Marshall Islands
Bikini Atoll
In 1946 the Indigenous inhabints of Bikini Atoll, an island apart of the Marshall Islands, were forcibly removed by the United States Military in order to conduct nuclear bomb test strikes. One of the tests was the 15-megatonne Bravo test on 1 March 1954 and was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima- exposing thousands in the surrounding area to radioactive fallout.[1] " In the early 1970's US government scientists declared the island safe for resettlement and some residents were permitted to return. In 1978 residents were, once again, removed from the island after ingesting high levels of radiation from eating foods grown on the former nuclear test site.[2]
US nuclear experiments in the Marshall Islands ended in 1958 after 67 tests. But a United Nations report in 2012 said the effects were long-lasting. Special rapporteur Calin Georgescu, in a report to the UN human rights council, said “near-irreversible environmental contamination” had led to the loss of livelihoods and many people continued to experience “indefinite displacement”.[3]