Posted on Nov 28, 2015
Once a nuclear test site, group of Pacific islands face oblivion again
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Did you know Once a nuclear test site, group of Pacific islands face oblivion again?
Did you know Once a nuclear test site, group of Pacific islands face oblivion again?
http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/once-a-nuclear-test-site-group-of-pacific-islands-face-oblivion-again-1.380964
THE REPUBLIC OF THE MARSHALL ISLANDS — A boy and his grandfather are fishing in the shallows off their tiny island, a dot of green in the sapphire eternity between Hawaii and Australia. The flash comes first, silent and brighter than the sun, from a four-mile-wide fireball beyond the horizon. The sky turns blood red. Wind and thunder follow.
Even 61 years after, Tony deBrum gets "chicken skin" when sharing his memories of the largest American nuclear-weapons test - the biblical, 15-megaton detonation on Bikini Atoll, 280 miles northwest of his island. Its flash was also seen from Okinawa, 2,600 miles away. Its radioactive fallout was later detected in cattle in Tennessee.
"We pause today to remember the victims of the nuclear-weapons testing program," deBrum says to a couple hundred people seated in a convention hall in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, a little-known nation that was entrusted to the United States as a primitive society 68 years ago.
Did you know Once a nuclear test site, group of Pacific islands face oblivion again?
http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/once-a-nuclear-test-site-group-of-pacific-islands-face-oblivion-again-1.380964
THE REPUBLIC OF THE MARSHALL ISLANDS — A boy and his grandfather are fishing in the shallows off their tiny island, a dot of green in the sapphire eternity between Hawaii and Australia. The flash comes first, silent and brighter than the sun, from a four-mile-wide fireball beyond the horizon. The sky turns blood red. Wind and thunder follow.
Even 61 years after, Tony deBrum gets "chicken skin" when sharing his memories of the largest American nuclear-weapons test - the biblical, 15-megaton detonation on Bikini Atoll, 280 miles northwest of his island. Its flash was also seen from Okinawa, 2,600 miles away. Its radioactive fallout was later detected in cattle in Tennessee.
"We pause today to remember the victims of the nuclear-weapons testing program," deBrum says to a couple hundred people seated in a convention hall in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, a little-known nation that was entrusted to the United States as a primitive society 68 years ago.
Nuclear
Weapons
Military History
Edited >1 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
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The Marine whose story I told in my blog not only attended an atmospheric test in Nevada, but also was present at the one mentioned in this story. He was on board a carrier that sailed through the lagoon where the test blast occurred after the surviving "target" ships where towed and anchored there. He reported seeing US sailors swabbing down the radioactive decks of the blasted hulks without any protective garb at all.
http://www.jackdurish.com/7/post/2015/10/the-atomic-veteran.html
http://www.jackdurish.com/7/post/2015/10/the-atomic-veteran.html
Dick Latham is a United States Marine whose story is missing a chapter. Members of every branch of the United States military wear their story upon their chest. Each chapter is written in a language...
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I watch for news of the Marshall Islands out of the corner of my eye, COL Mikel J. Burroughs. My father was an engineering officer in the Navy during WWII, and spent his time aboard ship in the Pacific Ocean. The ship's first destination upon leaving Pearl Harbor in DEC44 was Enewetak Atoll. His ship also made landings on Kwajalein Atoll. I'm sure that his ship made landings on other atolls of the Marshall Islands, but I can't think of their names offhand.
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Any place that was once a nuclear test site in the 1950's and 1960's is most likely going to be uninhabitable for at least another century COL Mikel J. Burroughs,
The Marshall Islands were scenes of some of fierce fighting between USMC primarily and Japanese defenders of the islands they occupied including the Kwajalein Atoll which was the administrative center of the Japanese 6th Fleet Forces Service prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. We fought them at Kwajalein, Majuro, and Enewetak.
The Marshall Islands were scenes of some of fierce fighting between USMC primarily and Japanese defenders of the islands they occupied including the Kwajalein Atoll which was the administrative center of the Japanese 6th Fleet Forces Service prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. We fought them at Kwajalein, Majuro, and Enewetak.
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