George Miller: “Today is the fortieth anniversary of the Bravo shot, the detonation of the largest nuclear device ever tested by the…”

“Today is the fortieth anniversary of the Bravo shot, the detonation of the largest nuclear device ever tested by the United States. The 15-megaton Bravo blast was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb which devastated Hiroshima. It blanketed thousands of square miles with radioactive fallout, including inhabited atolls in the Marshall Islands, the Pacific island nation then administered by the United States under a trusteeship agreement with the United Nations. Last week, the Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing during which testimony made clear that the United States breached the trust placed in it 40 years ago. Against the advice and admonition of its own military and civilian experts, the joint task force responsible for the Bravo test failed to evacuate inhabited atolls which they knew were directly in the path of potentially dangerous levels of radioactive fallout. After heavy fallout contaminated the inhabited islands as predicted, the task force responded half-heartedly to the emergency, evacuating only a few islands and only after the people on them had been exposed to radiation for several days. A shroud of secrecy covered up the fact that thousands more people, including American servicemen and their families, had been exposed to radioactive fallout from Bravo. The aftermath of the Bravo debacle continues in the Marshall Islands today.”