Artifact Title: Voice

Medium: Video

Creator: Los Angeles Times

Video Length: 3:48

Video Title: Parts of the Marshall Islands just as radioactive as Chernobyl and Fukushima

Upload Year: 2019

Platform: Youtube

Screenshot in Image: 0:40

Uploader: Los Angeles Times

Image Credit: Daphne Moss

TERA Curator: Amanda Nichols

Voice

In 1946, the Marshall Islands had a population of approximately 52,000 people. One year later, they became part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands created by the United Nations and run by the United States. Between 1947 and 1958, the U.S. conducted a series of nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, including twenty-three tests at Bikini Atoll and forty-four at Enewetak Atoll. Very little has been written about what happened to the people living in the Marshall Islands before the tests, but by 1950, there were only approximately 13,000 remaining. Many were displaced or otherwise evacuated, but others died because of radiation fallout in the area. This artifact is a photograph of a nuclear “coffin” or “gravesite” found in the Marshall Islands on Runit Island at Enewetok Atoll, which might be understood to represent the silencing of countless voices by the historical and ongoing U.S. nuclear agenda.