Breaking the Shell

Breaking the Shell
Author: Joseph H. Genz
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2018-02-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0824867912

On the atoll of Rongelap in the northern seas of the Marshall Islands, apprentice navigators once learned to find their way across the ocean by remotely sensing how islands transform the patterning of swell and currents. Renowned for their instructional stick charts that model and map the interplay of islands and waves, these students of wave piloting techniques embarked on trial voyages to ruprup jo̧kur, a Marshallese expression roughly translated as “breaking the shell” of the turtle, which would confer their status as navigators. These traditional practices, already in decline with imposing colonial occupations, came to an abrupt halt with the Cold War–era nuclear weapons testing program conducted by the United States. The residents and their descendants are still trying to recover from the myriad environmental, biological, social, and psychological impacts of the nuclear tests. Breaking the Shell presents the journey of Captain Korent Joel, who, having been forced into exile from the near-apocalyptic thermonuclear Bravo test of 1954, has reconnected to his ancestral maritime heritage and forged an unprecedented path toward becoming a navigator. Paralleling the Hawaiian renaissance that centered on Nainoa Thompson learning from Satawalese navigator Mau Piailug, the beginnings of the Marshallese voyaging revitalization—a collaborative, community-based project spanning the fields of anthropology, history, and oceanography—involved blending scientific knowledge systems, resolving ambivalence in nearly forgotten navigational techniques, and deftly negotiating cultural protocols of knowledge use and transmission. Through Captain Korent’s own voyaging trial, he and a group of surviving mariners from Rongelap are, against one of the darkest hours in human history, “breaking the shell” of their prime identity as nuclear refugees to begin recovering their most intimate of connections to the sea. Ultimately these efforts would inaugurate the return of the traditional outrigger voyaging canoe for the greater Marshallese nation, an achievement that may work toward easing ethnic tensions abroad and ensure cultural survival in their battle against the looming climate change–induced rising ocean. Drawing attention to cultural rediscovery, revitalization, and resilience in Oceania, the Marshallese are once again celebrating their existence as a people born to the rhythms of the sea.

Coral and Concrete

Coral and Concrete
Author: Greg Dvorak
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2018-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824855213

Coral and Concrete, Greg Dvorak’s cross-cultural history of Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, explores intersections of environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited coral atoll on earth. Approaching the multiple “atollscapes” of Kwajalein’s past and present as Marshallese ancestral land, Japanese colonial outpost, Pacific War battlefield, American weapons-testing base, and an enduring home for many, Dvorak delves into personal narratives and collective mythologies from contradictory vantage points. He navigates the tensions between “little stories” of ordinary human actors and “big stories” of global politics—drawing upon the “little” metaphor of the coral organisms that colonize and build atolls, and the “big” metaphor of the all-encompassing concrete that buries and co-opts the past. Building upon the growing body of literature about militarism and decolonization in Oceania, this book advocates a layered, nuanced approach that emphasizes the multiplicity and contradictions of Pacific Islands histories as an antidote to American hegemony and globalization within and beyond the region. It also brings Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, and American perspectives into conversation with Micronesians’ recollections of colonialism and war. This transnational history—built upon a combination of reflective personal narrative, ethnography, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies—thus resituates Kwajalein Atoll as a pivotal site where Islanders have not only thrived for thousands of years, but also mediated between East and West, shaping crucial world events. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, as well as Dvorak’s own experiences growing up between Kwajalein, the United States, and Japan, Coral and Concrete integrates narrative and imagery with semiotic analysis of photographs, maps, films, and music, traversing colonial tropical fantasies, tales of victory and defeat, missile testing, fisheries, war-bereavement rituals, and landowner resistance movements, from the twentieth century through the present day. Representing history as a perennial struggle between coral and concrete, the book offers an Oceanian paradigm for decolonization, resistance, solidarity, and optimism that should appeal to all readers far beyond the Marshall Islands.

Poisoning the Pacific

Poisoning the Pacific
Author: Jon Mitchell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2020-10-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1538130343

In this devastating exposé, investigative journalist Jon Mitchell reveals the shocking toxic contamination of the Pacific Ocean and millions of victims by the US military. For decades, US military operations have been contaminating the Pacific region with toxic substances, including plutonium, dioxin, and VX nerve agent. Hundreds of thousands of service members, their families, and residents have been exposed—but the United States has hidden the damage and refused to help victims. After World War II, the United States granted immunity to Japanese military scientists in exchange for their data on biological weapons tests conducted in China; in the following years, nuclear detonations in the Pacific obliterated entire islands and exposed Americans, Marshallese, Chamorros, and Japanese fishing crews to radioactive fallout. At the same time, the United States experimented with biological weapons on Okinawa and stockpiled the island with nuclear and chemical munitions, causing numerous accidents. Meanwhile, the CIA orchestrated a campaign to introduce nuclear power to Japan—the folly of which became horrifyingly clear in the 2011 meltdowns in Fukushima Prefecture. Caught in a geopolitical grey zone, US territories have been among the worst affected by military contamination, including Guam, Saipan, and Johnston Island, the final disposal site of apocalyptic volumes of chemical weapons and Agent Orange. Accompanying this damage, US authorities have waged a campaign of cover-ups, lies, and attacks on the media, which the author has experienced firsthand in the form of military surveillance and attempts by the State Department to impede his work. Now, for the first time, this explosive book reveals the horrific extent of contamination in the Pacific and the lengths the Pentagon will go to conceal it.

Iep Jaltok

Iep Jaltok
Author: Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 91
Release: 2017-02-14
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0816534020

"Iep jāltok is a collection of poetry by a young Marshallese woman highlighting the traumas of her people through colonialism, racism, forced migration, the legacy of nuclear testing by America, and the impending threats of climate change"--Provided by publisher.

Encyclopedia of Modern Coral Reefs

Encyclopedia of Modern Coral Reefs
Author: David Hopley
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 1226
Release: 2010-11-26
Genre: Science
ISBN: 904812638X

Coral reefs are the largest landforms built by plants and animals. Their study therefore incorporates a wide range of disciplines. This encyclopedia approaches coral reefs from an earth science perspective, concentrating especially on modern reefs. Currently coral reefs are under high stress, most prominently from climate change with changes to water temperature, sea level and ocean acidification particularly damaging. Modern reefs have evolved through the massive environmental changes of the Quaternary with long periods of exposure during glacially lowered sea level periods and short periods of interglacial growth. The entries in this encyclopedia condense the large amount of work carried out since Charles Darwin first attempted to understand reef evolution. Leading authorities from many countries have contributed to the entries covering areas of geology, geography and ecology, providing comprehensive access to the most up-to-date research on the structure, form and processes operating on Quaternary coral reefs.

Domination and Resistance

Domination and Resistance
Author: Martha Smith-Norris
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2016-01-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824847628

Domination and Resistance illuminates the twin themes of superpower domination and indigenous resistance in the central Pacific during the Cold War, with a compelling historical examination of the relationship between the United States and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. For decision makers in Washington, the Marshall Islands represented a strategic prize seized from Japan near the end of World War II. In the postwar period, under the auspices of a United Nations Trusteeship Agreement, the United States reinforced its control of the Marshall Islands and kept the Soviet Union and other Cold War rivals out of this Pacific region. The United States also used the opportunity to test a vast array of powerful nuclear bombs and missiles in the Marshalls, even as it conducted research on the effects of human exposure to radioactive fallout. Although these military tests and human experiments reinforced the US strategy of deterrence, they also led to the displacement of several atoll communities, serious health implications for the Marshallese, and widespread ecological degradation. Confronted with these troubling conditions, the Marshall Islanders utilized a variety of political and legal tactics—petitions, lawsuits, demonstrations, and negotiations—to draw American and global attention to their plight. In response to these indigenous acts of resistance, the United States strengthened its strategic interests in the Marshalls but made some concessions to the islanders. Under the Compact of Free Association (COFA) and related agreements, the Americans tightened control over the Kwajalein Missile Range while granting the Marshallese greater political autonomy, additional financial assistance, and a mechanism to settle nuclear claims. Martha Smith-Norris argues that despite COFA's implementation in 1986 and Washington's pivot toward the Asia-Pacific region in the post–Cold War era, the United States has yet to provide adequate compensation to the Republic of the Marshall Islands for the extensive health and environmental damages caused by the US testing programs.

Human Resources for Health Country Profiles

Human Resources for Health Country Profiles
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 35
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

This report was developed to review the Health Workforce Enhancement Plan 2013-2016 (HWEP), which had been extended until 2019, and to function as a human resources for health (HRH) situational analysis in preparation for the development of a national HRH strategic plan. The HWEP was developed as a response to Papua New Guinea Health Workforce Crisis: A Call to Action, a 2011 World Bank report that recommended the country adopt a strategy to increase pre-service and in-service training, staff for support services, and quality-enhancing non-salary budget expenditures, known in the report as Scenario 5. A recommended training schedule up to 2030 has also been developed to guide the implementation of such a strategy.

Suburban Empire

Suburban Empire
Author: Lauren Hirshberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2022-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520289153

Suburban Empire takes readers to the US missile base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, at the matrix of postwar US imperial expansion, the Cold War nuclear arms race, and the tide of anti-colonial struggles rippling across the world. Hirshberg shows that the displacement of indigenous Marshallese within Kwajalein Atoll mirrors the segregation and spatial politics of the mainland US as local and global iterations of US empire took hold. Tracing how Marshall Islanders navigated US military control over their lands, Suburban Empire reveals that Cold War–era suburbanization was perfectly congruent with US colonization, military testing, and nuclear fallout. The structures of suburban segregation cloaked the destructive history of control and militarism under a veil of small-town innocence.

Bombing the Marshall Islands

Bombing the Marshall Islands
Author: Keith M. Parsons
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2017-07-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107047323

A narrative history of the nuclear tests conducted by the United States in the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958.

Don't Ever Whisper

Don't Ever Whisper
Author: Giff Johnson
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Marshallese
ISBN: 9781489509062

Don't Ever Whisper - Darlene Keju: Pacific Health Pioneer, Champion for Nuclear Survivors tells the powerful story of a woman from a tiny Pacific island who championed the cause of nuclear weapons test survivors when others were silent, and who later implemented unparalleled community health programs and services that gave hope to a generation of troubled youth. Don't Ever Whisper is the stirring account of Marshall Islander Darlene Keju's struggle to gain an American education despite disadvantages of language and resources, and to use that education first to expose to the world a United States government cover up of its nuclear weapons testing program in her islands, and later to inspire young Marshall Islanders to make changes in their personal behavior to transform the health of their communities. Darlene remained ignorant for decades about the cancer-causing radioactive fallout that rained down on her and thousands of unsuspecting islanders. But she used her American education to pierce the veil of secrecy shrouding the U.S. government's hydrogen bomb tests at Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the 1950s. Darlene took to a global stage at the World Council of Churches Assembly in Canada to tell the world about the health impact of these nuclear tests, and of the U.S. Army's discrimination against Marshall Islanders at its missile-testing base at Kwajalein Atoll. A U.S. Ambassador accused her of creating "nauseating propaganda." But secret U.S. nuclear test-era documents that have come to light in recent years - and are detailed in this biography - document the U.S. government's deliberate concealment of the true story behind the conduct of its nuclear weapons tests. Don't Ever Whisper also tells the inspiring story of Darlene's further transformation to educational innovator, whose community health programs had far-reaching effects in her Pacific nation. Through Youth to Youth in Health, a non-government organization Darlene pioneered, she went to bat for marginalized young people, a largely ignored population with little hope, low self-esteem, and a penchant for expressing their frustrations by suicide and other anti-social behavior. As told in Don't Ever Whisper, Darlene empowered women, young people, and their communities to take control of their own health and economic well being through work that was praised as a model for the Pacific by the U.S. Public Health Service, the United Nations Population Fund, and other international organizations.