ABSTRACT
A gross disproportion of resources and military power between the Americans and the people of the Marshall Islands characterised the entire nuclear test program between 1946 and 1958. The Bikini people were the first to be relocated. When the military governor of the Marshalls arrived in February 1946, he compared the Bikinians with the children of Israel whom the Lord had led unto the Promised Land and explained that the atomic tests were ‘for the good of mankind and to end all world wars’. The Department of Defense and the Atomic Energy Commission undertook a quick clean-up of the atoll in 1969, dynamiting rusted towers, removing derelict vehicles, landing craft and machinery, filling holes and building roads around the islands. The people of Enewetak atoll were exiled by the Americans because of the nuclear tests. A few days before Christmas 1947, 142 Enewetakese disembarked from a US Navy landing craft at Ujelang atoll, the westernmost of all the Marshall Islands.
