“A lot of these people are living with those ghosts,” says Armbruster, bald, lanky and considered by many Marshallese to be savvy and empathetic. “It’s part of our shared history, part of our Cold War. We’re not going to go back and try to understand the decisions. But there are things we can do now.”
He lists them: encouraging the resettlement of Rongelap, sending a couple of Marshallese students to California to study nuclear issues, building drinking-water catchments, strengthening disaster management plans.
The U.S. Embassy considers the Marshall Islands to be on the front line of climate change, which manifests most dramatically during late-winter king tides. In March of last year, 1,000 people evacuated Majuro as the surge pulled homes into the ocean.
“Climate change is my nuclear experience,” says Mark Stege, 37, who grew up in Majuro, studied at Columbia University and is now director of the Marshall Islands Conservation Society. “I can see a lot of connections at the emotional level, and the community level, at the individual family level. The same questions are relevant in both situations. There’s this really deep sense of loss.”
On the afternoon of Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day, Armbruster hosts the unveiling of a U.S.-funded memorial at an outdoor basketball court near the college. The court is named after Solomon Sam, the only Marshallese service member in the U.S. military to die in Iraq or Afghanistan. Painted in white text on a blue wall is a written tribute to the Marshallese who have served the United States in some form over the past 70 years: scouts who gathered intelligence during World War II, families whose land and health were poisoned by testing during the Cold War, and the young generation who served in the Middle East.
Most of the white plastic chairs at the unveiling are empty.
Present at the ceremony is a young Marshallese man who served in the U.S. Army and deployed to Baghdad. The young man, who is absent without leave from the Army and asked not to be identified, says he thinks the memorial is a fine gesture from the United States.
“We’re biting the hands that feed us,” he says of remarks critical of the United States made earlier that day. “We’re sending out the message that this happened and we’re supposed to be pissed, and that’s been going on for 61 years. Why not change the tone? It’s really depressing.”
The young man was a combat engineer, with a focus on explosive-ordnance disposal. He helped protect American troops from bombs.
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