Palm fringed lagoon

Music

00:00

Americans dining on beach

CORCORAN: Welcome to Rocket Island - an exotic American outpost in the middle of the Pacific. It's the most precious pearl in a strand of 100 islands that form the world's largest lagoon.

00:07

Vox Pops with diners

WOMAN #1: "It's fabulous. There's nothing better than living on a tropical island".

00:29

WOMAN #2: "I pretty much have beachfront property, you know? It's great. I love it here".

00:33

Al fresco dining

Music

00:38

CORCORAN: Beyond the ‘80s music and the al fresco dining, the nightlife can be spectacular in more ways than one,

00:45

Radar tracking

for this is Kwajalein, a highly sensitive military base with a deadly purpose. Four times a year it's the target for Washington's ultimate deterrent.

00:53

Hatch slides/ Launch

Nearly 8,000 kilometres away in Vandenberg, California, a disarmed Minuteman ballistic missile blasts off.

01:13

COLONEL BUHL: [Commander, Reagan Test Site] "In order for a weapon to be a weapon of deterrence, it needs to be proven that in fact it will work. We want to know that it's as accurate as possible so that when a decision is made by the President of the United States,

01:26

Buhl

he can be assured that exactly what he has asked for, he can have".

01:39

Missiles

CORCORAN: The missile reaches speeds of 38,000 kilometres an hour before arcing towards splashdown at Kwajalein Atoll.

01:43

Missiles in night sky

It's a surreal lightshow. Each of the three re-entry vehicles is designed to carry a nuclear warhead 25 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

[to Buhl]:  This is about testing the delivery vehicle for an enormous nuclear weapon.

01:56

Buhl. Super:
Colonel Harold Buhl
Commander, Reagan Test Site

COLONEL BUHL: "That is correct so you saw something where anywhere else in the world if somebody saw it, it would be the last thing they saw".

02:23

Missiles hits water

02:29

Kwajalein Atoll shots. Military installation in b/g

Music

02:32

CORCORAN: That America chooses such a splendid location to rehearse for Armageddon may appear ironic, but there is a cold hard logic to it all.

02:47

Military ‘domes’

COLONEL BUHL: "When it came time to start doing some missile testing in the ‘50s we had to look for an area that had wide open spaces, not a lot of people, so that we could do things very safely.

03:00

Buhl

So Kwajalein became a perfect area to do that type of operation".

03:09

Military base

Music 

03:14

CORCORAN: But all work and no play makes for a dull rocket scientist. Fifteen hundred US workers and their families are here and they're determined to keep living the American dream.

COLONEL BUHL: "It's like small town America, growing up in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, it's that type of environment where you don't need to lock your doors at night, everybody knows everybody

03:16

Buhl

and it's just a great community".

03:40

Cycling around base

Music

 03:42

Buhl in front of overhead projection

CORCORAN: Range Commander Lieutenant Colonel Harold Buhl gives us a big picture briefing of his world. Kwajalein is also a sophisticated surveillance base, America's eyes and ears, covering a third of the planet and beyond.

03:50

Music

04:09

Domes and sensors

COLONEL BUHL: "When we're not doing these complex missile testings, we fill up the rest of our time looking at space, conducting surveillance, understanding where satellites are, where they are moving and what their general orientations are. Our sensors can stretch from an area

04:13

Buhl

roughly from India to Canada and of course from the surface of the ocean all the way to the moon and beyond if necessary".

04:27

Moon

Music

04:34

CORCORAN: Washington is determined that "Pax Americana", the American peace, will continue to reign over the Pacific. Kwajalein's proximity to the equator means it's perfectly placed to detect trouble.

04:37

[to Buhl]: "How quickly would you be able to detect a rogue launch in this region?"

COLONEL BUHL: "Most launches

04:57

Buhl at overhead projection slides

depend on their flight time and most flight times are within about 15 to 20 minutes of Kwajalein".

05:01

Radar tracking

CORCORAN [to Buhl]: "If hypothetically the North Koreans launched a missile south into the South Pacific, you would detect that here quite swiftly?"

COLONEL BUHL: "Rest assured,

05:12

Buhl. Super:
Colonel Harold Buhl
Commander, Reagan Test Site

anything that breaches the horizon from our sensors’ perspective, we'll be able to pick it up and see it".

05:20

Golf course on base/ Workers maintain gardens

Music

05:32

CORCORAN: Beyond the radars is a small army of Marshall Islanders quietly keeping the base running and the grounds manicured, earning five dollars an hour for their efforts. More than 900 work here, making the US Army one of the biggest employers in the Marshall Islands and an economic pillar of this poor Pacific nation.

05:35

Boat takes Marshallese to Ebeye

At the end of their working day, the Marshallese pile aboard for the 20 minute commute home across the lagoon. It's a journey from the first world to the third. Their destination is no country club, but a small island dubbed "The Slum of the Pacific".

06:03

Ebeye slums

This is Ebeye, home to 15,000 people, a quarter of the country's entire population and they're crammed into just 32 hectares, an area smaller than the average golf course.

06:23

Women fill water receptacles

SENATOR MIKE KABUA: "We have running water three days a week - sometimes two days a week - and

06:41

Kabua. Super:
Senator Michael Kabua
Ebeye landowner

the power. Right now we don't know if the boat's not bringing the fuel. If it doesn't arrive tomorrow we going to shut down.

06:47

Ebeye streets

The sewer lines come up from the street and all kinds of stuff. Two thousand kids, they don't go to school at all. Not enough room, not enough teachers - it's a very difficult life here on Ebeye".

07:00

Kabua desk on verandah

CORCORAN: Mike Kabua is both a Senator in the national parliament and a traditional chief and landowner of this island. At times he appears overwhelmed as he wades through fragments of the past, attempting to piece together exactly who owns what in his realm.

07:16

Driving through Ebeye

A century ago just 100 people lived here, but as the Americans expanded the missile range in the late 1950's, they leased several islands in the Atoll, forcing the inhabitants to relocate to Ebeye. Marshallese from other parts of the country were also lured here in search of work at the base.

07:40

Marshallese children

By the 1980's there were 8,000 people on the island. Now it's 15,000, half of them children. Many in Roseann Jackson's neighbourhood live in squalor.

08:04

Roseann with Corcoran at shanty houses

ROSEANN JACKSON: "More than 40 people living here.

CORCORAN: "Forty people live in his area here? How can you fit forty people in here? Where do they sleep?"

ROSEANN JACKSON: "They sleep like sardines maybe. Like that".

08:18

Corcoran in Roseann’s home

CORCORAN: Roseann is more fortunate and she takes us to her home. After years of working at the base, she can afford to live here in relative comfort with her many children and grandchildren.

[to Roseann]: "What's life like for you?"

08:32

ROSEANN JACKSON: "Hard. Not too good. Expensive. Too crowded".

08:46

CORCORAN: "Do you get angry about it?"

08:53

ROSEANN JACKSON: "Sometimes. Sometimes we complain but what can we do?"

08:55

CORCORAN: But after 45 years on Ebeye, she wants to return to live on her home island, which lies in the middle of the missile range.

ROSEANN JACKSON: (looking at map) "This island right here....

09:03

Roseann points to map

actually these two, because I was born right here. This is from my mum's side and this is from my dad's side. This is like a paradise. It's my home...

09:14

Roseann. Super:
Roseann Jackson
Ebeye resident

home sweet home and it's hard to get away for too long".

09:22

Ballpark at dump

CORCORAN: It's little wonder that they dream of escaping this. With so many people packed onto Ebeye, there's no room for playing fields so a corner of the dump doubles as a ballpark. As the field straddles the entire width of the island, hitting home runs can be problematic.

09:31

[to coach]: "Have you lost any balls in the rubbish or in the ocean?"

06:56

COACH: "We used to, yeah, but we haven't got them now. They're still out there".

09:59

Smoking rubbish dump

CORCORAN: This is a mess the US is not willing to clean up.

10:05

Facilities on base

COLONEL CLARKE: "We have softball fields, we have soccer fields and we have a lot of activities for people to do in their off times.

10:13

Clarke and Corcoran walk

We got scuba diving…”

CORCORAN: Across the lagoon, Base Commander Colonel Frederick Clarke sees himself as the Mayor of Kwajalein and while he wants to help, he's adamant that he can't take responsibility for Ebeye.

10:22

Clarke

"Don't you feel you have a moral obligation to do more over there?"

10:35

Super:
Colonel Frederick Clarke
Commander, Kwajalein Base

COLONEL CLARKE: "I don't think Ebeye was created for United States Army Kwajalein Atoll. It existed before. So our... you know, our obligation is towards the workforce that live here. Like I said before, we have a symbiotic relationship and when they have an issue, we're there with them.

10:35

Children/shots around Ebeye

For instance when I first took command, on the second day of my command they were having generator problems and we deployed six generators to their area to make sure that the island power was maintained and that their sewerage pumps would continue to work. So when they've asked for help, we try to come up with the best solution because what happens to them affects us as well".

11:02

Clarke

CORCORAN: "Yeah but you've got 15,000 people over there on a small island. I've been on bigger golf courses".

COLONEL CLARKE: "I think we're doing everything that we can.

11:24

We don't see it as our issue per se".

11:32

Lagoon

CORCORAN: Giff Johnston, editor of the Marshall Islands' only newspaper and one time resident of Ebeye, says Washington can't sidestep responsibility.

11:37

GIFF JOHNSTON:  "The problem is that Ebeye is a creation of the United States.

11:48

Johnston. Super:
Giff Johnston
Editor, Marshall Islands Journal

They shunted people off islands and stuck them on Ebeye and yeah, they created the situation. I mean there's no question. It's absolutely a fact that the US set it up".

11:54

Aerials of atolls

CORCORAN: The Marshall Islands is a collection of coral atolls strung out across the vast Pacific and totally dependent on US aid. From Kwajalein it's more than 500 kilometres to the capital Majuro.

12:04

Independence Day celebrations in capital

We arrive as American officials are celebrating their 4th of July Independence Day. It's a sad, half hearted affair. Everyone has Kwajalein on their mind, but the US diplomats and the Marshall Islands President, Litokwa Tomeing all refused to talk to us.

12:21

The Marshallese were ruled by Washington until being granted their own independence in 1986. The Americans say they can't take charge on Ebeye now because of the delicate issue of sovereignty, but like so many Pacific micro states, the Marshalls' administration borders on the dysfunctional, paralysed by self-interest and clan rivalries.

12:46

Lagoon shots

GIFF JOHNSTON: "The Marshall Islands could do more and frankly successive governments of the Marshall Islands haven't done much and Ebeye has just sort of been out there on the fringe somewhere and when there's a crisis people jump to it and fix it and

13:16

Johnston

then it just is allowed to you know kind of go off but the US doesn't want to deal with it at that level because they say, well it's an independent country".

13:30

Aerials over lagoon

CORCORAN: What Washington wants out of this relationship is land - 11 islands of the Kwajalein Atoll, leased for 12 million US dollars a year. But the traditional landowners now want 19 million. The Americans have offered 15 and that's where the negotiations and the goodwill have stalled.

13:40

GIFF JOHNSTON: "Well you'd think four million dollars in the days of

14:07

Johnston

multi billion dollar defence budgets is just a drop in the bucket and obviously it is, but that's exactly what has caused this roadblock at Kwajalein".

14:11

Mike Kabua walking among older women making shell necklaces

CORCORAN: Mike Kabua's vision is for a gentler, more traditional way of life. Without landowner consent, he says base closure is an option when the current lease expires in 2016. He now talks of implementing a radical solution to end the overcrowding on Ebeye, sending everyone back to their home islands, even if that means no more American money.

SENATOR MIKE KABUA: "We told our government that maybe we should go back to our place, to our home. That's where we belong, and live like everybody else.

14:22

Kabua. Super:
Senator Michael Kabua
Ebeye landowner

Live like island lap-lap people, like they have no Kwajalein but they live okay".

14:58

Military plane

GIFF JOHNSTON: "Does anybody in the Defence Department want to leave Kwajalein? I can't believe it. Based on what very high level people say, all the way from Defence Department people to US ambassadors, I mean

15:08

Johnston

there's no interest on the part of the United States to lose that asset".

15:19

Rocket on palm fringed pad

Music

15:53

– blasts off – lots of radio chatter /commentary.

CORCORAN: The Americans have no intention of going home. In fact they're expanding operations at the 4 billion dollar facility. Last month a commercial rocket company Space X launched a Malaysian satellite from here. It's just the first of many to come.

15:26

Rocket camera shots

COLONEL BUHL: "Their Falcon One rocket can put satellites into a low earth orbit and they're looking at in fact testing a larger version of it, Falcon 9, which as you could figure, would have nine of the same engines instead of just the one".

15:56

Music

16:16

Bunkers

CORCORAN: It's a bright future but scattered across the atolls are reminders of Kwajalein's bloody past. Ruined bunkers where thousands of Japanese fought to the death against US troops who stormed ashore here in the Second World War. The Americans never left and spent the next half century preparing for an apocalypse that never eventuated.

16:2

Farnham on boat in lagoon describing buildings

Researcher Dan Farnham takes us on a nuclear history tour of the atoll.

DAN FARNHAM: This place is a radar tracking building that was built back in the mid-1980's and this was part of the Star Wars defence programme under then President Ronald Reagan.

16:46

This is a blockhouse. It was built to survive a nuclear hit. In 1989 of course the Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin Wall came down, and as soon as that happened, funding for this building was taken away so it was never completed.

17:06

Farnham on boat in lagoon. Super:
Dan Farnham
Researcher

We're going to head over to Carlson Island and I'm going to show you a wreck that does a real good job tying World War II and the nuclear age together right here at Kwajalein Atoll.

17:18

Corcoran and Farnham on boat to wreck

Music

17:29

FARNHAM:  Well, right now we're sitting right next to the wreck of the Prinz Eugen. The Prinz Eugen was a German Admiral Hipper class heavy cruiser and it's one of the fleet units that managed to survive the war".

17:37

Archival. Atomic blast detonates in the middle of fleet.

Music

17:49

CORCORAN: The Prinz Eugen was part of a vast armada assembled by the US in 1946 at Bikini Atoll, just 300 kilometres from here.

17:59

Music

18:10

CORCORAN: These were America's first post-war atomic tests, designed to see if the ships would survive the world's most destructive weapons.

18:21

In a tribute to German engineering, two nuclear blasts failed to sink the ship. The radioactive hulk was then towed to

18:33

Prinz Eugen wreck in lagoon

Kwajalein for further study, where it capsized, contaminating the lagoon.

DAN FARNHAM: "It was in the early 1970's when the shipwreck was declared safe, radiological wise for diving and snorkelling, so you're not going to be spiking a Geiger counter after you finish diving this wreck today".

18:39

Underwater sequence

CORCORAN: The old Nazi warship is still remarkably intact. More than 200 metres long, the hull stretches off into the depths, the guns still visible.

19:02

[to Farnham]: "Was it a smart thing towing a radioactive ship from a nuclear blast into the atoll?"

19:26

DAN FARNHAM: "Well I mean that's a great question and I think at that point in time, there wasn't a whole lot known about the effects of radiation with regards to how radiation affected people and how dangerous it actually was".

19:30

Music

19:42

CORCORAN: The Americans conducted 67 nuclear tests here up until 1958.

19:48

Archival. Nuclear tests

Music

19:55

CORCORAN: The most powerful - detonated at Bikini - was a thousand times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

19:59

Many Marshallese were caught in the massive radioactive fallout and suffered horrific injuries. They claimed they were human guinea pigs - the US knew the probably effects all along.

20:09

It's an assertion Washington still denies although a special trust fund paid several hundred million dollars compensation to the survivors,

20:24

Kwajalein Atoll. Boat to Ebeye

but that money is now gone with more than 2 billion dollars still owed to the claimants. Many of whom resettled here on Kwajalein Atoll.

20:37

GIFF JOHNSTON: "This is not a place where people are burning American flags and saying go home America. They're not. We have a very close relationship with the US on many levels and yet lately I think a lot of the people who have issues to do with Kwajalein or to do with the nuclear testing programme, feel that

20:49

Johnston. Super:
Giff Johnston
Editor, Marshall Islands Journal

the US is ignoring one of its best friends when it needs to resolve some of these problems".

21:08

Kwajalein stick dance by group of men in grass skirts watched by gathered throng

Music

21:14

CORCORAN: For the first time in living memory, chiefs and clan leaders have gathered for a traditional conclave at Kwajalein Atoll. The event is masterminded by Ebeye leader Mike Kabua who says he doesn't want his people to end up like destitute Americans.

21:22

Kabua

SENATOR MIKE KABUA: "Maybe, if we do not nurture our culture, which holds us together, we too will eventually end up wheeling our trolleys and searching through the rubbish for food".

21:48

Return to dancing

CORCORAN: This meeting is about creating unity to confront both the Americans and their own government over Kwajalein. As traditional landowners, they're angry at being cut out of negotiations over the base's lease. But while there's plenty of colour and movement, there's little optimism for any real change on Ebeye.

GIFF JOHNSTON: "It's just nobody deals with these things until maybe

22:08

Johnston

there's a cholera outbreak or something and there's oh my gosh we've got a problem, let's, you know, fix it. But long term nobody, US, Marshall Islands, the leadership over there are just, nobody has really in the last ten or fifteen years, nobody's come up with a game plan for long term improvement of Ebeye.

22:39

Radar tracking

COLONEL CLARKE: "We have a commitment to the defence of both the US and Marshallese people and I

23:00

Clarke. Super:
Colonel Frederick Clarke
Commander, Kwajalein Base

see that our relationship and partnership going on for a very long time".

23:06

Radar tracking/Ebeye ferry

Music

23:11

CORCORAN: At the end of the day it's an unequal partnership between a struggling micro state surviving on financial handouts and a dominant super power that needs a testing range for its nuclear missiles.

23:14

Return to beachfront dining

Music

23:27

CORCORAN: And as the ferry shuttles workers off into the night, it's evident who is in charge.  They cook the meals and serve the drinks here at one of the world's most sophisticated surveillance bases, but the people of Ebeye could be forgiven for thinking that they've simply fallen off the radar.

23:34

Reporter: Mark Corcoran

Camera: David Martin 

Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen

Producer: Greg Wilesmith

Research: Bronwen Reed

                 Ben Bohane

24:04