Spring 2025
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States emerged as a dominant nuclear power in the world. Eager to assert and refine its atomic capabilities to compete with other nations, the U.S. expanded its research on nuclear weapons. However, this ambition did an enormous amount of irreversible damage to both the environment and the culture of the Native American communities. Two Native American nations that were profoundly affected by US nuclear testing and uranium mining were the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands and the Navajo Nation in Southwest America. Even though they were separated by geography and culture, both nations share a legacy of displacement, exposure to radiation, and a long struggle for justice. In this blog post, I will explore what these two Native nations went through and what the US government had done later as a restoration plan.
You may wonder why, after forcing Native Americans to relocate far away from their historical homeland, the US government decided to excavate hazardous Uranium mines and conduct nuclear tests on their reservation. In my opinion, this is an exploitation of minorities economically, environmentally, and culturally.
In the early 19th century, the United States government forced the Native American nations to relocate from their homelands to designated reservations. Unsurprisingly, those reservations were on barren land that the Americans did not want. Ironically, during the mid-20th century when the U.S. government was searching for lands for uranium mining and nuclear test, they once again turned to Native reservations. Due to the urgency of nuclear weapon development during the Cold War era, the US government exploited both the Native land and people by nuclear testing and mining. These events severely contaminated the Native land with radiation and toxic waste, leaving long-term health issues for nearby Native communities.
Nuclear Weapon Tests in Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands
In 1946, the US government selected Bikini Atoll, a remote archipelago in the Marshall Islands, as a primary site for the Pacific nuclear weapon testing. Over the following twelve years, the US conducted 67 nuclear weapons tests on these lands. The most infamous one was in 1954, which is the largest nuclear test conducted by the US government, yielding a thermonuclear explosion that was the equivalent of one thousand Hiroshima-sized bombs (Barker 2019).
You may think, but there was no one living on Bikini Atoll at that time! Yes, they were “evacuated” to the nearby Marshall Islands. However, the radiation from the bomb was so strong that it even affected communities in the “evacuated” zones. Before the nuclear test, the US government told the Bikinians that this was a temporary relocation for “the good of mankind”. In fact, the bomb vaporized their land, causing generations of Bikinians to be banished from their ancestral home since then. Not only did the bomb affect Bikini Atoll, the US nuclear testing site also turned the Marshall Islands into a toxic “sacrifice zone,” forcing indigenous people into unsafe living conditions and exposing them to radiation-related illnesses (Barker 2019).
The Navajo People and Uranium Mining, Southwest America
When the Bikini Atoll was irradiated by mushroom clouds, another silent disaster was unfolding in the American Southwest. During the Cold War era, the US government relied heavily on uranium mines produced from the Navajo nation. The government used these ores as a primary material for nuclear reaction. From 1944 to 1986, the US government mined 27,000 acres of uranium from the Navajo Nation, which contains nearly 1.4 million tons of uranium ore that belong to local Navajos (Calloway 2024). The uranium mine brought radioactive contamination to their homes, livestock, and water sources. Besides the damage on the Native land, the Navajo people who worked in the mines were also severely affected.
Entrenched in an economic crisis for decades, thousands of Navajo people worked in the uranium mines. However, due to lack of safety education and protective equipment, workers often worked under exposure to radioactive materials. Among the 2,450 registered Navajo uranium miners, 412 have died of various fatal disorders, including lung cancer, respiratory diseases, and kidney damages (Moure-Eraso 1999). Historian Colin Calloway describes that the Navajos were the “forgotten victims of America’s Cold War” as it is not until the 1990 that the government issued a formal apology and promised to compensate the families of Navajo men injured or killed by radiation in the government mines. Nevertheless, such compensation for victims’ families was “too little, too late” (Calloway 2024).
Government Restoration and Policy
In October 1990, the US congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which is a federal law that provides compensation to individuals who developed diseases as a result of radiation exposure during the Cold War era. The Act acknowledged that the US government’s atomic weapons testing and uranium mining activities caused unintended harm to individuals and communities because of radiation exposure. The compensation includes both financial support and medical assistance to help support affected individuals who had significant medical expenses, low wages, and other financial burdens (Gregerson 2017). This act was a milestone towards acknowledging decades of ignorance and unjust treatment toward the uranium mine workers and nuclear testing victims, the Pacific islanders in Bikini Atoll and the Navajo people in particular.
Looking Ahead
Looking forward, there is a long way to go for the restoration of the environment, culture, and people’s health. It is necessary for people to recognize and remember the damages that have been posed upon the Pacific Islanders on Bikini Atoll and the Navajo Nation. These incidents were caused by the government’s oversight of Native nations and exploitation of the minorities. In the history of the US, exploitation of minorities was a common theme. Regardless, it is important to know that the study of history is not only for the purpose of knowing events that happened in the past, but also to prevent repeating the mistakes in the future.
Reference
Barker, Holly M. “Unsettling SpongeBob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom.” The Contemporary Pacific 31, no.2 (2019): 345–79. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1353/cp.2019.0026.
Calloway, Colin G. “Chapter 9 Self-Determination and Sovereignty.” In First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History, 1213-1291. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, Macmillan Learning, 2024.
Moure-Eraso, Rafael. “Observational Studies as Human Experimentation: The Uranium Mining Experience in the Navajo Nation (1947–66).” NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy 9 (2): 163–78, 1999. https://doi.org/10.2190/4cb2-7n1d-jjr6-hgex.
Gregerson, Gloria. “RADIATION EXPOSURE AND COMPENSATION, 1981.” In Nuclear Reactions: Documenting American Encounters with Nuclear Energy, edited by JAMES W. FELDMAN, 211–14. University of Washington Press, 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwnh7v.52.
