It May Be a Spiffy Bomber to Us, But It Was Hell on the Marshallese

Sent to the Albuquerque Journal.

Editor

 In the Sunday Journal, Charles Brundt tells us about the need to raise funds to repaint a B-52B bomber that will be exhibited at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. Brundt elaborates on the history of this aircraft, including that it was heavily involved in "...Operation Redwing Cherokee, a series of 17 nuclear test detonations from May 4 through July 21, 1956, at the Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Pacific." Indeed, the U.S. conducted some 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands.

For whatever security this testing may or may not have provided Americans, its legacy continues to haunt the Marshall Islanders, where many areas have been too contaminated for habitation and where many people were directly subject to high levels of fallout and long term radioactive contamination. Imagine if New Mexico, rather than having experienced one small test of a nuclear device at Trinity Site, was used as a target for dozens of very large thermonuclear weapons.

Perhaps in addition to raising funds for re-painting that B-52, we should not be whitewashing the effects our testing program had on its unwilling participants living on those Pacific Islands. How much paint does it take to undo the equivalent of a nuclear war on someone's island home?