Robert Underwood: “40 years ago the United States conducted a test of a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb at Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands.…”

“40 years ago the United States conducted a test of a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb at Bikini atoll in the Marshall Islands. This test, called Bravo, was a significant event in the cold war arms race, and ensured that the United States would not fall precipitously behind the Soviet Union in developing this new generation of mass terror weapons. Unfortunately, for the people of Bikini, Rongelap, Enewetok, and Utirik atolls, as well as other far flung atolls of the Marshall Islands, Bravo signaled a different event of mass terror. The fallout from Bravo literally snowed radioactive particles on their islands. Some were subsequently evacuated from their islands; most had already absorbed the poisonous radioactive waste; the excuse for not moving the islanders: There was a sudden downwind which brought this cancerous snowstorm. Now, forty years later, as the Department of Energy begins to tell the secret story of radiation experiments, I join Chairman George Miller in calling for the complete story of the saga of the Marshall Islands nuclear tests, and of the Bravo shot in particular.”