In 1946, while the Marshall Islands were under U.S. military rule, the U.S. military revealed a plan to conduct a series of atomic “experiments” at Bikini Atoll.[5] The announcement came in the midst of intense debate about whether atomic power should be overseen by civilians or military leaders, held by the United States or regulated by an international body. At the time, the United States was the only country in the world with atomic weapons.
Weeks later, American military personnel, scientists, and film crews descended on Bikini where they captured the exchange between the U.S. Military Governor and Juda, whose words the Bikinians subsequently memorialized on their flag. Then, the U.S. military removed the Bikinians from their islands and detonated two atomic weapons there.
The following year, the U.S. occupation of the region was sanctioned by the United Nations. Christened the Trust Territory of the Pacific (TTP), the terraqueous zone comprised an area larger than the continental United States. U.S. officials pushed for it to be designated a “strategic area.” The designation limited international oversight and largely eliminated any mechanisms for accountability: as a “strategic area” (as opposed to a “non-strategic area”), the administering power—the United States—was accountable only to the U.N. Security Council (where the United States had veto power) rather than to the entire General Assembly.[6] The atomic tests that the military conducted on Bikini in 1946—while the Marshall Islands were under U.S. military rule—were the basis for designating the area “strategic,” limiting outside oversight and legitimating the U.S. occupation of the islands and their continued use for nuclear weapons testing. And because it was a “strategic area,” when Marshallese people appealed to the United Nations to stop the Americans’ nuclear testing, the United States claimed that the designation gave it the authority to continue to conduct nuclear testing there. As U.S. Representative to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. explained in a memo to the U.S. State Department, “The Trusteeship Agreement of 1947…was predicated upon the fact that the United Nations clearly approved these islands as a strategic area in which atomic tests had already been held. Hence, from the very outset, it was clear that the right to close areas for security reasons anticipated closing them for atomic tests.”[7]
Per the 1947 Trusteeship Agreement, as the administrator of the region, the United States agreed to promote the political, social, and economic development of the people. This included a legal obligation to “protect the inhabitants against the loss of their land and resources” as well as to “protect” their health.[8]
The United States did not fulfill this obligation. Over the next decade, the U.S. military tested sixty-five additional nuclear devices in the atmosphere, on the land, under the waters, and around the people of the Marshall Islands. In all, twenty-three of the tests—including the two from 1946—took place at Bikini Atoll.