Lojwa Animals: The Hidden Story of Cleaning Up Nuclear Testing in the Enewetak Atoll

After the end of World War II and Japan's surrender,

Enewetak came under the control of the United States as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands until the independence of the Marshall Islands in 1986. During its tenure, the United States evacuated the local residents many times, often involuntarily. The atoll was used for nuclear testing as part of the Pacific Proving Grounds. Before testing commenced, the U.S. exhumed the bodies of United States servicemen killed in the Battle of Enewetak and returned them to the United States to be re-buried by their families.

Forty-three nuclear tests were fired at Enewetak from 1948 to 1958.

Enewetak Atoll formed atop a seamount. The seamount was formed in the late Cretaceous. This seamount is now about 1,400 metres (4,600 ft) below sea level. It is made of basalt, and its depth is due to a general subsidence of the entire region and not because of erosion.

Enewetak has a mean elevation above sea level of 3 metres (9.8 ft).

At least 4,000 servicemembers were dispatched in the late 1970s to clean up the fallout from U.S. atomic bomb tests conducted in the Marshall Islands several decades earlier.

In a 10-year period that ended in 1958, 43 tests were conducted at Enewetak Atoll, the ring-shaped collection of 40 coral reef islands. For the next 20 years, the contamination sat atop the atoll, 850 miles west of Hawaii.

Enewetak Atoll- 850 miles west of Hawaii

By the 1970s, under threat of legal action by island natives, the U.S. launched a haphazard and dangerous plan to clean it up. The military would execute it.

Photo: Working on Runit Island, It's hot, hard work, shorts became the work uniform.

Wearing not much more than shorts, servicemembers used shovels, bulldozers and other heavy equipment to scrap radioactive materials from the islands, breathing in deadly powder along the way. The plutonium-infested debris was dumped inside a crater from a previous test at Enewetak’s Runit Island.

The Enewetak Atoll cleanup veterans, many of whom faced a long list of cancers and other deadly illnesses, are mostly gone today. Groups that track them estimate there are only about 400 left today.

How did they get here?

Enewetak Atoll- The airstrip is now abandoned and its surface partially covered by sand.

Men from the 110th Naval Construction Battalion arrived on Enewetak between 21 and 27 February 1944 and began clearing the island for construction of a bomber airfield. A 2,100-meter (6,900 ft) by 120-meter (390 ft) runway with taxiways and supporting facilities was built. The first plane landed on 11 March. By 5 April the first operational bombing mission was conducted. The base was later named for Lieutenant John H. Stickell.

Long runway and seaplane base

The Imperial Japanese Navy had developed a seaplane base on Parry Island. Following its capture on 22 February, Seebees from the 110th Naval Construction Battalion expanded the base, building a coral-surfaced parking area and shops for minor aircraft and engine overhaul. A marine ways was installed on a Japanese pier and boat-repair shops were also erected.

What did the US servicemembers do?

During the three-year, US$100 million cleanup process, the military mixed more than 80,000 cubic metres (100,000 cu yd) of contaminated soil and debris from the islands with Portland cement and buried it in an atomic blast crater on the northern end of the atoll's Runit Island. The material was placed in the 9.1-meter (30 ft) deep, 110-meter (360 ft) wide crater created by the May 5, 1958, "Cactus" nuclear weapons test. A dome composed of 358 concrete panels, each 46 centimeters (18 in) thick, was constructed over the material.

The final cost of the cleanup project was US$239 million.

Many worked 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week, painstakingly removing six inches of topsoil from the islands. The radioactive debris was dumped at Cactus Crater, the 300-foot-long divot named for its namesake test in 1958 at Runit Island.

Photo: Aerial view of the dome. The dome is placed in the crater created by the "Cactus" nuclear weapons test in 1958.

A backstory of Department of Defense Nuclear testing in the Pacific

The first hydrogen bomb test, code-named Ivy Mike, occurred in late 1952 as part of Operation Ivy; it vaporized the islet of Elugelab. This test included B-17 Flying Fortress drones to fly through the radioactive cloud to test onboard samples. B-17 mother ships controlled the drones while flying within visual distance of them. In all 16 to 20 B-17s took part in this operation, of which half were controlling aircraft and half were drones. To examine the explosion clouds of the nuclear bombs in 1957/58 several rockets (mostly from rockoons) were launched. One USAF airman was lost at sea during the tests.

Photo: Nuclear Tests vic. Enewetak Atoll

Photo: Ivy Mike test, October 31, 1952

The personal impact:

The United States government declared the southern and western islands in the atoll safe for habitation in 1980, and residents of Enewetak returned that same year. The military members who participated in that cleanup mission are suffering from many health issues, but the U.S. Government is refusing to provide health coverage.

Ron Madden didn’t think much of his first tooth falling out when he was 29. But when most of his teeth fell out the next year, the former Army heavy equipment operator started to worry. In the next three decades, Madden developed three forms of cancer, bone pain, severe joint weakness and trouble using his arms and legs.

Keith Kiefer found out he was suffering from degenerative bone disease and spinal stenosis, which causes pain in the spinal cord area. He’s had both his hips replaced in recent years. In his 40s, “I was told I had the skeletal structure of a 90-year old,” he said. Kiefer has also been diagnosed with a non-diabetic form of peripheral neuropathy, another radiation-connected illness.

The Enewetak Atoll veterans, unlike the atomic veterans who participated in the tests, don’t get disability coverage for their toxic exposure.

This year, lawmakers have refiled legislation to extend VA benefits to this newer generation of atomic veterans. The Mark Takai Atomic Veterans Healthcare Parity Act of 2019, named for a late Hawaii lawmaker, would close the gap in benefits between the atomic vets who participated in the tests and those who cleaned up the fallout.

House bill 1377, sponsored by Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., and 119 other lawmakers, and its counterpart in the upper chamber, Senate bill 555, authored by Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., and co-sponsored by 15 more senators, have stalled since the legislation was introduced in late February.

What's next?

In September 1979, the Runit Dome, known locally among the natives as “The Tomb,” was capped. There was no rebar or other structural support to keep the concrete from cracking, Sargent said.

It’s a haunting fixture for the locals known as Marshallese and others. In May, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivered a harsh warning that the “coffin” of radioactive material could be leaking.
“It’s going to eventually breech and go into the ocean,” Sargent said. “There are big-time cracks. We never put any liners, stuff we were supposed to do.”

LEARN MORE:

Stars and Stripes Special Report- "Conspiracy of silence: Veterans exposed to atomic tests wage final fight." Three parts- a riveting read by Claudia Grisales

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