Who We Are
Glenn Alcalay
Co-Founder, AtomicAtolls.org
Peace Corps Volunteer
Professor of Anthropology
Glenn is a former Peace Corps volunteer on Utrok Atoll (1975-77) and is currently Assoc. Professor of Anthropology [adj] at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY and William Paterson University of NJ. Glenn was an advisor for the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, testified numerous times before the U.N. and Congress on behalf of the Marshallese, and has written articles for CounterPunch, The Ecologist, the Nation, The Diplomat, and more.
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Glenn resides in Washington Heights, NYC
Andrew A. Fuchs
Co-founder & Webmaster, AtomicAtolls.org
Street Photographer
Andrew Fuchs is a graduate of William Paterson University, a NYC based street photographer and a renegade from corporate America. Formally educated in business, he has since left his corporate life and is creating a new identity for himself in the NYC street photography and arts communities.
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You can see his work on his Instagram at @AndrewFoxNYC
Andrew resides in Flatbush, Brooklyn, NYC.
Kai Erikson
Sociologist
Author
Kai is a world-renowned sociologist and author, and is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Sociology and American Studies at Yale University. He served as the 76th president of the American Sociological Association. He also worked with Glenn Alcalay on a research visit to RMI in 2002, and can be heard in some of our interview clips.
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You can keep up to date on Kai's work on AtomicAtolls, and here: https://sociology.yale.edu/people/kai-erikson
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Kai resides in Hamden, CT
Click on the thumbnail [below] for a 13-minute video "Paradise Lost" by ABC-TV [U.S.] which summarizes many of the issues covered on this website:
This 4-minute video features former Sen. Jeton Anjain and a more contemporary version of life and challenges in the Republic of the Marshall Islands
And only if you dare . . .
Listen to this 1986 NPR interview with Dennis O'Rourke as he talks about his film "Half Life" about the enigmas surrounding the 1954 "Bravo" H-bomb test at Bikini Atoll
1945 - 2013
The late Dennis O'Rourke was a giant among docu- mentary filmmakers whose films documented the lives of indigenous peoples in the Asia-Pacific region. His 1991 "The Good Woman of Bangkok" won many intl. awards. From "The Shark Callers of Kontu" and "Cannibal Tours" to "Cunnamulla" and "Land Mines: A Love Story," O'Rourke set a high standard for documentary filmmaking. I had the pleasure of working with O'Rourke in the making of his important 1985 film about the 1954 "Bravo" H-bomb ["Half Life"] and the questions surrounding the "accidental" wind shifts that caused massive radiological damage to downwind populations and atolls.
Dennis O'Rourke's classic 1985 film "Half Life" [above] is THE best film about nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. [Note: I worked on the film so I am completely without bias]. This YouTube version has Italian sub-titles but the audio is in English. This rare video begins at 15 minutes in, so please excuse the silly first fifteen minutes of an important video, otherwise unobtainable.
The approximately 100,000 people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands are the world's proverbial "canary in the coal mine." Having suffered - and continuing to experience - the legacy of H-bomb testing and radioactive fallout, the Marshallese remind us of humankind's worst possible scenario with horrific thermonuclear weapons, a nuclear war.
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Likewise, as we pass 420 parts per million of carbon dioxide and witness the Earth burning and the Polar ice caps melting, sea level rise poses an existential threat to all island and coastal populations, and in particular the low-lying coral atoll dwellers in the Pacific nation states of the RMI, Kibibati [formerly the Gilbert Islands], Tuvalu [formerly the Ellice Islands], and the Maldives in the Indian Ocean.
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In this sense then, the Marshallese offer us a "twofer" lesson about the threat of nuclear weapons, and the threat of destroying our precious Mother Earth by the burning of fossil fuels even Exxon knew was destroying the planet back in the 1970s!
This website is designed to give voice to the people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands [RMI] who have firsthand knowledge - in their bodies and DNA, in their memories and permanently in their atolls - of thermonuclear weapons and their destruction, having been at the receiving end of the United States' "foreign policy."
AtomicAtolls.org's primary mission is to provide a repository of the unfiltered history of the relationship between the U.S. and RMI through an archive of audio interviews [in both Marshallese and English*] on SoundCloud (previously unavailable to the public) and photographs of downwind Marshall Islanders who were caught in the radioactive fallout from the 67 atomic & hydrogen thermonuclear bombs detonated at Bikini and Enewetak Atolls between 1946-58.
In addition to these rare and powerful interviews conducted between 1981 and 2002 [by Glenn Alcalay & Kai Erikson], numerous unclassified U.S. government documents, U.N. testimonies, NGO reports, and other educational materials regarding nuclear testing issues in the Marshall Islands will also be made available to the public. Lastly, a large archive [150] of videos and documentary films about the people of the Marshall Islands in the Nuclear Age, from the Manhattan Project to Weapons in Space are available on the Nuke Videos page on the masthead above.
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Our website is dedicated to aolep dri-Majol, people of the Marshall Islands - especially the youth - and all of the glorious people who reside on our dear Mother Earth pushing to abolish nuclear weapons, and transition to green, renewable energy ASAP.
If there is a theme or a meme that truly captures the character and the spirit of this website, it is this:
America nuked the Gentle People.
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Glenn Alcalay
Peace Corps Volunteer, lovely Utrok Atoll 1975-1977
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Jeramman wot!
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* Please subscribe to the legendary Marshall Islands Journal
Go here to subscribe: https://marshallislandsjournal.com/
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** And please visit our other website: MarComU.org
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