A ground zero forgotten The Marshall Islands, once a U.S. nuclear test site, face oblivion again

November 30, 2015

The Marshall Islands, like the Village of Semey and the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan, suffered years of nuclear weapons testing by the cold war’s nuclear super powers. Both countries continue to struggle with that legacy. Here the Washington Post tells the forgotten story of the people and suffering of the Marshall Islands.

Washington Post Story

A boy and his grandfather are fishing in the shallows off their tiny island, a dot of green in the sapphire eternity between Hawaii and Australia. The flash comes first, silent and brighter than the sun, from a four-mile-wide fireball beyond the horizon. The sky turns blood red. Wind and thunder follow.

Even 61 years after, Tony deBrum gets “chicken skin” when sharing his memories of the largest American nuclear-weapons test — the biblical, 15-megaton detonation on Bikini Atoll, 280 miles northwest of his island. Its flash was also seen from Okinawa, 2,600 miles away. Its radioactive fallout was later detected in cattle in Tennessee.

Read the full Washington Post story here …