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"We are still here": The delegation from the Marshall Islands participated in the 13th Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture (FestPAC) last year, which was held in Hawaiʻi for the first time in the festival's 52-year history. "In the Marshall Islands, they dropped 67 nuclear weapons. They destroyed our way of life. They relocated our people. And yet, we still have our culture," one delegate said during the festival's opening ceremony. After the Second World War, the Marshall Islands were part a U.S.-administered United Nations strategic trusteeship, initially under Navy control and later transferred to the Interior Department. (The U.S. ended trusteeship in 1986, when the Compact of Free Association took effect.) From 1946 to 1958, the United States detonated more than 60 nuclear bomb tests in the Marshall Islands, 23 of those tests were conducted on Bikini Atoll. Residents of the atoll had been asked to temporarily relocate so that the U.S. could begin testing atomic bombs for "the good of mankind and to end all wars." The residents were assured that they could return home after the nuclear test program wrapped. The largest series of tests began on March 1, 1954, with the detonation of “Castle Bravo,” the largest nuclear weapon ever tested by the U.S. “Bravo” was one thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and its blast cut a crater about a mile wide into the Bikini reef. Meteorologists predicted wind conditions that would have carried radioactive fallout to a group of small atolls lying to the east of Bikini, according to a statement from then-Atomic Energy Commissioner Lewis Strauss. But the wind shifted south, hitting the islands of Rongelap, Rongerik, and Utirik. Marshall Islanders, U.S. service personnel, and crew members of more than 1,000 Japanese fishing boats were exposed to radioactive fallout. Marshallese experienced significant health consequences in the aftermath of nuclear testing, including an increase in cancer risk, infertility, stillbirths, miscarriages, thyroid abnormalities, and congenital birth defects. Radiological contamination of the Bikini Atoll still prevents Islanders from returning to their homeland to this day. By 2018, one third of the Marshall Islands' population had moved to the U.S. Today, about 10,000 Marshallese people live in Hawaiʻi -- a number that is expected to rise, with one study claiming climate change would render the archipelago uninhabitable as early as 2035. In October 2025, President Trump called on U.S. military leaders to resume testing nuclear weapons in order to keep pace with other countries. The last nuclear test conducted by the U.S. (in 1992) was held at an underground facility in Nevada — one of the country's most closely divided swing states. Some experts note that it would take the U.S. at least 36 months to restart testing at the facility, BBC News reported. Meanwhile, earlier in the year, the U.S. Air Force conducted a test of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg base in California, landing at Kwajalein Atoll (Marshall Islands). The test was hailed by officials as a demonstration of the strength and readiness of U.S. nuclear deterrence. Months later, the Air Force announced that it had suspended plans for cargo rocket testing with SpaceX at Johnston Atoll. That program sought to determine the viability and utility of using large commercial rockets for Defense Department logistics (perhaps nuclear-capable systems). The Air Force had considered Kwajalein, Midway Island, and Wake Island as sites for testing, as they already support ongoing military operations. A game of nuclear weapons chicken is already playing out in the Pacific theater. Trump's call to action merely brought it, and its implications, further into the daylight. Read more about Pacific Island nations and the new Cold War in our newsletter archive (July 2025).  Comments are closed.
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