The US conducted 67 nuclear bomb tests in the Marshall Islands after World War II, including Castle Bravo on Bikini Island - the largest nuclear device ever exploded by the US. The testing destroyed the lives of the local residents who can never return to their island home. Klaus travels to the Marshall Islands to learn about the legacy of the US nuclear testing, and hear what the residents hope for the future. He meets one of the caretakers of Bikini Island, still uninhabitable decades after the tests. Through wreck diving, he encounters the thriving coral reef among what’s left of the Navy ships used in the tests.

Thank you to
Jack Niedenthal, Secretary of Health & Human Services for the Marshall Islands
&
Stephen Palumbi, professor of biology at Stanford
for speaking to us for this story.

SOURCES & FURTHER READING

Jack Nidenthal's Bikini Atoll website has a lot of historical information from a local perspective:
https://www.bikiniatoll.com/

Stanford professor Stephen Palumbi is studying the long term impact of radiation on Bikini's land and water
  / stanford-research-on-effects-of-radioactiv...  

'Quite odd': coral and fish thrive on Bikini Atoll 70 years after nuclear tests
https://www.theguardian.com/world/201...

Brief History of Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands
https://marshallislands.llnl.gov/test...

A ground zero forgotten
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/nat...

America at the Atomic Crossroads
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals...



CREDITS

Producer: Klaus Thymann
Camera: Klaus Thymann
Editors: Nick Blatt, Kevin Tadge
Image Research: Isabela Quintero
Supervising Producer: Allison Brown


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