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The U.S. government first asked Bikini residents to leave temporarily in 1946. It then conducted a series of tests over a dozen years, including detonating a massive hydrogen bomb hundreds of times more powerful than the nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan during World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The inhabitants were moved to other islands that proved inhospitable. Kelen\u2019s family eventually ended up in Majuro, the capital. He says his parents always planned to return to Bikini but got to spend just four years there before being told to leave again. Kelen\u2019s father died two years ago and his mother, now 93, is too old to travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey told us we were relocated from Bikini for the good of mankind, to bring peace to the world. But I think nuclear is the same as climate change,\u201d Kelen said. \u201cIt benefits the big countries and ruins the small countries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bikini residents have received some compensation from the United States. But many people, including Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, say it\u2019s not enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Heine said in a speech this year that the removal of the Bikini residents produced \u201cinconsolable grief, terror and righteous anger\u201d that hadn\u2019t diminished in the seven decades since, and had been exacerbated by the U.S. being dishonest about the extent of the radiation and its effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Five thousand kilometers (3,000 miles) away in Tahiti, French Polynesia, Roland Oldham is also grappling with nuclear testing\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He is president of Moruroa e tatou, an organization that represents victims of French tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls. The nuclear tests lasted 30 years, ending in 1996, the year the United Nations adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Studies have shown that people in the region during the tests had an increased risk of developing thyroid cancer. But information on radiation exposure remains classified, making it hard to estimate the risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oldham says those who worked directly on the testing program suffered high rates of cancer and other health problems. He says it\u2019s difficult to get good statistics on the health effects on the broader community because of the continuing secrecy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much of the later testing was carried out underground, but some radiation has leaked. Oldham fears the problem could get much worse because parts of the a<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oldham, 66, says he sailed around Moruroa while completing his military service with the French Navy in 1970. He says he never saw or felt anything, and doesn\u2019t know if he was exposed to radiation or the extent of that exposure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oldham says the heated rhetoric between the leaders of North Korea and the United States has made much of the Pacific vulnerable at the moment because of U.S. military bases in places like Guam, Japan and South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe day the two guys throw a punch at each other,\u201d he said, \u201cthe whole area will be suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He says he worries that mankind is headed toward its own destruction by nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt some stage I want to be sick, when I observe the things happening in front of my eyes,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat a world. What a crazy mess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than 70 years after the first nuclear tests, Bikini Atoll remains contaminated today. It\u2019s part of a troubling nuclear legacy that continues to affect islands and people across the Pacific long after the U.S., Britain and France stopped their testing programs there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":67118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":12,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,12,26,62],"tags":[],"coauthors":[407],"class_list":["post-34304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-news","category-newsletters","category-pentagon-congress"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"7KU3IQ3KU5ERVDKKZWBUIYQI5Q","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/2017\/10\/07\/in-pacific-rising-tensions-evoke-troubling-nuclear-legacy\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP17278001674798.jpg.jpg\")
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