{"id":99466,"date":"2017-10-02T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=99466"},"modified":"2017-09-29T20:14:10","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T19:14:10","slug":"us-h-bomb-testing-forgotten-in-media-frenzy-over-north-korea-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/10\/us-h-bomb-testing-forgotten-in-media-frenzy-over-north-korea-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"US H-Bomb Testing Forgotten In Media Frenzy Over North Korea Threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the U.S. detonated nuclear bomb after nuclear bomb in the Marshall Islands \u2013 amounting to 23 tests of both fission and fusion bombs over a 12-year period \u2013 evacuated islanders and others nearby were intentionally exposed to radiation fallout from the testing, in what would become known as \u201cProject 4.1.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A mushroom cloud from the Operation Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton experimental thermonuclear device, detonated in the Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. (Photograph: US Air Force\/Public Domain)<\/p><\/div>\n

27 Sep 2017 – <\/em>In the aftermath of President Donald Trump\u2019s bellicose United Nations speech \u2013 where he threatened to \u201ctotally destroy\u201d the 25 million inhabitants of North Korea \u2013 Trump\u2019s own use of provocative and unprecedented language was largely ignored.<\/p>\n

Instead, frenzied coverage focused primarily on North Korea\u2019s response to his shocking UN address. North Korea\u2019s answer came courtesy of foreign minister Ri Yong-ho, who told reporters<\/a> that North Korean leadership may consider testing a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific in response to Trump\u2019s UN threats.<\/p>\n

The latest counter from North Korea prompted a frantic response from corporate media pundits.\u00a0 Fox News interviewed<\/a> retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters who argued that such a test would be \u201cclose to an act of war.\u201d Reuters quoted<\/a> David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, who argued that such a test would be a \u201ctipping point\u201d for China and might prompt many other countries to call for an \u201cend to the [North Korean] regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most reports gave a scant and highly selective history of nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific Ocean. Reuters, for example, stated that<\/a> the United States\u2019 only test of an operational ballistic missile with a live warhead was fired from a submarine in the Pacific Ocean in 1962. Others<\/a> made no mention<\/a> of the previous nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific, or merely stated that the last above-ground test of a nuclear device was conducted by China in 1980 \u2013 suggesting to their readers that a potential test by North Korea would be among the first conducted in the Pacific.<\/p>\n

In reality, the history of nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific is as long as it is tragic. Such tests in the region were conducted exclusively by the only country in the world to have used a nuclear bomb against another nation \u2013 the United States.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Marshall Islands: Bombsite, Med lab<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A massive column of water rises from the sea as the second atom bomb test at Bikini Atoll explodes underwater July 25, 1946. (AP\/Joint Task Force One)<\/p><\/div>\n

After World War II, the United States acquired the Marshall Islands, a remote island chain in the Pacific, and soon developed big plans for their new prize.<\/p>\n

One of the islands within the group, known as Bikini Atoll, was evacuated so that the U.S. could transform<\/a> the island into a nuclear bomb test site. At the time, media coverage of the bomb tests was extensive<\/a>, a major opportunity for the United States to showcase its military might and secure its place as a global \u201csuperpower.\u201d<\/p>\n

Little coverage, however, was given to the island\u2019s nearly 200 native residents who were forced to relocate to other nearby islands, leaving them out of the blast zone but not out of harm\u2019s way. Commonly referred to in the Western media at the time as \u201csavages,\u201d the native islanders were to become part of the U.S. government\u2019s sordid legacy of human experimentation.<\/p>\n

As nuclear bomb after nuclear bomb was detonated<\/a> in the Marshall Islands \u2013 amounting to 23 tests of both fission and fusion (i.e., hydrogen) bombs over a 12-year period, per the official record \u2013 evacuated islanders and others nearby were intentionally exposed to radiation fallout from the testing, in what would become known as \u201cProject 4.1.\u201d<\/p>\n

Project 4.1.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Officially titled<\/a> \u201cStudy of Response of Human Beings Exposed to Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation due to Fall-out from High-Yield Weapons,<\/em>\u201d Project 4.1 saw the U.S. government intentionally fail to inform island residents of the impending bomb tests or their threat to exposure \u2014 despite the fact that the government was directly responsible for overseeing their well-being \u2013 in order to \u201cconduct a scientific study of radiation injuries to human beings.\u201d When the first bomb detonated, children played with the dust that fell from the sky, only to wake up with weeping lesions and their hair falling out days later.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Photos show the results of radiation on a child taken before and after nuclear test Bravo on the Marshall Islands.<\/p><\/div>\n

Dr. Robert Conard, head of the Brookhaven\/AEC medical surveillance team for the islanders, wrote in his 1958 annual report<\/a> on the exposed islanders that their suffering would afford:<\/p>\n

\u201cthe opportunity for a most valuable ecological radiation study on human beings \u2026 The various radionuclides present on the island can be traced from the soil through the food chain and into the human being.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By 1974, almost a third<\/a> of exposed islanders developed tumors while many of their children were born with developmental problems, stunted growth or worse. Thyroid cancer became \u2013 and still is \u2013 the norm. Still unable to return to their homes, which were rendered uninhabitable by the repeated blasts, the natives of the Marshall Islands have been crowded into slums<\/a> that offer little to no medical treatment for the ills residents suffer due to decades of high radiation exposure. Adding insult to injury, much of their land has been overtaken by U.S. military bases.<\/p>\n

Yet recent corporate media coverage of a potential North Korean nuclear test in the Pacific has apparently sought to re-write the history of U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands.\u00a0 The Independent, for example, stated<\/a>\u00a0such tests were approved and conducted \u201cbefore the risks to innocent people and the environment were well-understood,\u201d an outright falsehood given declassified government documents<\/a> stating the contrary.<\/p>\n

The same pundits<\/a> fear-mongering over the potential threat have stated that \u201cdamage to humans could be limited if North Korea picks a particularly isolated spot\u201d to conduct the test. However, if North Korea chooses to pick a more dangerous location to detonate, the fact that the United States has done far worse in the past will certainly be swept under the rug. Such are the blinders that come standard-issue with \u201cAmerican exceptionalism<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Whitney Webb is a<\/em> MintPress contributor who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on<\/em> ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, 21st Century Wire, and<\/em> True Activist among others – she currently resides in Southern Chile.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Republish our stories! <\/em>MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 mintpressnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the U.S. detonated nuclear bomb after nuclear bomb in the Marshall Islands \u2013 amounting to 23 tests of both fission and fusion bombs over a 12-year period \u2013 evacuated islanders and others nearby were intentionally exposed to radiation fallout from the testing, in what would become known as \u201cProject 4.1.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weapons-of-mass-destruction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}