Precis

Runit is a far-flung coral speck surrounded by shimmering blue lagoons, a tiny outpost of the Marshall Islands.

It’s also Ground Zero of the South Pacific or, as one Marshallese calls it, “a big monument to a giant American fuck-up”.

Runit is dominated by what’s called the Dome. It looks like the work of extra-terrestrials. But this is a man-made, sprawling concrete circle that encases tonnes of nuclear waste including about 400 lumps of plutonium, one the deadliest substances known to science.

Now the Dome is cracking and leaking. Storm tides flood over it. Seawater is inside it. The fear is that a typhoon will break the whole thing apart and spew its radioactive contents into the ocean.

That dome is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age. It’ll be a devastating event if it really leaks. We’re not talking just the Marshall Islands, we’re talking the whole Pacific Ocean – Alson Kelen, Marshallese community leader

As reporter Mark Willacy discovers when he journeys to remote Runit, the Dome is a literal concrete example of America’s cavalier treatment of the Marshall Islanders. Bikini is seared into history for the 23 atomic bomb tests carried out there. Yet at least 40 more were done at Enewetak atoll, which includes Runit, and other Marshalls atolls in the 1940s and 1950s.

Displaced Marshallese can’t go home to contaminated islands. Many were burned by the fluttering fallout they called “snow”. Despite a US$2.3 billion compensation award, a mere US$4 million has been paid out.

We’re disposable. Our lives don’t matter.  War matters. Nuclear bombs matter – Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, poet and activist

Not only the Marshallese feel disposable in Washington’s eyes. When a bomb test at Runit misfired, leaving clumps of plutonium scattered over the island, someone had to clean it up. The job fell to US servicemen like Ken Kasik and Jim Androl in the late 1970s.

I was told I was going to a tropical paradise. I didn’t know it was radioactive – Jim Androl

My whole vision in life was to live on a deserted tropical island. We were lied to – Ken Kasik

Kasik and Androl say the clean-up teams shifted radioactive muck for months on end without radiation-protective clothing. For years they have battled cancers which they blame on the clean-up, and which they say also affect a disproportionate number of Runit vets.

But they can’t get extra help with medical bills because the US Government won’t recognise them as atomic veterans.

The government put us in the middle of a danger zone. Our boys worked six-month tours on a dirty island and the government says ’You were never there’ – Ken Kasik

Archival. Atomic explosions

Music

00:00

KEN KASIK: “My whole vision in life was to live on a deserted tropical South Pacific island. 

00:04

Kasik in hospital bed

Watch out what you tell the Lord!” [laughs]

00:09

Archival. Atomic explosion/Atoll

MARK WILLACY: America tried to bury its toxic legacy here on a remote coral atoll.

00:11

Photos. Burial of atomic waste on atoll

MICHAEL GERRARD:  They covered it over with an 18-inch-thick dome

00:17

Gerrard 100%

and left. 

00:22

Archival. Construction of dome on atoll

Music

00:23

Dome. Present day.

MARK WILLACY:  Now the sea is rising and the dome is leaking and the men who tried to clean it up, are dying. 

00:25

Kasik in hospital

KEN KASIK: “It was a total secret. We didn’t even know.

00:35

Photo. Kasik and others. Clean-up operation

The guys didn’t know. We were lied to”.

00:39

Willacy on boat/Jetnil-Kijiner/Kelen

MARK WILLACY:  Tonight, we journey to one of the most contaminated places on earth and we meet the people fighting back. 

KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER: “You know if you accept that you’re doomed then what is left to fight for? You know where are you going to find hope?”

00:43

ALSON KELEN: ‘We need the world to help us.  Whatever the world is doing, please look at us”.

00:56

Atomic explosion

01:02

Willacy in plane over atoll
TITLE GFX:  The Dome
REPORTER:  Mark Willacy

Music

01:13

MARK WILLACY:  We’re halfway between Australia and Hawaii, in the middle of a seemingly endless Pacific Ocean.  Below us, chains of mostly uninhabited islands that together form the nation of the Marshall Islands.

01:23

[on the plane] “Well we’ve just passed Bikini Atoll, known around the world for 23 atomic tests during the 1940s and 50s.  But where we’re going is much more remote – a place where nearly twice as many tests were carried out, some of the biggest in human history”.

01:41

Map Pacific Ocean showing Marshall Islands

Spread over two-million square kilometres of the central Pacific, the Marshall Islands is a scattering of more than a thousand islands and islets. 

01:55

Plane lands. Willacy out of plane

Few people have heard of Enewetak, but it’s the ground zero of US nuclear testing in the Pacific. 

02:08

Enewetak welcome sign

The welcome sign hints at what we’ve come to see, but when you know what it really is, few would want to visit this place.

02:18

Enewetak GVs

Music

02:25

MARK WILLACY: This atoll is a ring of 40 islands, so remote that there’s no regular transport in or out.  It’ll be a week before our plane returns – if we’re lucky. It’s a stunning place, but its beauty

02:33

Aerial. School yard

hides a dark, dirty secret. 

CHILDREN SINGING: [subtitle] “This is my land.

02:49

Children sing in school yard

Gone are the days when we live in fear, fear of the bombs, guns and nuclear…”

MARK WILLACY: This is a place whose atomic past is seared into its present.  The people of Enewetak

02:55

were forced into exile by the atomic fallout.  Allowed to return after three decades, a new generation is learning about the traditions and customs of this place.

03:16

CHILDREN SINGING: [subtitle] “So let’s work together”.

MARK WILLACY: They’ve also been taught about America’s toxic legacy and how it lies under a giant dome.

CHILDREN SINGING: [subtitle] “This is my country.  This is my land”.

03:27

CHRISTINA ANINGI: “They understand. Somehow they understand that

03:43

Christina 100%
Super:  CHRISTINA ANINGI
Enewetak School

we have a poison in our island, that is what they call poison.  They know that there is a tomb because they have been there”.

MARK WILLACY: “So the dome,

03:46

you call it the tomb?”

CHRISTINA ANINGI: “Mm we call it the tomb”.

03:57

Travelling to dome

Music

04:01

MARK WILLACY: We set out the next morning to see for ourselves. To do that, we need guides who know how to navigate the reefs and the World War II wrecks that lie in Enewetak’s shallows.

04:09

Willacy on boat

[on the boat] “To get to where we’re going we have to cross the world’s second largest ocean lagoon formed by the rim of an ancient volcano.  It’s a thousand square kilometres of the Pacific”. 

04:26

After nearly two hours, we approach one of Enewetak Atoll’s 40 islands, a tiny, scrubby rise called Runit.  What we’ve come to see is hard to spot from the beach,

04:39

Aerial. Dome on Runit

only from the air can you get a true sense of the size and the scale of what the United States military calls “the dome”. 

04:58

Aerials of Dome

The dome is actually a dump. It contains the toxic leftovers of some of the most powerful atomic bombs in history, America’s Cold War legacy.

05:06

MICHAEL GERRARD: [Columbia University] “It is a tomb of nuclear waste.  The dome is completely

05:20

Gerrard 100%. Super:
MICHAEL GERRARD
Columbia University

unlabelled.  There’s no fence, there are no guards there.  People can go there if they want and there’s nobody to stop them”.

05:25

Boat approaches Runit Island

MARK WILLACY:  Like other former nuclear test sites in the Marshall Islands, Runit Island is officially off limits, but there’s no one here to stop us when we visit. This place is just too isolated to guard.

05:34

Archival. Atomic test film

Music

05:50

MARK WILLACY: From 1946 to 1958 the United States detonated dozens of atomic bombs in the Marshall Islands. And while Enewetak is hardly known, its closest neighbour 300 kilometres to the east became synonymous with nuclear fallout.  Its name is Bikini. 

06:09

Archival. Bikini Atoll tests

ARCHIVE: “On Bikini Atoll… On the water you can see the shock wave coming towards the camera. Watch those palm trees in the foreground.”

06:33

ALSON KELEN: “I’m from Bikini Atoll. 

06:51

Alson 100%

Right now I don’t think I’ll be able to go back.  I mean it is not clean enough for us, it’s not safe”.

06:54

Men in canoe on lagoon

MARK WILLACY:  One of the country’s last traditional navigators, Alson Kelen is adrift, living in exile because he’s not allowed to return home to Bikini.  Ahead of the atomic testing there in the 1940s, the United States told Alson Kelen’s family and the 167 people of his atoll that they had a duty to the world to leave their islands.

07:02

Archival. Newsreel

It was a moment filmed by the military’s PR Unit.

07:27

ARCHIVE FILM – MILITARY LEADER: “All right now James will you tell them that the United States Government now wants to turn this great destructive force into something good for mankind and that this experiment here at Bikini are the first step in that direction”. 

07:35

ARCHIVE FILM – JAMES: [subtitle] “They say ‘everything’s good’ and they’re willing to go and everything is in God’s hands”.

ARCHIVE FILM – MILITARY LEADER: “Well you tell them and King Juda that everything  being in God’s hands it cannot be other than good”.

07:56

ARCHIVE FILM – VOICEOVER: “And here by the way you hear them singing their Marshallese version of You Are My Sunshine.  The Islanders are a nomadic group and are well pleased that the Yanks are going to add a little variety to their lives”. 

08:11

Alson’s elderly aunt

MARK WILLACY:  Alson Kelen’s 93-year-old aunt was one of those who was put on a boat and taken off her island.  Seven decades later, the pain of forced exile has not eased.

ALSON KELEN: [Community leader] “Every day she says, ‘When are we going back?’ 

08:32

Alson 100%. Super:
ALSON KELEN
Community leader

And I keep saying, “Oh one day.  I don’t know when, but one day’.  But I know, I know for a fact, that we’re not going back. 

08:47

Archival. Atomic blast

So it really, really made me sad because I don’t know what to tell her. 

08:54

Alson 100%

Should I lie to her?  I mean it’s not her fault, but I don’t want to lie to her”.

09:01

Lemeyo sitting outside home

MARK WILLACY:  Hundreds of Marshallese were shifted off their islands by the United States.  Some, like Lemeyo Abon, after it was too late. 

09:07

Archival. Castle Bravo

In March 1954, her island was enveloped in the fall-out from one of the Bikini blasts.  Codenamed Castle Bravo, it was the biggest nuclear test ever carried out by the United States - a 1000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. 

LEMEYO ABON: [subtitle] “The earth shook.

09:17

Lemeyo 100%

 When we saw the bright light and the loud sound, most of us were very afraid, we were afraid and we just sit down and see what will happen next”.

09:46

MARK WILLACY: A few hours later, 14-year-old Lemeyo noticed white powder falling from the sky.

10:05

LEMEYO ABON: [subtitle] “Some of the kids they didn’t know what snow is.  So they named that, ‘Oh, the snow’s fell down’.  This is the first time we saw this”.

10:11

Newspaper. Headlines:

MARK WILLACY:  The snow was highly radioactive fallout from the Castle Bravo bomb.  It took days for the Americans to

10:23

Archival. Island after testing

evacuate them.  The survivors remain nuclear refugees to this day. 

10:30

Archival. US spokesman

ARCHIVE FILM: “The meteorologists had predicted a wind condition which should have carried the fall out to the north of the group of small atolls lying to the east of Bikini.  The wind failed to follow the predictions,

10:35

Burns on Rongelap people  being checked by Americans

but shifted south of that line and the little islands of Rongelap, Rongerik and Uterick were in the edge of the path of the fall out. The medical staff on Kwajalein have advised us that they anticipate no illness, barring of course diseases which may be hereafter contracted”.

10:47

Jack driving

MARK WILLACY:  Jack Niedenthal washed up here in the Marshall Island’s capital Majuro more than 30 years ago and never left.  Now the head of the country’s Red Cross, he has spent decades fighting for nuclear justice for the people of Bikini Atoll, even taking their fight for compensation to Washington.

11:06

Jack 100%. Super:
JACK NIEDENTHAL
Red Cross

JACK NIEDENTHAL: [Red Cross] “As children you don’t open up your history books and see a word about Bikini and the nuclear testing out here, even though it’s my belief the Cold War was literally fought and won on the shores of Bikini.  I mean there were 23 weapons tested up there, 20 of them were hydrogen bombs.  I mean the people of Bikini did do a lot for mankind. 

11:28

Island GVs

I mean even now these days you have the North Korean leader talking about exploding a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific like it’s nothing. The idea that they’re even playing around with words and notions like that is so insulting and so infuriating to the people who live out here and have been through this and have

11:47

Jack 100%

suffered for since the ‘40s and ‘50s, it’s really awful for us to hear that”.

12:05

Archival. Bomb testing

ARCHIVE FILM: “Scientists term the experiment an entire success, a success in destruction. As the smoke rises on Enewetak, the curtain rises on the scenes of man’s oblivion”.

12:10

Island GVs

MARK WILLACY:  The impacts of 12 years of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands  included increased rates of thyroid and other cancers, and the permanent exile of people from their home islands. 

12:26

In 1986, as part of a deal to give the Marshall Islands independence, the US paid 150 million dollars. 

12:38

Boxes of tribunal files

Later, an independent tribunal awarded more than two billion dollars to victims of the testing program.  Less than four million was ever paid.  The tribunal office in the capital Majuro is no longer operating, with most claims unresolved, sitting in files gathering dust.

GIFF JOHNSON: “The US Government policy

12:49

Giff 100%

on the nuclear weapons legacy in the Marshall Islands, is to simply downgrade and dismiss health hazards as non-existent or insignificant”.

13:13

Giff in Journal office

MARK WILLACY: Giff Johnson is the publisher of the Marshall Islands’ Journal, the country’s only newspaper. For three decades he’s been a passionate advocate for the local people.  His wife, Darlene Keju, was a famous nuclear survivor and Marshallese leader who died of cancer aged just forty-five.

13:27

Giff 100%

GIFF JOHNSON: “It really makes us wonder if Marshall Islanders will ever get justice from the nuclear weapons tests that were conducted here and justice is the right word. 

13:47

It’s really important to understand that a lot of nuclear contaminated material was tossed into a crater leftover from a bomb test, a coral atoll essentially and a coral atoll by its nature is porous”.

13:58

Photo. Dome site

MICHAEL GERRARD: “When the US was getting ready to clean up and leave in the late 1970s, they picked the pit that had been left by one of the smaller atomic explosions

14:15

Gerrard  100%. Super:
MICHAEL GERRARD
Columbia University

and dumped a lot of this plutonium and other radioactive waste into the pit

14:28

Aerials. Dome

and covered it over with an 18-inch thick dome and left”. 

MARK WILLACY: That dome lies 1100 kilometres to the west of the capital, Majuro.  Like Bikini Atoll, this place is deemed too hot in radioactive terms for human habitation.

JACK NIEDENTHAL: “People in the United States would not tolerate something like this in their own backyard right now – or any time.  That’s why it’s up there. It’s astounding that it is there. 

14:35

Jack 100%

But when you go out there, it’s very surreal.  I mean to me it’s like this big monument to America’s giant fuck up”.

15:09

Aerials. Dome

MARK WILLACY: The dome was never meant to be anything but a temporary solution to the problem of atomic waste.  At almost every stage of its construction, safety was sacrificed to save money. 

12:53

Gerrard in office

Michael Gerrard is a US climate change specialist who’s visited the dome.

15:38

Gerrard 100%

MICHAEL GERRARD: “The bottom of the dome is just what was left behind by the nuclear weapon’s explosion. It’s permeable soil. There was no effort to line it and therefore the seawater is inside the dome.

15:55

GVs of Dome

Already the sea sometimes washes over it in a large storm, and the United States Government has acknowledged that a major typhoon could break it apart and cause all of the radiation in it to disperse”.

16:00

MARK WILLACY:  You can see why Runit’s remoteness made it seem like a good place for the dome and its contaminated contents, but like most of the islands of the Marshalls, Runit is barely a metre above sea level at its highest point. 

16:15

Willacy to camera on beach in with dome

“When this dome was built in the late 1970s, there was no factoring in sea level rises caused by climate change. Now, every day when the tide rolls out as it is now, radioactive isotopes from underneath the dome roll out with it”.

16:33

Alson with Willacy

ALSON KELEN: “That dome is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age. 

16:49

Alson 100%

It’ll be a very devastating event if it really leaks and we’re not talking just the Marshall Islands, we’re talking the whole Pacific Ocean”.

16:55

KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER: “I think it’s really telling that the

17:06

Kathy 100%

ocean is rising and it is making this nuclear waste leak out because in a lot of ways this climate change issue has also been revitalising a lot of conversations about our nuclear legacy.  Every time someone talks about climate change you can’t ignore our nuclear legacy as well. It’s linked”.

17:11

Kathy sitting with women weaving

MARK WILLACY:  Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner is a poet and climate activist.  She’s proud of her Marshallese heritage.

KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER: “It’s my home,

17:29

Kathy 100%

it’s where I’m from, it’s where my family’s from, my ancestors, they’ve been here for thousands of years and there’s also just nothing like it anywhere else and it’s a part of who I am”.

17:42

Kathy weaving with women

MARK WILLACY:  A rising leader of her nation, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner was invited to the 2014

18:02

Archival. Kathy at UN summit

United Nations Climate Change summit in New York to speak about how the Marshall Islands is on the frontline in the battle against rising sea levels.

18:07

Kathy delivers UN speech

KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER: [UN speech] “The Marshall Islands encompasses more than 2 million square kilometres of ocean”.

[interview] “I mean it’s the United Nations, these are world leaders from all over and

18:16

Kathy 100%

it was the first time that I was able to share something that I cared about, you know something about our islands”.

18:25

Kathy delivers poem at UN

MARK WILLACY: And what she shared was a poem about climate change, a poem addressed to her infant daughter.

KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER: [UN speech] “You are a 7-month-old sunrise of gummy smiles.

18:31

Kathy with daughter on home island

You are bald as an egg and bald as a budda.  You are thighs that are thunder, shrieks that are lightning so excited for bananas, hugs and our morning walks along the lagoon. 

18:42

Lagoon views

Dear Matafele Peinem, I want to tell you about that lagoon, that lazy, lounging lagoon lounging against the

18:55

Broken sea wall at cemetery

sunrise.  Men say that one day

19:01

Kathy delivers poem at UN

that lagoon will devour you.  They say it will gnaw at the shoreline, chew at the roots of your breadfruit trees, gulp down rows of sea walls and crunch through your island’s shattered bone”.

19:05

 Kathy to camera on island

[on her island] “Dear Matafele Peinem, don’t cry.  Mummy promises you no one will come and devour you.  No one’s drowning baby. No one’s moving.  No one’s losing their homeland, no one’s going to become a climate change refugee”.

19:16

Kathy with family at UN. Delegates stand and applaud

MARK WILLACY:  In a place known for sober speeches and poker face diplomacy, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s pledge to her daughter to fight climate change moved many to tears.

19:30

KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER: “I mean when they all stood up I kind thought they were just being polite but I just found out later that that’s not, that doesn’t happen all the time”.

19:45

Atoll town

MARK WILLACY:  Some estimates put the sea level rise here in excess of 60 centimetres by the end of this century.  That’s enough to inundate three-quarters of the country. 

19:55

Flooded areas and homes

KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER: “Now we’re on alert every time there’s a high tide because the water will come over and flood our houses, you know crashing in homes, it will destroy homes.  It’ll dry the crops and,

20:10

Kathy 100%

you know, that didn’t ever happen before.  You know we’re getting a lot more extreme weather like drought too and so it’s just gotten a lot worse in the past couple of years”.

20:22

Coral reef. Men spearfishing

ALSON KELEN: “It will kill our reef. If it kills our reef, it kills our fish, kills our food and you know Marshall Islands have very, very limited land so there’s really nothing for us

20:31

Alson with Willacy

to survive on.  So I would, you know I would

20:45

Alson 100%

say a very, very short time – I cannot give you the year but we will gradually probably start moving out soon”.

MARK WILLACY: “So the clock is ticking before you have to relocate?”

ALSON KELEN: “It is, it is ticking”.

20:49

Aerial. Jack driving through Majuro

JACK NIEDENTHAL: “I drive my grandson to school every day.  He’s eight years old, and we talk about this stuff”.

[in car/subtitle] “Why do you think the climate’s changing?  Why do you think things are so different now?”

21:03

Jack and grandson in car

GRANDSON: [subtitle] “The ice?”

JACK NIEDENTHAL: “Yeah, the ice is melting.  Yeah and that’s causing the seas to rise and the Marshall Islands are very low”.

21:15

MARK WILLACY:  Jack Niedenthal argues that rising seas are a bigger threat to his island home and to his grandson’s future than atomic bombs ever were.

JACK NIEDENTHAL: “I’m telling him your life

221:24

Jack 100%

is going to be really hard, a lot harder than my life was.

21:35

Grandson out of car and into school

And the place that you love is going to be slowly disappearing and it’s going to be up to people of your generation to fight back on this and he, he gets that”.

21:39

Aerial. Island road

KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER: “Everywhere is the coast because there are some parts of the island that are so thin that there’s ocean on either side of you. 

21:50

Kathy 100%

We’re just surrounded by ocean and

21:58

Island Aerials

I don’t think the ocean has ever looked as big to me until I came back home after living out in the States”.

22:00

Tidal damage

MARK WILLACY:  In recent years, later winter king tides have swept over some islands, choking crops with salt and even wrecking homes.  The flooding could contaminate the country’s shallow freshwater aquifers and sewerage filled tides threaten outbreaks of fever and dysentery.  And according to the locals, it’s becoming much more frequent.

22:08

Giff 100%. Super:
GIFF JOHNSON
Marshall Islands Journal

GIFF JOHNSON:  “We would go years in between seeing big, big inundation incidents and since about 2008, it’s increased with regularity to the point where I mean we’ll have six, eight of these in a year”.

22:32

Tide damaged cemetery

MARK WILLACY:  Not even the dead have been spared.  Here graves have been smashed and washed out to sea.  In 2014, a state of emergency was declared when five metre swells smashed over the shoreline.  The US Geological Survey warns that many Pacific atolls like those in the Marshall Islands, will be uninhabitable within decades. 

22:48

Island church. Families walk to church

MICHAEL GERRARD: “The Marshall Islands are in grave danger.  There are

23:19

Gerrard 100%

already a lot of people who are leaving the Marshall Islands,

23:23

Island churchgoers

a lot of them go to Hawaii or to mainland United States, some of them go elsewhere, but the long-term future of the Marshall Islands is not bright”.

23:26

Congregation sings hymns

[singing]

23:38

ALSON KELEN: “I would say that our country is sinking. 

23:45

Alson 100%

Our country is a front line so we’re facing the devastating effect of climate change and we need the world to help us.

23:49

Church congregation

People of Bikini got relocated from their atolls because of nuclear, today we’re about to get relocated,  

23:57

Alson and Willacy

not from our island, but from our country.  So, whatever the world is doing, please look at us”.

24:05

Aerial. Willacy standing in centre of dome

Music

24:17

MARK WILLACY: For many Marshallese, the dome on Runit Island remains a potent symbol of the threat of climate change.  It may be made from half-metre thick concrete panels, but as we’ve seen elsewhere, the ocean is likely to win out over concrete every time.

24:21

Radiation testing laboratory. Willacy looking at machine

The radiation levels of the people of Enewetak are supposed to be monitored here in this space-aged US built lab on the main island.  But when we visit, the machine for assessing radioactive exposure isn’t working. 

24:38

GVs island live

The US Government prohibits the export of food from Enewetak because of the concerns about contamination.  Fish from here is also banned.

24:56

Men fishing in lagoon

But this atoll surrounds a calm lagoon, and the lure of fresh fish is too much to resist, despite the lingering radiation. 

25:05

Footprints in concrete of dome

And as we’re about to find out, it’s not just the people of the Marshall Islands who are living with the fallout from what happened here all those years ago.

25:15

Willacy to camera standing on dome

 “This was the site of the largest nuclear clean up in United States’ history.  Four thousand young soldiers toiled here for years to fill in the bomb crater underneath this dome.  Among the more than 80,000 cubic metres of contaminated soil and debris was plutonium, one of the most toxic substances on the planet.  For many of the young soldiers who worked here, there was a high price to pay”.

25:26

Willacy driving through Nevada desert

Music

25:52

MARK WILLACY:  Those young men are now in their 50s and 60s and few in the United States know their story. 

[driving in a car] “From the islands and atolls of the Marshall Islands,

25:59

Willacy to camera in car

I’ve come to the desert of Nevada, another place where the United States tested many of its atomic weapons. 

26:10

Archival. Nevada atomic testing

In fact, you could see the mushroom clouds from the Nevada test site a 100 kilometres away in Las Vegas. 

26:16

Driving through Nevada

And that’s where I’m headed today, to meet one of Enewetak’s atomic clean up veterans”.

26:23

Aerial. Las Vegas suburbs

The suburban sprawl of Las Vegas feels like another world away from the remote emptiness of Enewetak Atoll, but the dome is something former US soldier Jim Androl can never forget and neither can he forgive.

26:23

Jim 100%

JIM ANDROL: “I’d never even heard of Enewetak.  I never knew that there were 43 nuclear tests out there.  I didn’t know it was radioactive. They didn’t tell us ‘til we landed. 

26:47

Photos. Atoll clean-up operation

Everybody kind of pretty much flipped out when they found out”. 

MARK WILLACY: “Because it was radioactive?”

JIM ANDROL: “Because it was radioactive. 

26:54

Jim 100%

I was told I was going to visit a tropical paradise for the last six months of the service”.

27:03

Photos. Jim as young man/Young US soldiers

MARK WILLACY:  A specialist in the Army’s 84^th Engineer Battalion, Jim Androl was one of thousands of US soldiers sent to help clean up Enewetak Atoll in the 1970s. 

27:09

Archival. Newsreel. Enewetak clean up

ARCHIVE NEWS STORY: “A thousand workers from the US armed forces are giving the northern islands a face lift, striving to dig and scrape away the radioactive soil and debris”.

27:22

MARK WILLACY: This US news story shows soldiers on Enewetak wearing radiation suits, but Jim Androl says this was just a show for the TV cameras”.

27:32

Jim 100%

JIM ANDROL: “There was no special gear issued.  We were just issued our normal warm weather gear, which would have been shorts, t-shirts, hats and jungle boots and that’s it”.

27:42

MARK WILLACY: “And were you given radioactive decontamination training?”

27:50

JIM ANDROL: “No, none whatsoever”.

MARK WILLACY: “Was there any safety equipment?”

JIM ANDROL: “No”.

27:53

Archival. NBC News report. Runit.  Super on archival:
Jim Upshaw
NBC News

ARCHIVE NEWS JIM UPSHAW: [NBC News] “If people do come back to Runit Island, they’ll be risking perhaps the hottest radiation on earth.  This island won’t be fit for human habitation again for at least 24,000 years”.

27:57

MARK WILLACY:  On Runit Island, site of the dome, soldiers were exposed to one of the most toxic substances known, the result of a bomb test gone wrong.

28:07

Archival. US Testing

MICHAEL GERRARD: “One of the attempted nuclear weapons explosions didn’t work and so the plutonium, rather than having a nuclear

28:17

Gerrard 100%

blast, was just broken apart by the conventional explosions, leading to about four hundred little chunks of plutonium that were spread all over around the atoll”.

28:25

Archival. Construction of dome

MARK WILLACY: Those four hundred chunks were put in plastic bags and tossed into the crater underneath the dome. 

28:37

Jim 100%

JIM ANDROL: “Well they had us walk around and pick up loose pieces for instance and just gather up whatever we could, throw it in a pile

48:45

Archival. Construction of dome

and I never had any clue that dust could literally get into your lungs, but these guys were dealing with that every day, all of us were, we all were”.

28:50

GRAPHIC OF SECRET DOCUMENTS
“…SOLID PLUTONIUM BEARING CHUNKS…”
“…THE QUANTITY IS UNDOUBTEDLY LARGE…
“…PRESENTS A NEW AND SERIOUS CONCERN…”

MARK WILLACY:  Declassified US Government documents reveal that Washington knew that troops would be exposed to plutonium on Runit Island. This secret cable from 1972 talks about the existence of solid plutonium bearing chunks on the island surface.  It warned that the quantity of plutonium was undoubtedly large and that it presented a new and serious concern. 

29:03

Enewetak clean up sign/Photos of young soldiers during clean up

MICHAEL GERRARD: “Many of the US soldiers in particular who worked at Enewetak have since come down with illnesses that they say were caused by their work there”.

29:28

Jim and wife at computer showing Facebook Enewetak Clean-up vets page

MARK WILLACY: Jim Androl is one of those soldiers.  For years he’s suffered from a myriad of complaints he says are linked to his service on Enewetak.

BEV ANDROL: “He had his gall bladder out, shortly after that they found

29:44

a seven-and-a-half-pound tumour, cancerous tumour in his abdomen”.

30:01

Jim 100%

JIM ANDROL: “I suffer from roughly 40 to 45 residuals from the cancer. I’ve got pancreatitis.  I’ve got a spot on my liver that they’re watching, kidneys”.

30:05

Photos. Army clean-up workers

MARK WILLACY: The problem for former clean-up workers like Jim Androl, is that unlike the other US soldiers involved in the atomic tests, the government does not recognise them as atomic veterans.  This means the 4,000 clean-up veterans have no special healthcare coverage.  Many are lumbered with crippling medical bills.  Washington argues safety precautions on Enewetak were exemplary, that workers’ radiation exposure fell below recommended limits and that their illnesses and the time they spent on Enewetak are not linked.

GIFF JOHNSON: “I mean these people were in the army. 

30:17

Giff 100%

What choice did they have?  They were told, go clean up Enewetak.  They went.  I think mostly they’re trying to get health coverage, medical care because they’ve got, some of them have terrible bills, really high bills from hospitals because of their treatment”.

30:53

Photos. Army clean-up workers

MARK WILLACY:  There has never been a formal study of the health of Enewetak workers, but one informal survey reported that hundreds suffered problems such as cancers, brittle bones and birth defects in their children.

31:09

Willacy visits Ken in hospital

KEN KASIK: “Hi mate, how’s it going?”

MARK WILLACY: [walking into hospital room] “I didn’t think I’d be seeing you in hospital, are you okay?”

KEN KASIK: “Yeah, a little better”.

MARK WILLACY: “Yeah? Take a seat, sit down mate.  How are you feeling?”

KEN KASIK: “Strange.  I might have had some damage done to another part of my body when they were putting

31:25

in the stomach aneurism”.

MARK WILLACY: Enewetak veteran, Ken Kasik, knows all about hospital bills.  We meet in Hawaii, although by the time I arrive Ken has been rushed to intensive care with a brain aneurism.  As a 24-year-old

31:42

Photos. Ken as young man

he was working at a US air-force base in Hawaii where he was asked if he was interested in running the military exchange on an idyllic pacific atoll called Enewetak. 

31:59

Ken in hospital

KEN KASIK: “Oh sign me up, that’s it I’m going.  My whole vision in life was to live on a deserted tropical South Pacific island.

32:09

Religious books on bedside table

Watch out what you tell the Lord.  It came through”. 

32:17

Photos. Enewetak post tests

MARK WILLACY:  This would be no posting to paradise.  Not long after arriving on Enewetak, Ken Kasik realised he was living and working in the middle of a massive nuclear clean up, one centred on the dome on Runit Island.

KEN KASIK: “It was a very

32:21

Ken in hospital

dirty operation and the same vehicles that transported this filthy, filthy, filthy horrible atomic waste to Runit, the boys are on these boats.  You can see this crap going on their faces and on their bodies. You know you cannot get away from it”.

32:29

Photos. US soldiers on clean-up operation

MARK WILLACY: Like Jim Androl, Ken Kasik says he was never given any safety gear or training.  He says the thousands of young men sent into the clean-up, had no idea of what they were exposed to.

KEN KASIK: “It was a total secret.  We didn’t even know.  The guys didn’t know. 

32:55

Ken in hospital

None of those guys would be in an area that’s so contaminated if they knew about it.  We were lied to and our boys worked 6-month tours on a dirty island and the government says you were never there”.

33:13

Ken and Willacy look at photos

MARK WILLACY:  Ken Kasik has undergone nearly 40 surgeries for cancerous lesions which he blames on his time on Enewetak.  But he and Jim Androl count themselves lucky, saying many of their comrades died young and in terrible pain. 

33:25

KEN KASIK: “The radiation is killing everybody”.

JIM ANDROL:  God there’s been so many. 

33:42

Jim 100%

We just lost one two weeks ago.  We lost one about six months before that.  They told me I’d be dead by now.  Kenny is supposed to have been dead by now”.

33:44

Bev on computer with Jim

MARK WILLACY: Jim Androl’s wife Bev is now helping the Enewetak veterans battle for justice, both in the corridors of Washington and on social media.

33:57

BEV ANDROL: “Most of these men we have never met in our lives but they’re like our brothers.  We love these guys and you know they’re dying before they’re 60. It’s ridiculous”.

34:06

Ken in hospital

KEN KASIK: “There’s nobody trained in the atomic waste. There’s people trained in the actual making of the bombs, testing the bombs and all like that, but not picking it up.  You cannot get rid of this.  The island should just be destroyed”.

34:21

Hawaii shots

MARK WILLACY: Wherever his work took him around the world, Ken Kasik always returned here to his Hawaiian home. These days restricted to a hospital bed, he rarely gets to enjoy its beauty and lifestyle. 

34:37

It’s been four decades since he first left here for his adventure on Enewetak, and Ken Kasik is haunted both mentally and physically by the dome.

KEN KASIK: “America dumped all of their

35:04

Ken in hospital

worst rubbish to the Marshallese and abandoned them with it, and we don’t want to hear about it.  It’s a disgusting shame and it… it ah… it makes us look bad”.

35:18

Archival. Newsreel. Marshallese

ARCHIVE FILM: “And as the natives express to the people of the United States their welcome, and their simplicity and their pleasantness and their courtesy, they’re more and willing to cooperate although they don’t understand the world of nuclear energy any more than we do”.

35:34

Aerial. Dome

MICHAEL GERRARD: Runit Dome

35:52

Gerrard 100%

embodies injustices in many different ways. 

35:54

Archival and Photos. Montage of tests/soldiers/atoll

The fact that all these weapons were exploded there; the fact that this plutonium was left behind; the fact that the workers who worked there have not been compensated and very importantly the fact that the entire nation is endangered by sea level rise which is caused mostly by the greenhouse gas emissions of the major emitting countries of which

36:00

Gerrard 100%

the US was historically number one.  These are an accumulation of injustices”.

36:25

Boat wreck/man cleaning beach

JACK NIEDENTHAL: “The last couple of years when people would come and they wanted to talk about the nuclear legacy,

36:31

Jack on beach

I said the nuclear legacy is not as devastating and it’s almost not as important as climate change. Because if I’m a Marshall Islander and I have an island that has radiation on it and has the hope of someday being mitigated or rehabilitated, if I have a choice between that island and one that’s underwater forever, I’ll take the radioactive island every time because there’s still hope in that. Once these islands go underwater, they aren’t coming back”.

36:38

Aerial. Lagoon.

MARK WILLACY:  The Marshall Islands may be damned either way, because Michael Gerrard says even if the dome is smashed apart in a Pacific storm, it may make little difference to the environment outside. 

MICHAEL GERRARD: “I’m persuaded that the radiation outside the dome is as bad as the radiation

37:09

Gerrard 100%

inside the dome, and therefore it is a tragic irony that the US Government may be right that if this material were to be released, that the already bad state of the environment around there wouldn’t get that much worse”.

37:28

Island women sing/Willacy boards plane

Music

37:43

Plane takes off/Willacy in plane

MARK WILLACY: The Marshall Islands’ isolation made it ideal for a superpower to test the most destructive weapons in history, and now its survival is threatened yet again by the actions of much larger nations thousands of kilometres away. 

37:55

Women sing

Music

38:10

KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER: “These are situations where the Marshallese people are almost

38:14

Kathy 100%. Super:
KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER

either guinea pigs or they’re just seen as disposable.  We’re seen as disposable in both of these situations.  We’re disposable, our lives don’t matter, the war matters, nuclear bombs matter.  Our lives don’t matter, oil matters, money matters, gas matters you know, profits matter”.

38:16

Island women sing

Music

38:34

Sunset at beach

MARK WILLACY: Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner is determined that her child will not become a climate change refugee.

38:39

Kathy 100%

KATHY JETNIL-KIJINER: “See I don’t think we’re doomed and I also can’t accept that. You know if you accept that you’re doomed then what is left to fight for?  You know where are you going to find hope? 

38:48

Child on beach

A lot of people describe our islands as drowning but

38:58

Kathy 100%

we like to say that, you know, we’re fighting we’re not just drowning”.

39:00

Aerials. Atoll

[reciting poem] “And there are thousands out on

39:03

Marshallese children

the streets, marching hand in hand chanting for change now and they’re marching for you baby, they’re marching for us.  Because we deserve to do more than just survive.  We deserve to thrive.  Dear Matafele Peinem, your eyes heavy

39:08

Sunset over lagoon

with drowsy weight.  So just close those eyes and sleep in peace 

39:29

Kathy to camera

because we won’t let you down.  You’ll see”.

39:34

Credit start. See below.

39:42

Outpoint after credits

40:07