Danity Laukon has never stood on the ancestral lands her mother grew up on in Utrik Atoll, which remains contaminated by radiation from U.S. nuclear testing.
From Castle Bravo to the leaking Runit Dome, Marshallese communities continue to battle health, environmental, and intergenerational trauma.
Danity stressed that because we share the same ocean and eat the same fish, concerns about nuclear radiation affect everyone in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa.
It has been 80 years since the first U.S. nuclear bomb detonated in the Marshall Islands. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States exploded 67 nuclear weapons across the islands, devastating the land and its people.
The fight for nuclear justice, environmental remediation and access to adequate healthcare continues, now intensified by the growing threat of climate change.
‘It plagued our women and children’
When radioactive fallout fell from the sky, Danity said many fishermen and children were out in the sea. Mistaking it for snow, they played in it, but soon their skin burned and hair fell out.
“They did not realise this was the start of a long journey of suffering,” Danity stressed.
In the years that followed, women experienced increased miscarriages and stillbirths. Some gave birth to infants with severe deformities, later described as “jellyfish babies,” born without bones and with translucent skin.
Danity said the psychological trauma has been intergenerational. As U.S. authorities denied or downplayed the impacts of radiation exposure, many mothers were left feeling ashamed and blamed themselves.
They had heartbeats, but they didn’t look like human beings. That memory continues to be vivid in our minds.
— Danity Laukon
Today, Marshallese women face some of the highest rates of cancer in the world.
READ MORE about French nuclear testing in Māohi Nui, which exposed local communities to decades of radiation and intergenerational health impacts.
Decades of denial and secrecy
In the aftermath of the tests, the U.S. launched a secret study known as Project 4.1 to observe the effects of radiation on Marshallese communities.
Documents declassified in 1994 revealed that U.S. officials knew far more atolls were contaminated by the 1954 Bravo test than they had publicly acknowledged. Testing continued despite evidence the area was unsafe.
For years, reports of radiation burns, sickness and cancer were dismissed. Officials sometimes claimed there were “no signs” of exposure, even as Marshallese communities were suffering visible and documented health impacts.
READ MORE about the Fukushima disaster, where reactors failed after a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, releasing radiation into the Pacific.
Washington says it has fulfilled its obligations to the Marshall Islands under the terms of the Compact of Free Association. But on the ground, many families feel the legacy of testing has never been fully addressed.
The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal was established in 1988 to handle claims from the 67 U.S. nuclear tests conducted between 1946 and 1958. Over its operation, the Tribunal determined that victims were owed more than $2 billion in compensation for personal injury and land damage.
However, the United States provided only $150 million to fund the Tribunal, and that trust was depleted by 2009. Because the fund was far smaller than the total awards, most claimants received only a fraction of what they were legally entitled to, leaving billions of dollars in approved claims unpaid.
Leaking radioactive waste and the threat of climate change
Three years ago, Danity travelled to Enewetak Atoll, one of the primary nuclear test sites and home to the Runit Dome. Built in the late 1970s after years of protest and negotiation, U.S. crews bulldozed radioactive soil and debris into a blast crater and sealed it beneath an 18-inch-thick concrete cap spanning roughly 106 metres. The structure was never lined up at the bottom.
Today, the unlined dome is already cracking and leaking as seawater moves in and out with the tide, raising fears that radioactive contaminants could leach into the surrounding lagoon.
This danger is amplified by rising sea levels.
Laukon had seen photographs and studied the dome in classrooms, but seeing it in person was different. “It scared the shit out of me,” she said.
Monitoring has shown elevated radiation levels in parts of the surrounding environment. Yet when Laukon asked a local resident whether the dome should be relocated, the answer was no. “If we put it somewhere else, we would expose other human beings and other natural environments.”
