Opinion 70 years later remembering the fallout from a nuclear test washingtonpost com opinions 2024 03 05 fallout-nuclear-test-70-years-marshall-islands Walter Pincus March 5 2024 Opinion 70 years ago an H-bomb test went awry We must never forget the fallout By Walter Pincus March 5 2024 at 6 45 a m EST A 15-megaton thermonuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll on March 1 1954 Courtesy UNO photo by Ann Ronan Pictures Print Collector Getty Images Walter Pincus a former Post reporter and columnist and author of “Blown to Hell America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders ” writes for the Cipher Brief March 1 was Remembrance Day a national holiday in the Marshall Islands Sign up for the Prompt 2024 newsletter for opinions on the biggest questions in politics On the morning of that date in 1954 the United States carried out Castle Bravo the first-ever trial of a deliverable hydrogen bomb on a man-made island in Bikini Atoll in the mid-Pacific Marshall Islands It was 6 45 a m Sunrise Bravo’s explosive power turned out to be 15 megatons the equivalent of 15 million tons of TNT more than double what had been expected and the largest nuclear test in U S history — almost 1 000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Original projections suggested that Bravo might create a cloud of radioactive fallout 15 miles wide stretching into the atmosphere Instead a fireball brighter than the sun blasted 10 million tons of vaporized coral sand and water into a 100mile-wide radioactive plume boiling 130 000 feet into the stratosphere Five hours after detonation a mist of radioactive particles began falling on Rongelap Atoll 120 miles to the east of Bikini That radioactive mist turned heavier around 1 p m and continued for hours Fallout covered the trees and the flowers and the fruit the roofs of houses and the beach along the lagoon Rain fell briefly late in the afternoon dissolving the radioactive ash on the roofs and sluicing it down drains and into the household water barrels Rainwater carried the ash from the tin roofs into the island’s communal water supply The children playing along the beaches all day had been rolling in fallout They were tired and thirsty by the time the rain ended and they drank the radioactive water So did some of the adults For many radioactive white limestone dust was held fast by the coconut oil that islanders used in their hair The women of Rongelap regularly wore dresses men wore pants but usually no shirts Adults wore sandals or went barefoot Children were always barefoot and the youngest wore no clothes at all In the heat and humidity that day they perspired and as the fallout came down it stuck to their hair and to their bodies gathering particularly at the folds of their necks On parts of the island the fallout was an inch and a half deep on the ground When the moon broke through the clouds that night the white powder glowed like snow Two days later U S personnel took 82 Marshallese from Rongelap and the nearby Ailingnae atoll to a U S Navy base on Kwajalein another atoll in the Marshall Islands The Navy doctor supervising their examinations found two-thirds of the Rongelap people suffering loss of appetite nausea and vomiting and a majority felt itching and burning of exposed skin all signs of exposure to radioactive materials The people of Rongelap were returned to new homes on their beautiful atollby the United States in 1957 but left again in 1985 after finding continued radioactivity in the contaminated environment which made locally grown food unsafe Only security people live there now A 2019 study by Columbia University researchers found that levels of radioactive contamination on the island in northern Rongelap Atoll most affected by nuclear testing still exceeded the levels of radioactive contamination more recently found at Chernobyl Ukraine and at Fukushima Japan Castle Bravo was carried out 70 years ago this month but there is reason beyond the anniversary to remember this story A half-century ago I went to Bikini and Rongelap accompanying an American medical team that every year since 1954 has examined the exposed Rongelap Marshallese who are still alive What I learned and saw on that trip contributed to my determination to keep reminding people of the danger of nuclear weapons To me one of the best ways to understand the potential long-term danger of nuclear warfare and to realize why any use of such weapons must be deterred is to replay what happened at Rongelap and imagine it occurring wherever you live Had an equivalent H-bomb exploded near the ground in D C the fallout might have extended as far as New York blanketing thousands of square miles and affecting millions of people — leaving that area “contaminated to such an extent that avoidance of death or radiation injury would have depended upon evacuation of the area or taking protective measures ” according to the Atomic Energy Commission’s “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons ” published in 1962 Two memorable facts Nine years after the fallout in 1963 the first of 19 children under age 10 when they were exposed was found to have a growth on her thyroid that if not removed would become cancerous In the following years 17 more from that group showed the same potentially cancerous growth — as did several adults All had their thyroids removed The Rongelap story is sadly current even now with fewer than a dozen of those originally exposed to radioactivity still alive One of the many pieces of legislation before Congress today is a joint resolution signed on Oct 16 2023 calling for an extension of the Compact Agreements between the U S government and the Republic of the Marshall Islands The agreements continue to grant assistance and trust fund contributions over the next 20 years that will total approximately $2 3 billion Grants of $1 5 billion will continue U S funding of health care and education for the atolls exposed to radioactivity — Rongelap Enewetak Bikini and Utirik — and postal services for Marshall Islanders plus an additional $700 million to a separate Compact trust fund providing funds to Marshall Islands atoll governments including Rongelap’s U S negotiators of the agreements specifically say none of the funds are to be designated for nuclear compensation — although they allow $15 million for a nuclear history museum and improving document archives Last month a bipartisan group of senators failed to attach approval of the Compact Agreements to the National Security Supplemental passed by the Senate on Feb 13 with aid to Ukraine What’s done cannot be undone but the anniversary of that American H-bomb test is a fitting time for Congress to act to help living Marshallese and their descendants to help — even seven decades late — pay down the debt of a paradise lost