Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016. x, 249 pp. (Maps, B&W photos.) US$62.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-4762-3.
Martha Smith-Norris opens with a dedication to Tony deBrum, the minister of foreign affairs who presented before the UN Trusteeship Council in 1981 and “all of the others who fought, and continue to fight for justice in the Marshall Islands,” demonstrating her argument expands beyond the discipline of history (v). She provides a valuable text to realize the contemporary and ongoing implications of the US nuclear and missile defense programs in the Marshall Islands and beyond.
In July 2017, 130 nation-states gathered at the United Nations (UN) for the “conference to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination” (United Nations, Report A/CONF.229/2017/L.3/Rev.1, 2016). The United States (US), along with all other nuclear-armed states, boycotted the negotiations and refused to participate. Despite this public defiance and denial of nuclear norms and dangers, 122 nation-states signed the treaty banning nuclear weapons on July 7, 2017.
This important event and the continuing refusal of the US to consider disarmament is tied to the history of the US nuclear weapons testing program, which culminated in sixty-seven nuclear explosions and hundreds of missile and other chemical weapons tests in the Republic of the Marshall Islands during the Cold War. Today, Washington continues to fail to “provide adequate compensation to the people of the Marshall Islands for the extensive health and environmental damages caused by the US testing program” by not fully funding the Nuclear Claims Tribunal (1).
As part of her site-specific case study, Smith-Norris combines historical government documents, previously classified information, maps, and photographs, with testimonies presented before international institutions and legal bodies of the first-hand accounts of nuclear weapons experiments and missile defense testing. She limits her analysis to five themes: the power and authority of the US in the Marshall Islands; key aspects of Washington’s Cold War research agenda, including weapons systems and human radiation studies; the health and environmental damage caused by the American testing programs; the acts of protest and resistance by the islanders and specific communities; and the US response to the plight of the Marshallese (6).
Based on the realist theory of international relations and focusing on indigenous resistance strategies (11), she presents two sides of the nuclear program story. She begins with the US justification to test “a vast array of nuclear bombs and missiles … while conducting research on the effects of human exposure to radioactive fallout” (1) for the “benefit of all mankind and to end all world wars” (44). Smith-Norris successfully exposes how the openly racist and often contradictory US governmental programs of the past continue to inform US policies and the enduring resistance by the Marshallese people.
The book is divided geographically by atoll, with the first three chapters providing the historical setting and reasons for the US nuclear testing program on each atoll. Enewetak Atoll was used for forty-three nuclear tests between 1948 and 1958 as well as the lesser known chemical warfare testing of the early 1970s (13). Twenty-three nuclear weapons tests on Bikini Atoll occurred between 1946 and 1958, with the 1954 Bravo explosion memorialized as the largest test ever conducted, devastating both Rongelap and Utirik atolls. Smith-Norris clearly demonstrates how, without their consent, the atoll communities became the subjects of human radiation experiments by scientists and doctors from the Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1954 into the 1980s, and were used as a data source for the benefit of the US government.
In each chapter, Smith-Norris emphasizes the human and ecological consequences, and through residents’ statements and Navy and activists’ photographs, she features a “variety of political and legal tactics—including petitions, lawsuits, demonstrations, and negotiations” of nonviolent direct action indigenous resistance by the Marshallese (1). Chapter 4 includes a brief mention of Marshallese “sail-ins” protesting the missile-testing range on Kwajalein Atoll, currently known as the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, where the US currently tests intercontinental ballistic missiles and antiballistic missile systems (14).
The geopolitical, environmental, and ethical complications of this case study cannot be underestimated, with the fifth chapter discussing the political climate when the US and the Republic of the Marshall Islands signed the Compact of Free Association. The epilogue stresses the 2012 UN rapporteur’s report, which demands compensation from Washington for the extensive health and environmental damages caused by the American nuclear testing program (15). The Marshallese continue to fight for health justice and proper medical care, environmental justice and the clean up of their toxic home, and financial justice to fully fund the Nuclear Claims Tribunal’s decisions. However, progress has not been able to match the pace of damage on the island of Runit, where the radioactive waste site is currently “leaking 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris,” as reported by Collen Jose, Kim Wall, and Jan Hendrik Hinzel of The Guardian in 2015 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/runit-dome-pacific-radioactive-waste).
Smith-Norris presents a complex and uncomfortable chapter in Cold War history of which most Americans, even students of history, are unaware. She provides an accessible and investigative overview of US government and military “domination” during the Cold War years. Through her analysis of the steadfast, resilient “resistance” by the Marshallese, she offers a valuable context for understanding contemporary US nuclear policies and global missile defense systems. Her work contributes to the field of not only history, but international and domestic law, particularly in relation to health, environmental, and financial justice. The relevance of this book within international relations and peace and conflict studies offers a needed critical discussion of contemporary and historical US militarization. This significant work should be required reading for both students and policy makers alike.
As an academic activist involved with indigenous resistance movements to US militarization across Oceania, I appreciate her approach to the complexities and challenges within the Marshallese resistance and would have liked to learn more of the strategies of and issues surrounding the scholarly solidarity expressed by US anthropologists, academics, and lawyers.
Sylvia C. Frain
University of Guam, Mangilao, Guam
pp. 202-204