed and disrupted.
All to test these deadly bombs.
And this history of colonization and destruction
isn't taught in American classrooms.
The Marshall Islands is located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Benetick Maddison wants to make sure
that both Marshallese and Americans don't forget about this history.
Around World War I, Japan took over the Marshall Islands.
- The Caroline and Marshall Islands,
which were mandated to Japan after the World War,
and which she seized for her own when she left the League of Nations.
- They were pushed out by the Americans in 1944.
- Out of the war, the United States inherited many new Pacific islands.
And soon, right after, the United States was looking for a place
where they could test nuclear weapons.
Even though the U.S. had killed more than 200,000 people
by dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
the very next year it decided to test even more nuclear weapons.
- In 1946, Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands
was the scene of the first of these tests.
This was Operation Crossroads.
Over the next 12 years, there were other operations too:
with the devastating Bravo explosion.
- Because of its remoteness, and also because of its small Indigenous population,
the United States chose the Marshall Islands.
- These islands in the Pacific — Bikini, Kwajalein and Enewetak —
were chosen because no populated areas would be put in danger.
But populated areas were put in danger.
- All of those exposed were taken to Kwajalein,
where complete physical examinations were carried out.
We had to wash the radiation doses received.
They stripped them naked.
So these men, they saw their mothers, their sisters, their grandmothers, naked right in front of them.
Neisen said that this happened for three months.
- After the Natives were evacuated, radiation survey teams were flown back to the exposed atoll,
where studies were made and water and soil samples taken.
After three years in exile, the people of Rongelap were sent back.
- My uncle said, “Are you really going to take us back to Rongelap when it's still contaminated?”
They said, “That is true, it's contaminated. But it's not dangerous. You can live on it.”
Neisen says that's when the medical problems started.
I was 4 years old at the time.
My mom and dad, our family, went on the trip back to the island.
I grew up on the island.
I remember people get really, really sick all the time.
Babies were born.
And no shell to the back of the head.
You can see their brain.
When the radiation affects the cell
and it affects the genetics, the DNA,
then instead of making the normal products, it'll make the abnormal products.
That's Dr. Sheldon Riklon.
He's the only Marshallese doctor in the continental United States.
- You've got your immediate effects, your acute affects.
And so in terms of the beta burns that people experience during that time.
The thyroid nodules and the thyroid cancers,
the malformed babies, jellyfish babies, some people call them.
Some of these images are intensely graphic.
But it's important to show what the aftermath of Castle Bravo was.
When you think about radiation,
when you think about nuclear weapons or nuclear testing,
the first thing that usually comes into mind is the direct effect in terms of cancers.
Neisen says she lost many relatives to cancer and other diseases
she suspects were caused by nuclear radiation.
My Uncle John died.
He died.
His son Lekoj, he had leukemia.
I think it's cancer in the blood.
Neisen's family brought her cousin Lekoj to the U.S. for treatment,
but it was too late.
- He never saw the island again.
He went back in a box.
My cousin Iroji, like I told you, he was on top of a tree when that happened.
He ran into the ocean and got worse.
He died as a teenager.
This is a picture of Iroji being inspected by Dr. Robert Conard
of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Iroji and other Marshall Islanders
were studied for their exposure to nuclear fallout without their consent.
- Significant blood changes were found in patients from the heavier fallout areas,
including pronounced lowering of both platelets and leukocyte count.
The U.S. called this Project 4.1.
American doctors come to the island every year in January and check us,
taking blood, urine.
And then they didn't tell me, tell us anything.
For more than 30 years, the Atomic Energy Commission
studied the Marshallese people.
And they didn't know they were being studied until documents were declassified in 1994.
- The United States chose us to be guinea pigs.
Neisen says that she has thyroid nodules that she suspects is from the radiation
from the food she had to eat as a child.
I've got thyroid too, and I got blood pressure too.
I'm taking medicine for them.
I'm trying to tell my doctor that it's from the
hydrogen bomb. But I don't know.
I was young and I didn't really understand a lot of things.
Because the island was contaminated, the U.S. government told the people on Rongelap
not to eat the fish or the food that they farmed on their land.
Neisen says the U.S. Army used to bring rations like flour and rice at the beginning of every year.
But it was never enough.
When we ran out of those, we will eat whatever we can eat on the island.
So when the rations ran out, the Marshallese on Rongelap
had to eat the contaminated vegetables and fish.
You would have blisters in your mouth, in your throat.
You get diarrhea.
You get sick.
They come and check us every year, but they never really tell us
that we were living in a contaminated place.
Even though the United States knew that the people of Rongelap
were dying from leukemia and other cancers,
the U.S. government didn’t help evacuate these Marshallese from their contaminated island.
So the people of Rongelap called on Greenpeace for help
and used the group's Rainbow Warrior ship to flee the contaminated atoll for good in 1985.
- United States didn’t to help because, they said, "It was OK to stay there."
So the Greenpeace took them.
You can't live on that island.
You know, you will still be sick.
It's contaminated.
You can't go back there.
Dr. Riklon says that nuclear radiation has also caused long-term ill effects
for the Marshallese in terms of their diet and lifestyle.
You think, wait,
your diabetes cannot be caused by the radiation,
your high blood pressure cannot be caused by radiation.
But if you change a group of people's way of living,
where you get your food, what type of foods you're able to eat.
You know, you cannot eat from the ocean anymore because it's radioactive.
You cannot gather your foods from the islands because it's radioactive.
And you substitute that with canned goods, with preserved foods,
with all these foods
that are not healthy, that are not your normal Marshallese diet.
That definitely has an effect on the health today of Marshallese
and health of Marshallese in the future.
So what has the U.S. done in response
to all the damage from nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands?
Well, in the late 1980s, it promised $150 million in a trust fund
as compensation to the Marshallese people suffering medical problems.
But that money distributed over time across all the people who had been harmed
doesn't amount to much.
Thirty-five dollars a quarter for one person.
Thirty-five dollars every three months.
That's what Neisen receives from the U.S. government
for making her homeland uninhabitable.
It was over $100, you know, but now it's $35 a quarter.
Can you live on that?
Neisen left the Marshall Islands in the '70s and now lives in northwest Arkansas,
and she loves playing with her dogs.
This is Biggie, this one's Rosie
and that's Milkshake.
Even though she can't go back to Rongelap Atoll because it's contaminated,
Neisen says she wants to spend her retirement on another atoll
back in the Marshall Islands.
I've been here too long. I came in '75.
I've been working all my life.
I want to go back and relax.
Sit by the ocean on the beach.
Be a beach bum. [Laughs]
And here in Arkansas, where the Marshallese population numbers more than 15,000,
a new generation of Marshallese is keeping the history of the island's nuclear legacy alive.
In part two of the series, we explore how the Marshallese community moved to Arkansas,
and what's causing this mass migration.