ABSTRACT
Since the Second World War era, social change among members of the Enewetak/Ujelang community has been a constant feature of life. Much as nuclear detonations on Enewetak and Bikini demonstrated America's hegemonic power to the world, the environmental clean-up of Enewetak was intended to project a rehabilitative arm of that same insurmountable potency. Indeed, following the 1952 Mike test on Enewetak, the world's first thermonuclear explosion, they presumed that their homeland no longer existed. Elders, in large part, imagined the return as going home, back to the land they remembered from prior to World War II. By contrast, most of the community — anyone 30 years or younger — only knew of Enewetak through the stories of the elders, since they had been born and raised on Ujelang. Much like the 1947 plan to move Enewetak people to Ujelang, the Enewetak rehabilitation plan was also a rush job.
