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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