After decades of interfering in the island nation with nuclear testing, disposal of radioactive waste, and human experimentation, U.S. leaders are considering a formal apology.
by Edward Hunt
April 19, 2022
Some U.S. officials are considering whether to issue a formal apology to the Marshall Islands, a small island nation in the Pacific Ocean that the United States subjected to years of nuclear testing and human experimentation during the Cold War.
Last month, several members of Congress introduced resolutions that, if approved, would offer an apology to the people of the Marshall Islands who suffered from nuclear testing and the disposal of radioactive nuclear waste.
From 1946 to 1958, the United States detonated sixty-seven nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, destroying entire islands and causing serious health problems for local residents, including cancer.
“Our government used the Marshallese as guinea pigs to study the effects of radiation and turned ancestral islands into dumping grounds for nuclear waste,” said U.S. Representative Katie Porter, Democrat of California, who introduced one of the resolutions into Congress.
The Marshall Islands, home to about 50,000 people, are located 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. The nation consists of two island chains that include several small islands and low-lying atolls. Its total landmass, which is threatened by rising sea levels, is around seventy square miles.
From 1947 to 1986, the Marshall Islands were part of the U.N. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. Since then, the nation has remained under indirect U.S. control through a compact of free association, in which the United States is the dominant military power in the region in exchange for providing economic assistance to the islands.
With these economic provisions set to expire at the end of 2023, U.S. officials have been trying to renegotiate the compact, which provides about 21 percent of the islands’ expenditures. As Marshallese leaders have been pressing their concerns about the ongoing effects of past nuclear testing, U.S. officials have been struggling to arrange formal negotiations.
“We made clear through our ambassador there that we’re ready for formal negotiations,” State Department official Mark Lambert told Congress last month. “We have not received a response back.”
From 1946 to 1958, the United States detonated sixty-seven nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands, destroying entire islands and causing serious health problems for local residents, including cancer. The United States also conducted experiments on the Marshallese people, transported soil from a nuclear testing site in Nevada to the islands, and experimented with lethal biological weapons, all without the knowledge and consent of the Marshallese people.
“A formal apology is long overdue to the Republic of the Marshall Islands for the harmful legacy of U.S. nuclear testing,” Senator Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a March 1 statement.
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