Giff Johnson - The legacy of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands

Ivy Mike (yield 10.4 mt) - an atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the U.S. at Enewetak Atoll on 1 November 1952. It was the world's first successful hydrogen bomb.

Map of the Marshall Islands

The Runit Dome was constructed on Marshall Islands Enewetak Atoll in 1979 to temporarily store radioactive waste produced from nuclear testing by the US military during the 1950s and 1960s.

The "Baker" underwater nuclear weapons test at Bikini Atoll in 1946. Dozens of World War II vessels were used as targets for this weapons test, and now lie on the atoll's lagoon floor. Photo: US Navy.

Bikini women load their belongings onto a waiting Navy vessel in March 1946 as they prepare to depart to Rongerik, an uninhabited atoll where they spent two years. The Bikinians nearly starved for lack of food at Rongerik until the US Navy moved them to Kwajalein in 1948 and then to Kili Island, where they remain today.