Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day is almost forgotten in the U.S.

Castle Bravo, the largest U.S. nuclear bomb test, exploded over the Marshall Islands.

There was scarcely a mention of Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day in U.S. media. It's a national holiday in the Marshall Islands but for most American's it's a day they prefer to forget. It was the day 67 years ago that changed the lives for the Marshallese forever.

The U.S. State Department on Monday, March 1, released this single paragraph statement:

March 1 is Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Seventy-five years ago, the United States conducted the first of 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands as part of its nuclear testing program. The United States honors the memory of those affected from the atolls of Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap, and Utrik, and we should never forget those lost family members and loved ones. The United States honors the historical and current contributions of the Marshallese people that help promote peace and stability throughout the world. The United States is committed to our longstanding partnership with the Marshall Islands and to our shared vision for a better and safer future.

The statement from the State Dept. is cut and dry and doesn't begin to account for the untold suffering caused by the nuclear testing done in that Pacific nation.

The following is from the Marshallese Education Initiative website:

From 1946 through 1958 the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests on Bikini and Enewetak Atolls in the Marshall Islands. On March 1, 1954, the United States detonated its largest thermonuclear device, Castle Bravo, which at 15 megatons, was 1,000 times the force of the first tests on Bikini in 1946 and that of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1944.

The Bravo test vaporized three islands on Bikini and swept the crushed coral, trees, marine life and sea water into the atmosphere, which fell as radioactive fallout on the inhabited atolls of Rongelap, Utrok, and Ailinginae. The explosion, seen across the Marshall Islands, also spread radioactive fallout throughout the Marshall Islands, though in less detectable amounts.

On March 1 in the Marshall Islands, this event is commemorated through a national holiday, Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day. Here, we refer to it as Nuclear Remembrance Day, or NRD.

Today, the people of the Marshall Islands still suffer from the biological and ecological effects of radiation exposure, forced relocations, and loss of lands, which are still not safe for habitation despite U.S. cleanup efforts on small, targeted areas. Utrokese were returned to their atoll shortly after Bravo and have remained. The Rongelapese were returned in 1957, where they suffered from unknown illnesses and thyroid abnormalities. Greenpeace came to their aid and removed them in 1985, when the U.S. refused. Researchers have recently found that some areas in the Marshall Islands are, today, 10x more radioactive than Chernobyl or Fukushima.

The Marshallese were forced to relocate from their island homes.

Medicaid eligibility restored to Pacific Islanders

Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands was used to test nuclear bombs.

In the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill signed by Donald Trump last week  includes a provision to restore  Medicaid eligibility for an estimated 100,000 citizens of the Freely Associated States — the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Palau who live in the United States and its territories.

Since the 1980s, the three nations have been under the Compacts of Free Association (COFA), a series of treaties that established the U.S.'s exclusive military use rights in them, including using their islands to test nuclear testing sites.

Twenty-four years, President Bill Clinton signed a welfare bill removed the Marshallese and other nations of medical coverage. Experts say it was an injustice that had long been ignored.

"For over 25 years, we have suffered because of health inequity," said Melisa Laelan, Executive Director of Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese (ACOM). "The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the gruesome health injustices that we COFA communities recognized, but the rest of the world ignored."

In exchange for allowing the U.S. test bombs on the islands and give the U.S. access in the Asia-Pacific region, citizens of COFA nations were allowed to live, work and study in the mainland and reside in U.S. terretories. The Pacific Islanders are considered "legal nonimmigrants," who also pay U.S. taxes and had been promised medical care.

The U.S. bumps it's nuclear waste  (domed circle) in the Pacific Island nations.

"Many of our folks came here to not only seek medical care, but also employment and educational opportunities for our families. We are not a rich nation, and we come here to look for the American dream," said Eldon Alik, consul general of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. "Just like everybody else, we pay all the taxes that are required. So it is just right that we get Medicaid also."

For about a decade during the Cold War, the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear bombs in and around the Marshall Islands, according to NBC News. The U.S. also dumped 130 tons of soil from an irradiated Nevada testing site onto the Enewetak Atoll, part of the nation.

"This is a group of people who sacrificed much, and in fact their countries [play] a big part of our national security, especially in the Indo-Asia Pacific region," said Hawaii's Sen. Mazie Hirono, who championed the measure. "They certainly deserve this kind of coverage, which never should have been taken away."