Denial, Cover-up, and Secrecy: Confronting a trinity of institutional barriers - Atomic Testing and Clean-up

With the end of the Cold War ... climate change replaced nuclear war as the greatest global fear (Hecht 2012:10). 

Gabrielle Hecht reminds us that nuclear war was the biggest fear of a previous generation; a terror so real that otherwise rational people would build bunkers to hide their families underground for long periods of time, or send children scurrying under their classroom desks, clenching their heads to hide from the destruction of a nuclear detonation. As nuclear weapons became 'normalized', or simply relics of the Cold War, our attention has shifted to climate change as our greatest contemporary threat. 

Many people, including environmentalists, consider nuclear energy to be the only viable energy source for the global economy, given that it does not contribute to climate change in the same ways as fossil fuels, as well as the perceived inability of alternative energy forms and conservation to meet global energy demands. It is difficult for us to consider the full scope of the risks that accompany decisions to embrace nuclear energy as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, however, because the lessons learned about radiation remain secret or silenced. 

The science of nuclear energy comes from the same technology that brought us nuclear weapons. Because knowledge about the horrific and inequitable impacts of radiation exposure is associated with militarized nuclear weapons, much of this information remains opaque because of security concerns. How could the energy source that threatened the survival of a previous generation be seen now as a solution for our current climate change predicament? Commodore Ben Wyatt, a US Navy representative, in 1946 instructed a Marshallese translator to communicate the following message to the people of Bikini (whose homeland in the Marshall Islands had been chosen as a 'proving ground' of the destructive abilities of nuclear weapons): '[T]ell them, please, that the United States government now wants to turn this great destructive power into something for the benefit of mankind and that these experiments here at Bikini are the first step in that direction' (cited in Barker 2004:80). Such 1946 interest in creating societal benefits from nuclear fission is not dissimilar from current efforts to use weapons technology for nuclear energy. In 1946 and in 2015, we make decisions largely without acknowledging the damages and injuries associated with radiation exposure. 

As evident in the Marshall Islands experience, as well as that of other indigenous communities in the USA and Oceania, the effects of nuclear testing that brought military and economic benefits to some while destroying the DNA and environment of others for tens of thousands of years, remain largely unspoken, unacknowledged, and undiscussed. An understanding of these experiences, however, is essential to evaluate the consequences of nuclear energy in the future. 

FROM NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO NUCLEAR ENERGY 

Although Japan and the United States were bitter enemies during World War II, the years after the war ushered in a new era of Japanese and US cooperation and collusion to develop nuclear capabilities, both military and civilian. This history, veiled in secrecy and deceit, brought once warring governments together to develop nuclear energy despite public outcry stemming from fear of radiation in the wake of atomic and thermonuclear detonations. I examine how discourses of government and the nuclear industry erase previous fear and knowledge about the damages and injuries from nuclear weapons that impact indigenous communities, and how this cover-up enables nuclear states and nuclear industries to promote nuclear energy as a viable response to climate change. More specifically, I consider how a common interest in nuclear energy led Japan and the USA to jointly promote the technology, regardless of the legacies stemming from nuclear weapons use. 

Japan and the USA suffered high casualties during WWII as they waged long, hard-fought battles on islands throughout the Pacific, in places such as Wake Island, Kwajalein, Guadalcanal, and Tarawa. During the war, the US government created powerful and racist propaganda depicting the Japanese as ugly barbarians opposed to dearly held US values; the Japanese were threats to US democracy, and to human decency itself. Similarly, the war-time Japanese government characterised both Americans and the British soldiers as horrible, devil-like creatures (Nakazawa 2010). Americans cheered when the US atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki silenced the evil enemy. Most had no idea that the atomic bombs were not necessary to end the war because plans were already under way for a Japanese surrender (Alperovitz 1996) or that the US government was anxious to see the strategic effects of its newest weapon, which prior to Japan the USA only tested once in Alamagordo, New Mexico. 

After the guns of World War II quieted in the Pacific, a new battle began to brew: a Cold War in which the goal was to secure US nuclear supremacy over the former Soviet Union. Much of this war--with millions of victims and veterans despite the absence of a battlefield --played out in the Pacific region. At the end of World War II, the United Nations gave the United States administering authority for the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI). With Saipan as the capital, the area sprawled across the region dubbed by colonisers as Micronesia. The UN considered the TTPI a 'strategic trust', meaning only the Security Council, not the General Assembly could terminate its existence. As a part of the TTPI, the USA was charged with protecting the well-being of the island inhabitants, including people from the Marshall Islands. Globally, the USA has a history of seeking out geographically remote islands, far removed from the eyes of the public, for top secret military activities (e.g., Vieques in the Caribbean and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, see Vine 2009). 

From a US perspective the Marshall Islands was an ideal location for the US government to explore the full range of military applications for the atomic bomb, and then to develop and test the hydrogen bomb. From 1946 to 1958, the US government detonated 67 atmospheric nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima-sized bombs every single day for 12 years. Although their experiences with nuclear weapons differed from the Japanese, the Marshallese know what it is like to endure nuclear war (Johnston and Barker 2008). The Cold War was not a war that was never fought. It was a war with thousands of veterans, many of whom were Pacific Islanders and Native Americans. 

THE LUCKY DRAGON 

The largest nuclear device ever tested by the US government was a thermonuclear bomb code-named Bravo detonated on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on 1 March 1954. The weapon's name reflected the self-congratulatory atmosphere surrounding US scientific accomplishments, and the US government's applause for the technology that created a hydrogen bomb, a fusion device much more powerful than atomic bombs: the Bravo bomb was approximately one-thousand times more powerful than the devices dropped on either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. 

As we approach the 61st anniversary of the Bravo incident, the enduring legacies of an experiment that caused death, disease, and stigma remain strong for the Marshallese (certainly not meriting applause), and for the 23 crewmembers aboard the Japanese fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon, that unknowingly pursued tuna 75 miles from the ground zero location at Bikini Atoll. According to Oishi Matashichi, a crew member on the Lucky Dragon, the captain knew that the waters around Enewetak Atoll, the first testing location for the USA, were off limits, but he did not know that the US government had also created an exclusion zone around Bikini (Matashichi 2011). In his book. The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the Lucky Dragon, and I, Matashichi describes how radioactive ash, or fallout, from the Bravo test overwhelmed his fellow crewmembers:   This silent white stuff that stole up on us as we worked was the
   devil incarnate, born of science. The white particles penetrated
   mercilessly--eyes, nose, ears, mouth; it turned the heads of those
   wearing headbands white. We had a sense that it was dangerous. It
   wasn't hot; it had no odor. I took a lick; it was gritty but had no
   taste. We had turned into the wind to pull in the lines, so a lot
   got down our necks into our underwear and into our eyes, and it
   prickled and stung; rubbing our inflamed eyes, we kept at our tough
   task. I was the refrigerator man, and wearing rubber coat and pants
   and hard hat, I put the catch in the tank. Lots of ash went into
   the tank, too, blowing like snow (p. 20).

National shock ensued in Japan after the Lucky Dragon hobbled back to its port in Tokyo. The Japanese people understood the impacts of nuclear radiation based on the nation's experiences at the end of World War II. For many reasons, including the sheer extent of the chaos and destruction emanating from two atomic attacks and the loss of a war, there was no immediate Japanese protest about nuclear weapons in 1945. The USA, during its post-war occupation, maintained a complete ban on public discussions of the bombings (Kuznick 2011).

It was not in the best interest of the USA to promote understanding and awareness about the impacts of the atomic bombs during the occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1952. Even Japanese citizens living adjacent to Hiroshima at first did not realise the degree of destraction (Nakazawa 2010) unleashed by 'Little Boy', the atomic weapon that displayed none of the characteristics associated with the name: childlike and innocent. We are left to conclude that the naming of a voracious murdering device 'Little Boy' was ruthlessly ironic. 

Nine years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, the Japanese had gained more knowledge about nuclear weapons, and the ability to vocally condemn the US testing in the Pacific that the Lucky Dragon's experience brought to light. The nuclear fears of the Japanese were reawakened by the Bikini incident. Citizens drafted petitions and organised grassroots protests. Bikini Atoll also became the mythical birthplace of Godzilla who emerged from nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands. Godzilla captured the horrors of atomic weaponry. In Godzilla, Japanese filmmakers depicted a nuclear monstrosity that could ravage cities and kill innocent people with the same indiscretion as atomic bombs. For others, though, who watch nuclear nightmares from places of safety and comfort, Godzilla is mere entertainment (Cutshall 2012). 

Panic broke out shortly after the Lucky Dragon incident when the Japanese learned that irradiated tuna from the ship had been sold and consumed in many Japanese cities (Kuznick 2011). In an effort to avoid legal claims, the US government offered Japan a $2 million ex gratia payment for damages associated with the incident, a large portion of which went to Japan's tuna industry (Schwartz 1998). Concern about a possible Soviet invasion of Japan and the need to silence a Japanese outcry about weapons testing in the Marshall Islands led the US government to devise additional political solutions. It launched a fabricated publicity stunt to discredit Lucky Dragon crewmembers by accusing the ship of being on a spy mission near the proving grounds. Matashichi discusses the humiliation he and his fellow crewmembers endured as the US government called for an investigation into the backgrounds of the fishermen, and the ensuing suspicion which the men experienced even in their own villages. These inquiries took place while the fishermen suffered devastating illnesses linked to their radiation exposure, including organ failure and complications from blood transfusions (Matashichi 2011). 

As part of the $2 million ex gratia offer, the USA refused to admit that nuclear testing at Bikini was illegal. It agreed to provide medical care to the crewmembers--an agreement that furthered US government medical research interests to study the effects of radiation exposure on human beings by giving the US government access to information about the crewmembers' conditions (Barker 2004). In exchange, Japan agreed to halt monitoring of radiation surrounding US nuclear tests and, despite national outcry, the Japanese government refused to call for a halt of US nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. The reward for remaining silent about nuclear tests came just one week after the political settlement of the Bikini incident when the USA offered enriched uranium to Japan to develop nuclear power. The June 1955 US-Japan Atomic Energy Treaty paved the way for the USA to deliver the first nuclear reactor to Japan and for the two nations to work jointly on the research and development of atomic energy. 

To allay Japanese fears of nuclear power, the Japanese and US governments jointly launched a massive publicity campaign that promoted peaceful uses of atomic power (Kuznick 2011). Efforts to persuade the Japanese public to embrace atomic energy included films, lectures, articles, and travelling exhibits. As nuclear historian Peter Kuznick notes, these exhibits: 

... highlighted the peaceful applications of nuclear energy for generating electricity, treating cancer, preserving food, controlling insects, and advancing scientific research. Military applications were scrupulously avoided. The nuclear future looked safe, abundant, exciting, and peaceful (Kuznick 2011). 

The campaign to change public perceptions in Japan was a success, as Kuznick notes: 'Wanting their country to be a modern scientific-industrial power and knowing Japan lacked energy resources, the public allowed itself to be convinced that nuclear power was safe and clean. It had forgotten the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki' (Kuznick 2011). 

The Bikini incident became an entry for nuclear power, and the subsequent public relations campaign scrubbed nuclear energy with a discourse of cleanliness and safety--a discourse that remains common today. The public relations campaign in Japan mirrored the 'Atoms for Peace' programme launched by President Eisenhower in 1953 to promote the civilian benefits of nuclear technology and science. Eisenhower, in a speech to the United Nations, promised to promote civilian uses of atomic energy both at home and abroad (Kuznick 2011). 

NUCLEAR ENERGY DISCOURSE 

Where do we get our ideas that nuclear energy is a 'clean' source of energy? How are we led to believe that nuclear energy is the only viable means to meet our energy needs without contributing to global warming? Why do we fail to see the connections between the intersecting risks that connect contemporary climate change with the historical cover-ups of nuclear contamination in the Pacific Ocean? 

Radiation is mutagenic; radiation exposure causes living cells to mutate--in plants, in animals, and in human beings, including in utero. By analysing the experiences of the people of Bikini Atoll, the people whose homelands will forever be associated with the ground zero location for US nuclear weapons tests, such as Bravo, it is clear that US nuclear policies mutate the public's thinking about radiation and its impacts. 

Marshallese is a language spoken by approximately 70 000 people (including those who have moved abroad), yet most Americans and people worldwide are unaware that virtually everyone knows at least one Marshallese word: bikini. Most often, if we are asked to conjure an image of 'bikini', we think of the bathing suit. At the end of World War II, French fashion designer Louis Reard needed a name for his new, flashy, hot garment that would match the public's elation that a long and destructive war was over. Reard took inspiration from the US nuclear weapons tests--the splitting of an atom and a bathing suit in two--to describe the US government's newest weapon (Barker 2004; Teaiwa 1994). 

The atoll name remains permanently affixed to a garment that violently clashes with contemporary Marshallese culture. Bikinians, like all Marshallese, are very modest in their dress. Bikinian women most frequently wear long skirts or dresses past the knees, and tops that cover their shoulders. If we take our conjuring to the next step and think about context, we often imagine a physically fit and healthy woman, often Caucasian, relaxing on a tropical beach in her bikini with no apparent concern about time or money; a privileged body. This image comes in stark comparison to the realities of the people of Bikini, particularly the women. Some Marshallese women have bodies gnarled or compromised by the radiation exposure from the tests, or the residual radiation that mutated the DNA of their parents, or their offspring. Women from Bikini do not have the idle time or the economic resources to fly to a distant beach paradise to relax and escape reality. Radiation from the nuclear weapons tests altered Bikini's economy by forcing the community into diaspora. Because they can no longer live on their home islands, it is more challenging for the Bikinians to secure resources for their needs; medical, nutritional, educational, and other. In this regard, the bikini bathing suit both reveals and conceals simultaneously, and the symbolic concealment of the Pacific Islanders' bodies--and their erasure from our association--disempowers and depoliticises the people (Teaiwa 1994). 

For all Marshallese and Oceanic people, land is the most important resource. Land ownership defines people's social status, what resources they are allowed to cultivate, and where they can be buried. The Bikinians cannot live on their sacred homelands because radiological contamination more than 60 years after the testing ended renders their islands too dangerous for human habitation. Both the language of the bathing suit and the mutated DNA of the people allow the cruelty of the testing period to persist for Bikinians and the Marshallese for decades, generations since the cessation of US nuclear weapons testing. 

To the Bikinians, the word 'bikini' does not mean a bathing suit or a proving ground. Bikini comes from the Marshallese word pikinni, or surface of the coconut (pik--surface, and ni = coconut). Like all indigenous communities in Oceania, the place names that people give to their natural world reflect the deep connection with the environment as well as the sacred importance of the natural world. The connection is not just to land, but to the ocean, the sky, and the universe. Coral heads, channels between islands, households, islets, reefs, and sandspits have names indicating their importance in everyday life to the people of Pikinni when they resided there. Some of these names are: Eomelan (land reserved for chiefs), Lomwilik (place where the frigate bird sleeps), Lopiti (place for making sennit), Lqwuleej (cemetery), Paaneraj (give bait to whales), Toon-lounlep (passage of great magical power), wajelke (canoe we depend on) (see Abo et al. 2009). 

The bikini bathing suit is not the only example of the public's disconnection between popular culture and nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands. The animated television series Sponge Bob Square Pants is Nickelodeon's highest rated show and has become a staple in American culture through movies, video games, promotions with Burger King, merchandise, music, and more. Sponge Bob Square Pants and his friends live on Bikini Bottom. In some episodes, the characters experience explosions. (The Baker detonation was an underwater atomic test conducted by the US government in the Bikini Atoll lagoon in 1946). Much of the humour in the show comes from its bizarre characters, all of whom are grossly mutated. Mutations caused by radiation exposure at Bikini have become sources of humour for the Western world, much as Godzilla allowed us to fear terror from afar. In fairness to the consumers of Sponge Bob, people are not cruelly laughing at Marshall Islands mutations resulting from radiation exposure when they watch the programme because the disconnect between the historical events that produced devastating human consequences for the Marshallese is so complete that viewers fail to note the connection between mutated characters and nuclear testing. However, genetic mutations are anything but humorous for the Marshallese who live with the effects of their radiation exposure every day. 

NUCLEAR ENERGY, THE SOLUTION FOR OUR CLIMATE CHANGE CHALLENGES? 

Another environmental catastrophe facing the Marshall Islands is climate change. For the current generation of Marshallese, the challenges of the nuclear era may become eclipsed by global climate change which now poses a severe threat to their sovereignty and right to occupy their lands (Barker 2011; Rayfuse 2011). Small island nations that contribute very little to the problem of climate change are among the first to feel the devastating effects; sea-level rise caused by the melting of polar ice and the heat-induced expansion of ocean water now threaten to submerge many of these islands and render them uninhabitable. 

Discourse in the United States, fuelled by global media, often talks in terms of islands sinking, such as this headline from CNN: 'Sinking island's nationals seek new home' (Chakrabarti and Ahmed 2008). Presenting islands as sinking rather than the rising sea transfers the assignment of causation and responsibility for the impact of climate change from the polluters to the islands. Atolls such as those in the Marshall Islands are no more 'sinking' than other island types. Unconsciously, Oceanic leaders sometimes replicate Western discourse. The President of Nauru, Stephen Marcus, wrote an Op-Ed about climate change published in The New York Times, entitled 'On Nauru--A sinking feeling' (Marcus 2011). 

THE PLUTONIUM CYCLE AND INDIGENOUS BODIES 

We do not have the luxury of presuming that either nuclear contamination or climate change is a problem only for one particular community or nation. The plutonium cycle connects the global environment, the economy, and human life. This cycle begins with the mining of uranium to obtain the raw materials necessary for processing into a form for nuclear weapons or nuclear energy. 

In a study of uranium mining in Africa, anthropologist Gabrielle Hecht (2012) illuminates the ways that nuclear technology leads to empowerment, particularly political power, but also for those who deal with the risks of the nuclear cycle, such as African miners, disempowerment, and distance from decision-making. Hecht uses the term 'nuclearity' to highlight the contested terrain that exists between the false dichotomy of nations, regions, or people as being 'nuclear' or 'non-nuclear'. Her theories apply to all indigenous people in the plutonium cycle, including the people from the Marshall Islands or the Navajo Nation where uranium is mined, who come in contact with nuclear materials but acquire only the harm and none of the political or economic benefits associated with these materials. This connection between possessing nuclear technology and political power is startlingly clear at the United Nations. The first five countries to develop nuclear weapons were the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China. Not coincidentally, these five nations are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Nuclear colonialism, or the ability of nuclear states to gain access to resources, occupy lands, and build economic and military strength, was forged during the Cold War and remains generally unchallenged into the modern political era. 

In the United States, the government asserted its nuclear colonialism on native lands and people. Washington State, where I reside, is home to the Northwest's only open-pit uranium mine as well as the plutonium processing facility at Hanford. Uranium mining took place at the Spokane Reservation where the ore was blasted out of the hillside by native miners and sold to the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) (Kramer 2011). The miners did not have sufficient safety gear, and exposed family members to radiation when they returned home with radioactive dust on their clothing. Concerns remain on the Spokane Reservation about high incidences of cancer that is the legacy of the community's support of US efforts to build a nuclear arsenal. 

During the Cold War, the AEC transported uranium mined at the Spokane Reservation to Hanford, a facility built in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project. Although the Yakima, Nez Perce, and Umatilla inhabited this area for more than ten thousand years and maintain treaty rights that give them access to the land, river, and sacred areas, the US government determined that the remote desert location and Columbia River water required to keep the world's first plutonium production reactor from overheating were essential to US military interests (Sanger 1995). At its peak, Hanford had nine nuclear reactors processing plutonium for the AEC. Presently, Hanford is the largest and most expensive Superfund site. To this day, the US government lacks both the financial or technological ability to clean-up Hanford. 'Clean-up' of radiation is impossible; only long stretches of time will stop the release of radiation (which is why radiation's potency is discussed in terms of half-lives, or the amount of time it will take to attenuate radiation's risk by one-half). 

Once the uranium from the Spokane Reservation was processed into plutonium, it became the energy source for the world's first nuclear weapon detonated at the Trinity site on land owned by the Western Shoshone people. Plutonium processed at Hanford was also used in the 'Fat Man' bomb detonated over Nagasaki. The US government secured Shoshone land with relative ease and proceeded to conduct more than 300 above-ground nuclear tests. As with other indigenous communities that maintain close connections to the land and depend on local foods for subsistence, the Shoshone were susceptible to the risks of radioactive fallout from the tests. 

Hanford's plutonium spilled from many of the bombs detonated by the US government in the Marshall Islands. The dehumanising racism that allowed the US government to violate the lands and bodies of others is evident in the names of the bombs. On 6 April 1954, the US government detonated the 'Koon' shot over Bikini, and in 1956 the Redwing series of tests included seventeen bombs named Cherokee, Lacrosse, Zuni, Yuma, Erie, Seminole, Flathead, Blackfoot, Kickapoo, Osage, Inca, Dakota, Mohawk, Apache, Navajo, Tewa, and Huron (Republic of the Marshall Islands, Embassy to the United States n.d.). Presumably the US government wanted to conjure images of native savagery or ruthless killing machines, not unlike the demeaning appropriation of native tribal names as sports mascots where the dominant culture extracts the benefit of being perceived as violent aggressors, regardless of the impact on native communities (Beamon and Messer 2014). Given the systematic genocide of native peoples by white settlers, it is certainly ironic to associate the tribes with weapons of mass destruction. 

As a bone seeker, that same plutonium continued its journey into the bodies of people from New Mexico, Nagasaki, and the Marshall Islands and remains in the soil and ecosystems of downwind communities far from detonation areas. Nuclear weapons produce chain reactions in cultures and societies as residual radiation contamination, and the health and environmental effects it produces, bring immigrants with expensive illnesses from distant Pacific islands to the United States. As Hecht (2012) argues, nuclear colonialism is grounded in the racial differences that fuelled colonialism. In this case, nuclear colonialism seeks to contain injuries, illness, and death to native lands and bodies. The colonised Marshallese body, which the US government allowed to be tested on and exposed to radiation, still in 2015 did not have access to chemotherapy or an oncologist; is not wanted in Hawai'i where it is a drain on limited public health resources; is not eligible for healthcare in the country that created the bodily harm because the body is legally considered 'alien'; yet is invited to don a US military uniform at any point to advance the interests of the institution that developed and continues to deploy the source of radiation exposure. 

CLIMATE CHANGE BRINGS THESE ISSUES FULL CIRCLE 

The persistent and contemporary challenges created by the nuclear arms race of the Cold War are not issues that just impact people on native reservations, or seemingly far-flung islands. They impact all of us. The failure of colonial powers to adequately contain nuclear waste in Oceania threatens all people who depend on the vast Pacific Ocean. 

In the 1970s, the US government endeavoured to 'clean up' Enewetak Atoll, the other ground zero location besides Bikini, by creating a temporary nuclear storage facility on Runit Island. The US Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) constructed the Runit Dome to prevent large amounts of plutonium and other radionuclides from entering the ecosystem and food chain. The DNA scraped all of the topsoil, trees, and radioactive debris left from the testing programme from a fragile atoll environment into a crater created by one of the detonations. These materials were mixed with cement. Currently, it would be illegal to store municipal waste in the USA in this manner (Gerrard 2014). Plutonium is a radionuclide with a half-life of 24 000 years, meaning that in 24 000 years the plutonium will be half as radioactive as it is today, and it will take an additional 24 000 years beyond that to cut in half again the degree of radioactivity. Radiation is an energy form that only stops when the energy dissipates. Plutonium remains in high quantities on Enewetak, and it is particularly lethal when suspended in the air and living creatures breathe it into their lungs. A speck of plutonium--an amount invisible to the naked eye--can cause lung cancer if inhaled. 

The Runit Dome plutonium storage facility sits only a few feet from the Pacific Ocean. The Marshallese do not have the human or financial resources to monitor the integrity of this structure, or to prevent it from succumbing to rising seas. If plutonium falls into the Pacific Ocean, it is not just a problem for the Marshallese. Like the Bravo test, it is a problem for global tuna fishing in the northwestern Pacific, including Japan, and for the West Coast of the United States that borders the Pacific Ocean. Radioactive waste from the testing programme that remains insecure in the Marshall Islands makes all of our lives and our environment insecure as well. 

Sea-level rise may render the Marshall Islands uninhabitable in the next 50 years (Stege 2008). The media continue to characterise Pacific Islanders as climate change 'refugees' (Barnett and Campbell 2010), a term that conjures desperate populations fleeing war zones with no ability to care for themselves, and fails to recognise a strong tradition of resilience, adaptation, and fighting back in Oceanic communities. 

The nuclear industry wants us to believe that nuclear energy is the path forward because nuclear energy is a 'clean' energy that does not produce greenhouse gases like oil and coal. The Runit Dome, a nuclear waste storage facility hovering on the edge of an island succumbing to the rising seas, exposes the danger of these misrepresentations. As long as the full scope of damages linked to nuclear materials remains remote, and silent, the propaganda and its resulting 'clean' nuclear policies go unchallenged. 

POLYNESIA 

The Marshall Islands is not the only location in Oceania where nuclear colonialism left behind military radioactive waste. British nuclear weapons testing resulted in contamination and exposure of soldiers, including many Fijians, at Christmas Island as well as destruction of Aboriginal lands in Australia. In French Polynesia, France conducted 196 nuclear weapons tests that it did not want to explode in France: 46 of these tests were atmospheric, and 147 were detonated underground on Moruroa and Fangataufa Atolls. As with the Marshall Islands, there is little knowledge about the testing programme and its impacts beyond the colonised borders. Looking back on the cover-up and secrecy of nuclear colonialism, the name for France's chosen test site seems almost humorous; as Miriam Kahn has noted, the meaning of moruroa, the test site, is 'big lies' (Kahn 2011:72). 

France's colonisation of the area created a linguistic fissure that makes it very difficult for indigenous Ma'ohi people to communicate with other Oceanic peoples (Maamaatuaiahutupu 2014): The colonised language of the Marshallese is English and the colonised language of the Ma'ohi is French. Despite close parallels between the impacts of nuclear testing on Oceanic people, it is difficult for the Marshallese and the Ma'ohi to share or converse about these issues. The French government poured thousands of barrels of loose nuclear waste into 25 underground firing shafts that today are either sitting in water, or at risk of inundation. By comparison, nuclear waste in France is kept underground in areas where it cannot come into contact with groundwater or rain (Barillot 2010). 

Ma'ohi oceanographer, Keitapu Maamaatuaiahutupu, is concerned that land around the underground test sites has been weakened, fractured, and destabilised by nuclear weapons testing. Adding the accelerated ecological distresses of climate change to reefs that are already collapsing and sinking in on themselves because of the underground detonations should cause alarm. Like the United States, France refuses to take responsibility for the radioactive debris left from its military endeavours in Oceania, and there is no monitoring of Fangataufa. 

Furthermore, radionuclides and chemicals released from the underground shafts make their way into ocean currents. The South Equatorial Current flows east-to-west. France's failure to acknowledge or contain nuclear waste in its colonial territory, therefore, is problematic for Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Solomon Islands, New Zealand, and other populations that are downcurrent from French proving grounds. 

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT 

When the word bikini can be expropriated to reflect seduction, and class privilege, it is clear that discourse and imagery powerfully influence the ways we see and understand the world around us. Discourse analysis, or the study of the values, meanings, and persuasion imbued in our language, helps expose political efforts to build and promote a nuclear economy. As Nicola Woods argues: 

In much the same way as the discourse of advertising seeks to persuade us to purchase a product or service, the language used by politicians is designed to lead us to a particular view of political reality, and to act in a way that is consistent with this view--by voting for a particular party, for example (Woods 2006:50). 

Both international and US nuclear regulatory industries purposefully frame and advertise nuclear energy as 'clean'. We cannot see radiation, we cannot smell radiation. It is invisible, yet powerful. Yet, is it clean? It is clean for some. It is clean for nuclear industry decisionmakers and the politicians who live and work far from the areas where the largest risks from radiation reside. Radiation is not 'clean' for workers at power plants or radiation-contaminated Superfund sites such as the Hanford facility. Radiation is not 'clean' for Oceanic communities that receive the castaways of Fukushima's power plant disaster in ocean currents. Nuclear energy is not 'clean' for the uranium miners, including many native communities in the United States such as the Navajo or the Aboriginal peoples in Australia. Nuclear energy is not 'clean' for the downwinders whose bodies, farms, and livestock have been coated with radiation, such as the people living downwind from facilities in Utah, French Polynesia, Chernobyl, or Fukushima. But for those who reside in political and economic hubs, distant from the damage and injuries, radiation brings wealth and power. 

US military propaganda introduced the public to the idea of a 'clean bomb' or a 'clean strike'. 'Clean' denotes a surgical setting where the patient gently goes to sleep while the doctor uses precise technology to remove or fix the ailing body. Before the patient awakens, unseen workers mop up the blood, and provide crisp, white, fresh bed linens; the patient wakes to a sterile, pristine environment. The language has entrapping qualities; it traps us into certain ways of thinking and knowing (Cohn 1987). 

A clean bomb is an atom bomb that leaves little or no radiation. The notion of 'clean' sanitises the public's associations. We are left envisioning an atomic bomb that can defeat the enemy without making a mess. Similarly, the notion of a 'clean strike' is that there are no civilian casualties involved and our weapons systems eliminate only the bodies of combatants. The 'clean strikes' by the US government in Afghanistan undoubtedly did not have 'clean' effects for the young men targeted for the attacks. In most characterisations of weaponry, Americans possess 'clean' bombs while our enemies have 'dirty' bombs. Despite the name, there is no weapon that can do the housecleaning for the US military by eliminating the foe in a bloodless environment. Attacks with bombs or weapons leave severed limbs, death, horror, and chaos, realities that the discourse silences. 

The notion of 'clean' that clings to our military deployment of nuclear weapons extends to the nuclear energy industry and civilian uses of nuclear power. The Nuclear Energy Institute is the nuclear power industry's primary lobbying group. The logo appearing on the NEI's website (Nuclear Energy Institute n.d.) shows a Caucasian family skipping through grass and flowers, holding hands and carefree. The image states: 'Nuclear. Clean Air Energy'. With the background of a clear sky, and the slight outlines of what appears to be scaffolding to enshroud a nuclear reactor, the advertisement makes nuclear energy seem normal and synonymous with clean air. The joy, health, and middle-class existence of the pictured Caucasian family contrasts sharply to the bodies and lifestyles of many peoples in the world, predominantly indigenous and low-income communities, who have a different but first-hand understanding of the dangers of nuclear energy. Families near Fukushima no longer have the ability to hold hands and skip through the parks around the entombed reactors. 

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)-the US federal agency charged with maintaining a critical regulatory eye on the operations of the nuclear industry-uses imagery startlingly close to the main industry lobby group. The image on the homepage of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's own website (United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission n.d.) shows healthy children and adults running or strolling through a pristine, tree-lined park. Clear skies and picturesque hilltops are in the backdrop. The NRC logo informs viewers that the agency is 'Protecting People and the Environment'. There is no mention of nuclear energy in the image. The silences and the absences from the text are noteworthy. Protecting people and the environment is not controversial: Who could object to the work of a federal oversight agency with this mission? 

FUKUSHIMA 

During his campaign for the presidency in 2008, then-Senator Barak Obama clearly stated that he was a proponent of nuclear energy and that he envisioned nuclear power as an important component of a secure American energy source. Given the interest of the US government to promote nuclear energy, and a continued US-Japan joint interest in creating public support for the nuclear industry. President Obama's reaction to the post-tsunami events at Fukushima were not surprising. As one of the most powerful people in the world, President Obama had an historic opportunity to address a public--not just the American public, but the global public that consumes and disseminates US media--that felt anxious and concerned about radiation from Japan and the far-reaching potential of radiation exposure. At the White House on 17 March 2011, six days after the tsunami, and five days after the first known meltdown of one of the reactors' cores, President Obama offered this message: 'In the coming days, we will continue to do everything we can to ensure the safety of American citizens and the security of our sources of energy. And we will stand with the people of Japan as they contain this crisis, recover from this hardship, and rebuild their great nation' (Lee 2011). 

Not only did the US government provide the first nuclear reactors to Japan, but the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant were designed by an American company, General Electric, the world's biggest nuclear-equipment supplier. Despite the role of the United States in developing and encouraging the nuclear industry in Japan, President Obama's response shadowed the political collusions between Japan and the USA. Obama expressed unilateral concern for 'the safety of American citizens and the security of our sources of energy'. The President offered little to the people of Japan, pledging only to 'stand with the people of Japan' as they address and recover from their hardship. Certainly the Japanese people needed more than a US President who offered only to stand by them, just as all people need a critical conversation about the trade-offs and risks of nuclear energy. Fukushima was not caused by an earthquake and tsunami; it was caused by technological and human error. Japan had billions of dollars in earthquake protection--the best in the world-but nuclear energy is a system that requires predictability, stability, and perfection, assurances that neither human nor technological safeguards can provide. 

GEORGIA 

In his Rose Garden statement, President Obama avoided any critiques of the nuclear industry. Undoubtedly as the Fukushima disaster played out, the US government was involved in an alliance between Toshiba, a multinational Japanese company, and Westinghouse, a nuclear technology company based in Pennsylvania majority owned by Toshiba (Rascoe 2012). On 17 February 2012, the Seattle Times ran an article, originally published by Yomiuri Shimbun, about the US government's reversal of 34 years of policy by issuing the first federal permit since 1978 to build a plant in the state of Georgia (Yomiuri 2011). Nuclear radisation fallout worldwide from Fukushima incident.

Given the history of racism that has enshrouded US nuclear policy, it is disconcerting, but not surprising that the USA is eyeing Georgia which has the sixth worst poverty level in the USA, and a high percentage of African American residents (31% according to the 2010 Census) as the potential new nuclear site. The article (which remained ignored by US media for three months) noted: '(t)he decision to resume construction of reactors is expected to pave the way for Japan to export related equipment to the United States ...' (Yomiuri 2012). The Obama Administration has since offered $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees to fund the project (Rascoe 2012). Similar to the Bikini Incident in 1954, Japan and the USA are careful not to criticise events in the other nation for fear of adversely impacting joint nuclear interests. Obama remained calm during the Fukushima nuclear crisis, and simply expressed confidence in Japan's ability to contain the problem. 

CONCLUSIONS 

The date 1 March 1954 witnessed the largest nuclear weapon ever tested by the United States, but the exposure of the fishing crew aboard the Lucky Dragon that day also became an important catalyst fueling more than six decades of US-Japan nuclear energy interests. Discourse analysis of news accounts, US nuclear energy industry statements, and other historical documents illuminate deep-seated and disturbing hegemonies that silence criticism, and manipulate construction of public perceptions about nuclear energy. The sanitising language of our nuclear industry--beginning with nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands and continuing to current nuclear power interests--shrouds the nuclear energy in an Oz-like version of reality where radiation no longer mutates, kills, maims, sickens, and destroys. Attention to nuclear discourse reveals US policy goals. As Carol Cohn argues, we must learn the language of our institutions so we can better criticise and transform our policies (Cohn 1987). 

Here is what the English language looked like in the 11th century, a shorter time frame than the half-lives of some of the more enduring radioisotopes:   Syddan wees geworden paet he ferde purh pa ceastre and paet
   castel: godes rice prediciende and bodiende. and hi twelfe mid. And
   sume wif be waeron gehaelede of awyrgdum gastum: and untrumnessum:
   seo magdalenisce maria of paere seofan deoflu uteodon: and iohanna
   chuzan wif herodes gerefan: and susanna and manega odre pe him of
   hyra spedum penedon.

Given the 24 000 year half-life of plutonium, what language or symbols will we use to communicate the dangers that future generations will inherit from us? The effects of nuclear policies and actions today may last longer than humans are likely to inhabit the planet. 

The challenge for all of us, as global citizens, is to demonstrate our interconnectivity, across generations, oceans, political boundaries, income, class, race, and beliefs. Policymakers and average citizens need to understand that the challenges of radiation exposure, as well as climate change, are not just burdens for people in remote areas, but are conditions that diminish the quality of life for all of us. If a nuclear waste storage facility on Enewetak Atoll succumbs to rising tides, or if an earthquake causes the meltdown of nuclear reactors that contaminate the Pacific Ocean, these events do not create problems just for local communities. They create problems for all of us. 

Nuclear energy is heralded as the answer to national security, environmental issues, and even economic woes, yet there still is no long-term viable storage option for the nuclear waste produced by power plants. Nuclear waste remains hazardous to all forms of life for tens of thousands of years. The government-military-nuclear Cerberus is able to effectively guard the secrets of the nuclear beast as long as those damages and injuries remain relegated to colonised bodies and lands considered as our periphery. The lessons from Fukushima, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini, Enewetak, Moruroa, Fangataufa, the Yakima, Nez Perce, Umatilla, Shoshone, Navajo, and Spokane tribes, and beyond provide ample evidence of the racialised and hidden dangers of the nuclear era as well as the lack of human and technological ability to control the nuclear beast. 

DOI: 10.1002/ocea.5104 - Holly M. Barker - University of Washington 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

I thank Ty P. Tengan and Lamaku M. Roy for inspiration from their 2014 ASAO Distinguished Lecture that called for '... all anthropologists and scholars. Native or non-Native, to both account for and be accountable to the deep cultural and political histories of place wherever they go, be it for research or for a conference' (Tengan and Roy 2014). I also thank the traditional land owners of Picuris Pueblo for hosting this year's ASAO annual meeting. This paper was adapted from 'Discourses of secrecy and silence in the post-tsunami Pacific' delivered at a March 2012 conference at Oberlin College which focused on 'Fukushima: Lessons Learned?'. I acknowledge with thanks Sylvia Watanabe, William Sherman, Sarah Fulton, Frank Fulton, Jennifer Marcello, and Gayle Sato for comments on earlier drafts; ASAO board members and officers Lisa Uperesa, Alexander Mawyer, Lamont Lindstrom, Ryan Schram, and Mary McCutcheon, and deep respect and gratitude to friends, family and colleagues in the Marshall Islands. Specific thanks to Rochelle Fonoti, Carmen Borja, Hau'oli Kikaha, John Timu, Sheryl Day, Sven Haakanson, and many others; friends and colleagues Julie Walsh, Vince Diaz, Sylvia Watanabe, Gail Sato, Barbara Rose Johnston, Keitapu Maamaatuaiahutupu, Bill Leap, Peter Kuznick, Bob Kiste, Byron Bender, Carol Cohn, Adam Horowitz; and finally Marshall Islands associates Wilfred Kendall, Banny deBrum, Tony deBrum, Kristina Stege, Mark Stege, Jeilar Kabminmeto, Bill Graham, Lijon Eknilang, Abacca Anjain-Maddison and Newton Lajuan. 

REFERENCES 

• ABO, T., B.W. BENDER, A. CAPELLE, and T. DEBRUM. 2009. Marshallese-English Dictionary. PALI Language Texts: Micronesia. [Accessed 27 July 2015.] 
• ALPEROVITZ, G. 1996. The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. London: Vintage. 
• BARILLOT, B. 2010. Moruroa: Environmental Risks and Climate Change Testing Consequences, translated by Keitapu Maamaatuaiahutupu. Tahiti: Moruroa E Tatau. 
• BARKER, H. 2004. Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. 
• 2011 . Budgetary cuts threaten lives of Washington's hungry and sick. The News Tribune (Tacoma, WA), 6 May. 
• BARNETT, J. and J. CAMPBELL. 2010. Climate Change and Small Island States: Power, Knowledge and the South Pacific. London: Earthscan. 
• BEAMON, K. and C.M. MESSER. 2014. The Enduring Color Line in U.S. Athletics. New York: Routledge. 
• CHAKRABARTI, S.K. and S. AHMED. 2008. Sinking island's nationals seek new home. CNN, 11 Nov. CNN.com [Accessed 27 July 2015.]
• COHN, C. 1987. Slick 'ems, glick 'ems, Christmas trees, and cookie cutters: Nuclear language and how we learned to pat the bomb. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 43(5): 17-24. 
• GERRARD, M. 2014. A Pacific isle, radioactive and forgotten. The New York Times, 3 Dec. [Accessed 27 July 2015.]
• HECHT, G. 2012. Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 
• JOHNSTON, B.R. and H.M. BARKER. 2008. Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
• KAHN, M. 2011. Tahiti Beyond the Postcard: Power, Place, and Everyday Life. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 
• KRAMER, B. 2011. Spokane Tribe members worked gladly in uranium mines. The Spokesman-Review, 5 June. [Accessed 27 July 2015.] 
• KUZNICK, P. 2011. Japan's nuclear history in perspective: Eisenhower and atoms for war and peace. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [Accessed 27 July 2015.] 13 April. 
• LEE, J. 2011. President Obama: 'We will stand with the people of Japan'. The White House Blog, 17 March. [Accessed 27 July 2015.]
• MAAMAATUAIAHUTUPU, K. 2014. Climate change and nuclear risks: French Polynesia. Burke Museum (Seattle, WA) public lecture. [Accessed 27 July 2015.] 
• MARCUS, S. 2011. On Nauru--a sinking feeling July 18, 2011. The New York Times, 18 July. 
• MATASHICHI, O. 2011. The Day the Sun Rose in the West: Bikini, the Lucky Dragon, and I. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. 
• NAKAZAWA, K. 2010. Hiroshima: The Autobiography of Barefoot Gen, edited and, translated by Richard H. Minear. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. 
• NUCLEAR ENERGY INSTITUTE, n.d.. Website. [Accessed 27 July 2015.] 
• RASCOE, A. 2012. NRC approves first new nuclear plant in a generation. Reuters, 9 Feb. [Accesssed 27 July 2015.] 
• RAYFUSE, M. 2011. Life after Land. The New York Times, 18 July. [Accessed 27 July 2015.] 
• REPUBLIC OF THE MARSHALL ISLANDS, EMBASSY TO THE UNITED STATES, n.d.. Nuclear issues: List of nuclear tests in the RMI. [Accessed 27 July 2015.] 
• SANGER, S.L. 1995. Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWH Hanford. Portland: Portland State University. 
• SCHWARTZ, S. 1998. Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons since 1940. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. 
• STEGE, M. 2008. Presentation to focus the nation, a national day of campus action on climate change (unpublished). Seattle: Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. 
• TEAIWA, T.K. 1994. Bikinis and other s/pacific n/oceans. The Contemporary Pacific 6: 87-109. 
• UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION, n.d.. Website. [Accessed 27 July 2015.] https:// www.nrc.gov/ 
• VINE, D. 2009. Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 
• WOODS, N. 2006. Describing Discourse: A Practical Guide to Discourse Analysis. London: Hodder Arnold. 
• YOMIURI, S. 2011. U.S. to restart construction of nuclear reactors, The Seattle Times, 26 Nov. [Accessed 27 July 2015.]

COPYRIGHT 2015 Blackwell Publishing Limited, a company of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright 2015 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ocea.5104/abstract?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+unavailable+on+Saturday+17th+December+2016+at+09%3A00+GMT%2F+04%3A00+EST%2F+17%3A00+SGT+for+4hrs+due+to+essential+maintenance.Apologies+for+the+inconvenience