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Nuclear Justice for the Marshall Islands
Seventy-five years after the U.S. began testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific, the Marshall Islands stand at a new crossroads.
July 01, 2021 The “Baker” explosion, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test by the United States military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, on July 25, 1946.
Credit: U.S. Department of Defense
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Just three months after the atomic ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been burned into Japan’s landscape, U.S. military and political leaders began planning a series of atomic weapons tests in order to study the effects of the bomb on naval vessels. With World War II over and a new era of Pacific control ahead, the United States selected Bikini and Enewetak Atolls in the northern Marshall Islands, part of what it called the Pacific Proving Grounds, as the site of 67 nuclear weapons tests. These tests played a key role in setting the stage for global politics and power