[CPEO-MEF] RADIATION, VETERANS: Mashall Islands cleanup crews

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

[The Atomic Veterans story is not new news, but it’s worth remembering. - LS]

US military atomic cleanup crews were sent out in the wake of American nuclear testing, and many paid a heavy price, veterans say

By Jake Epstein
Business Insider
December 11?, 2022

For over a decade beginning not long after World War II, the US carried out dozens of nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands — a chain of islands and atolls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The largest of the 67 tests that were conducted between 1946 and 1958 was Castle Bravo. On March 1, 1954, the US military detonated a thermonuclear weapon at Bikini Atoll, producing an explosive yield 1,000 times greater than the atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima, Japan.

Nuclear tests like Castle Bravo produced a substantial amount of nuclear fallout that negatively affected the people of the Marshall Islands, according to the Brookings Institution think tank. Radioactive material was even found in communities thousands of miles away.

American service members were later deployed to the Pacific so they could tackle the cleanup efforts. Insider spoke recently with one veteran who supported these efforts and said he was exposed to contaminants during his service. He's one of many with such complaints.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-atomic-cleanup-crews-heavy-price-nuclear-testing-2022-12


—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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