[Music] oh yeah you see it right away from the boat you don't see it at all and then suddenly it's so clear oh man I canot believe I was actually standing on this this is where our history are buried and as long as this thing is here will remind us that we've been robbed we were robbed immediately after World War II the US was engaged in a cold war arms race with the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1958 the US carried out a series of nuclear tests detonating 67 giant bombs in the Marshall Islands a
tiny nation of 29 atols that was a US military Outpost in the Pacific the tests a US officer said at the time were for the good of mankind and to end all the wars everything is in Readiness now and at last the moment has arrived bomb away the shock wave visibly roared across the ocean and hit the camera ship miles away from rising with the cloud are millions of cubic feet of radioactive a in the late '70s the US sent servicemen to clean up bearing vast amounts of radioactive soil and debris under a massive concrete
dome but just four decades later plutonium and other hazardous materials may already be leaking out in total more than 3 million cubic feet of radioactive waste was buried under this 18in thick concrete cap but the cleanup was only partial vast areas of contaminated land were never cleared at all and now the Dome itself is starting to fall apart see look that was repaired that whole section big crack here has been repaired I mean look that's literally someone's just gone with a tube a glue no cement would last forever I mean if plutonium has a half
life of 24,000 years this definitely isn't going to last it's only been 50 years that's the other greater you see how deep that is yeah next to the Dome is a crater from one of the blasts 44 of the 67 tests were conducted here on the anuo ATL two on Luna Island the lacrosse Crater from 1956 and the cactus Crater from 1958 it was recently discovered that it wasn't just local contaminated soil that was buried here 130 tons of waste from the famous Nevada nuclear test was also shipped all the way to the martial islands
and buried lots more waste was simply dumped into the Lagoon the largest of the nuclear test was the Bravo explosion on the bikini atol in 1954 approximately 1200 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima the blast was so big that another ATL called ralap almost 100 miles to the east was covered in radioactive dust NJ Joseph was 7 years old when the Bravo bomb was detonated she's one of the last remaining survivors who can still describe what they saw so the first you knew that anything was going on was was was literally when
you heard an explosion [Music] so you couldn't take any of your possessions do you still have any hope that you'll be able to go home again NJ has never been able to go home but elsewhere some martial were told by the US government that it was safe to return to their at all what the US didn't say is that toxic waste had been dumped into the nearby Lagoon which is one of their main sources of food Kimo yannes the current acting mayor returned in 1980 when he was 17 in 1986 when it had long been
clear that the nuclear Legacy was much more harmful than the US had promised and with the Marshall Islands itching for Independence the two countries signed a compact and the US agreed to pay compensation to victims of the tests because it wasn't safe to eat locally produced food the US also agreed to send shipments process food every 3 months here we [Music] go we have rice sugar can meat you guys want to eat spaghetti spaghetti and meat balls and this is this is is one shipment every 3 months from the US and if we run out
we C swi him out there and catch some fish even though they pising them they are not good for our health but we have to take [Music] it three generations have now been suffering from the impact of the nuclear testing amongst those who lived through the tests cancer and miscarriages became commonplace Mina tias was living on ralap at all when the tests were [Music] conducted how old were you when you first started to get sick [Music] did any of your children or grandchildren get sick [Music] [Music] the US knew exactly how much damage had been
done and the danger that contamination posed but didn't share that information with the martial E when the compact was negotiated US Government documents Declassified in the early '90s reveal just how much information was withheld Ariana tibon education and public awareness director of the national nuclear commission is organizing these Declassified documents to inform the mar public of what really happened here it shows project 4.1 which is the biomedical studies that were done on human beings within these documents one Us official makes a case for using the martial people as research subjects by saying while it is
true that these people do not live like westerners do civilized people it is nevertheless also true that these people are more like us than the mice the marshes people believe and they know that they were Exposed on purpose that project 4.1 could carry its course Ariana also showed us one of the most commonly reported effects of the tests birth effects some babies were born um Without Limbs there was an instant where there is a baby with no arms or legs and no head the skin was transparent and they could see all the organs beneath the
skin this baby was born with white hair and no ears and no genitals all this makes me feel like we're not even human into the in the eyes of the United States government the compact also set up an independent tribunal to assess and pay out health related claims from $150 million fund for nuclear victims the fund was set up as a trust and was supposed to make $18 million a year but there were so many claims that it quickly ran out Kathy Wakefield has been helping victims make their claims since 1994 so this is the
conditions yeah the first yeah the first list more than a dozen different cancers unexplained bone marrow failure radiation sickness severe mental retardation and these are all conditions you've seen regularly in these in these claims and they were fully compensated not yet but when were these claims made from the beginning they come to my office and say when are we going to get pay wor of money but there's nothing I could do you know I tell them go and talk to you uh Senator the nuclear claims tribunal concluded that $2.2 billion should be paid to the
martial Islands but today only $4 million of that money has been sent so that's the US Embassy they originally agreed to an interview um but then they said only if we don't ask about the nuclear Legacy which is a bit like being granted an interview with Harvey Weinstein if you're only allowed to ask about his charity work the martial e will get a chance to ask for these failures in funding and in the cleanup effort when they renegotiate the compact which is up for renewal in 2023 former president and current foreign minister castan NRA will
be leading the negotiating team when the martial islands and the US signed the compact the US said that all past present and future claims are now taken care of yes what's your reaction to that our negotiators they didn't have a lot of information at that time as a member of of parliament here how much you actually know about about the long-term Legacy of the nuclear testing I mean so we don't know much with the exception of what's being provided and the US has the information about what was done and where but they just haven't shared
it all with you so far well they do and can imagine these were kept as a top secret information and they have their own protocol how these are disclosed we're just at the tip of the iceberg we don't know that much the martial e commemorate their experience each year on March the 1st the anniversary of the Bravo test and as a new generation takes up this defining issue they're also demanding action on a newer one which threatens to make the nuclear Legacy even worse the coffin that embodies the horrendous truth of our nuclear Legacy brenet
dome is at risk of collapsing due to the rising Seas the Marshall Islands are already facing a serious threat from climate change and the subsequent rise in sea levels the entire enire country is barely 6 ft above sea level and sea walls are already being built to save people's homes back on run Island we returned at high tide to see how vulnerable the Dome is wa that old s is covered yeah I mean earlier on this felt like it was almost yeah Beach and now it's almost completely submerged however long it was designed to last
it wasn't designed to be submerged I'm sure it it was it I don't think when it was designed SE Rising was part of the equation this is kind of like a crazy thing it's actually nice and beautiful up here how can a dangerous place so beautiful at the same time [Music]
