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Marshallese Music &
     Selected Videos

  For more videos on the history of the Marshall Islands & the Nuclear Age, etc. please  click here              

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 V  I  D  E  O  S 

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 A marathon 12-hour music/conference on COVID-19 in Majuro, Marshall Islands; August 28, 2020

 Yokwe Bartowe" ["Poor Bartowe"] - An original 90-
 minute Marshallese play that premiered on "Bravo 
      Remembrance Day" March 1, 2020 in Majuro

  "Na Noniep" ["I Am the Good Fairy"] is the first
     children's play in the Marshallese
language
                      [Released in 2019]

All Videos

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Anointed (w/ Subtitles) - by Dan Lin & Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

Anointed (w/ Subtitles) - by Dan Lin & Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

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Acclaimed poet and activist, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, explores the nuclear testing

legacy of the Marshall Islands through the legends and stories of Runit Island.

        Go here for Kathy's website:      https://www.kathyjetnilkijiner.com/

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The "Tomb" on Runit Island, Enewetak Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands.  The Tomb consists of 73,000 cubic meters of contaminated soil from previous nuclear tests. A colonel  from the Pentagon overseeing the project told Glenn Alcalay in 1980 "there is communication between the dome and the lagoon"

                                                 U P D A T E!
While the world has been watching the nasty and dangerous "Tomb" on Runit, it has been known that the REAL radioactive threat at Enewetak is not the "Tomb," but rather the tons of radioactive topsoil bulldozed into the lagoon during the 1970s "clean up" operation at Enewetak utilizing four thousand men - aka "atomic veterans" who were exposed to radiation during the operation.
Go here for an
astute article in the N.Y. Times by renowned law professor Michael Gerrard, who visited the "Tomb" in 2010:   https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opinion/a-pacific-isle-radioactive-and-forgotten.html

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Statement and poem by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Climate Summit 2014 - Opening Ceremony

Statement and poem by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Climate Summit 2014 - Opening Ceremony

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Statement by Ms. Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Civil Society Representative from the

Marshall Islands at the opening of the United Nations Climate Summit 2014.

Lessons From Hawaii by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

Lessons From Hawaii by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

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   A provocative "speak truth to power" video poem. Written and performed by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner. Cameramen: Russell Thoulag & Otis Aisek. Editor: Yu Suenaga

Dennis O'Rourke's classic 1985 film "Half Life" 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 EnglishThis rare video begins at 15 minutes in, so please excuse the silly first fifteen minutes of an important video, otherwise unobtainable.

The YouTube link to the classic 1959 film "On the Beach" based on the Australian author Nevil Shute's 1957 book of the same title.  Shute based his novel on the "Bravo" fallout and the exposed downwinders in the Marshall Islands three years previously.
Personal note:  When Glenn Alcalay was 10 years old and saw "On the Beach" on TV, he could not sleep that night fearful of a nuclear war during the height of the Cold War, when people in the U.S. were building bomb shelters.  Coincidentally, fifteen years later when Glenn applied to the Peace Corps, he was sent to the very place that was the inspiration for Nevil Shute's book made into the movie that kept him awake all night when he was 10.  Funny that . . .

This 13-minute video "Paradise Lost" was produced in 1990 by ABC-TV [U.S.] and encapsulates the important issues and themes from this website

This 4-minute video from 2013 features Sen. Jeton Anjain, his decision to move his people in 1985, and his receiving the prestigious Goldman Prize

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Dennis O' Rourke-NPR-Half LifeArtist Name
00:00 / 06:09

Listen to this  POWERFUL  6-minute NPR interview

          with Dennis O'Rourke re: "Half Life"                 

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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.

​

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.

​

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.

​

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.

​

          Glenn Alcalay

Peace Corps Volunteer, lovely Utrok Atoll 1975-1977

​

       Jeramman wot!

​

* Please subscribe to the legendary Marshall Islands Journal

  Go here to subscribe:    https://marshallislandsjournal.com/

​

** And please visit our other website:   MarComU.org

​

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Glenn Alcalay & Andrew Fuchs - for our friends

www.AtomicAtolls.org

© 2015-2024

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