![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Anti-nuclear protests in the Pacific Islands began in the 1950s. There were a series of petitions throughout the decade as Islanders living under colonial administration sought assistance from the United Nations Trusteeship Council, the newly created Non-Aligned Movement, and international ecumenical networks such as the World Council of Churches. At the height of the 1950s Cold War between the United States and USSR, these calls were mostly brushed aside by the nuclear weapons states. Despite this, Islanders from French Polynesia, Fiji, Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Western Samoa, and other colonial dependencies spoke out against nuclear weapons and especially the US and British nuclear programmes in the Pacific, petitioning for an end to nuclear testing. This document is a striking example of these petitions, inspired by the March 1954 atmospheric nuclear test, codenamed Bravo, in the Marshall Islands.
Notes
1 For examples from French Polynesia, Western Samoa, and Cook Islands, see Nic Maclellan, Grappling with the Bomb: Britain’s H-Bomb tests in the Pacific (Canberra: ANU Press, 2017), 7, 75–9.
2 For studies on Marshallese campaigns of resistance and redress in subsequent decades, see Martha Smith-Norris, Domination and Resistance: The United States and the Marshall Islands During the Cold War (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016); Barbara Rose Johnston and Holly Barker, Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report (Santa Monica: Left Coast Press, 2008); Mary Mitchell, ‘Land, Culture, and Marshall Islanders’ Struggles for Self-Determination During the 1970s’, Environmental History 22 (2017): 209–34.
3 Jonathan M. Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994), 302.
4 The health and environmental consequences for Marshallese and US service personnel are documented in Holly Barker, Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2004); Giff Johnson, Nuclear Past, Unclear Future (Majuro: Micronitor, 2009); Jack Niedenthal, For the Good of Mankind: A History of the People of Bikini and their Islands (Majuro: Micronitor, 2001). US government perspectives are detailed in Thomas Kunkle and Byron Ristvet, ‘Castle Bravo: Fifty Years of Legend and Lore’, Jan. 2013, US Defence Threat Reduction Agency, DSTRIAC SR-12-001.
5 Petition from the Marshallese People Concerning the Pacific Islands, ‘Complaint Regarding Explosions of Lethal Weapons within our Home Islands to United Nations Trusteeship Council’, 20 Apr. 1954, circulated as UN Trusteeship Council document T/PET.10/28, 6 May 1954, United Nations Archives, Series S-0504, Box 0013, File 0010.
6 Bill Waugh, ‘Creation of the N-petition’, Associated Press, 29 May 1954.
7 Office of the Historian, ‘Foreign Relations of the United States 1952–54’, United Nations Affairs, Washington, Department of State, vol. 3, 350/5–354, Telegram 933, 1479-81.
8 Desmond Narain Doulatram, ‘Marshallese Downwinders and a Shared Nuclear Legacy of Global Proportions’ (Presentation to Human Rights, Future Generations and Crimes in the Nuclear Age Conference, University of Basel, 14–17 Sept. 2017).
9 In 1956, Heine presented a second petition to the UN Trusteeship Council, and as payback was suspended from his post by US authorities. Doulatram, ‘Marshallese Downwinders’.
10 United Nations Trusteeship Council, ‘Petition concerning the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands’, 14 July 1954, 5.
11 Statement of the US Mission to the United Nations, Press Release no. 1932, 7 July 1954, cited in Barbara Rose Johnston and Holly Barker, eds, Consequential Damages, 18–19.
12 ‘Marshall Islanders Urgent Pleas – End A-Bomb Tests’, The Times (London), 15 May 1954.
13 Circulated as UN Trusteeship Council document T/PET.10/28, 6 May 1954, United Nations archives, Series S-0504, Box 0013, File 0010.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Nic Maclellan
Nic Maclellan – journalist and researcher in the Pacific Islands, correspondent for Islands Business magazine (Fiji). [email protected]