If we’re talking about nuclear justice, please don’t forget the Marshall Islands.
Many people have already pointed out how the Oppenheimer film glosses over the effects of nuclear testing on Indigenous communities in the United States, and it’s undeniable that more people need to know about this. More attention also needs to be paid to the Marshall Islands, where the legacy of US nuclear testing still affects the Marshallese people to this day. Most Americans don’t even know where the Marshall Islands is—let alone what the US government did there during the Cold War.
Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear weapons on the Marshall Islands, which was then a US trust territory. The tests yielded the same level of radiation as 7,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs, or 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for 12 years. The US government didn’t even evacuate some islanders from close proximity to the testing grounds. The fallout—which spread across the islands and beyond—caused deaths, miscarriages, stillbirths, radiation sickness, cancer, and many other health problems, with high cancer rates persisting to this day. Whole islands remain uninhabitable, and generations have been displaced.
It gets even worse. The US government knew that certain islands were too dangerous for human habitation and resettled the Marshallese there anyway; then US scientists studied the effects of radiation on them without their knowledge or consent in a secret program called Project 4.1. The US government secretly brought radioactive waste from Nevada and buried it in a concrete dome on Enewetak Atoll that is now vulnerable to erosion from the rising seas. And the US military also used the Marshall Islands for at least a dozen biological weapons tests. The US government did all of this to the Marshall Islands while it was a trust territory under US protection.
But in the decades since nuclear testing ended—even since the Marshall Islands’ independence in 1986—it has never received full compensation from the United States. Never.
There is a lot more that everyone should know about this history, and I recommend starting here to learn more:
I’m paying to force seven thousand strangers to see a photo of my late husband having fun with his dog. Tumblr Blaze is totally worth it. XD
Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. ❤️
Reblog to have your dashboard be visited by the spirit of joy that death can end but not erase.
you want to help stop tumblr from murdering itself? here’s how!
click this link and go to the support page, then click “contact support”
click on the category list and click on feedback
now you need to tell staff WHY putting in an algorithm will cause the site to fucking die, and be sure to be detailed and not a dick in it. theyre not gonna listen to feedback calling them assholes
i encourage you to reblog this so we can get as many people leaving feedback as humanly possible. we need to let staff know this is an utterly terrible idea
by the way, tumblr has turned off asks on all of their staff blogs, so this is the only way to tell tumblr how you feel
The new layout it a whole mess. Thankfully Xkit can already help with a bunch of this! I’m sure it’ll give more options soon.
Vanilla Tumblr: (I have marked in red what can be removed. The tabs can be set not to stick, so you will really only see them at the top of your dash. Empty box on the left for hidden notifications and shop sparkle, i just didn’t have any. I’m EU so no Live for me).
