The Republic of the Marshall Islands is comprised of 29 atolls in the North Pacific Ocean.

An atoll is a group of coral islands that form a ring around a shallow lagoon.

After World War II, the United States occupied the Marshall Islands for several decades.

In 1946, the United States began a nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands to
test post-World War II nuclear weapons.

In 1954, the United States detonated Bravo, the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever
tested by the United States, on Bikini atoll.

The fallout radiation from the test forced the evacuation of Marshallese and U.S. military
personnel on four of the atolls.

Many of the people exposed to the radiation began to experience nausea, vomiting, and
itching skin and eyes.

Those who were most heavily exposed suffered skin burns and later hair loss. The U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission issued a statement to the press calling Bravo a "routine
atomic test" and stating that some Americans and Marshallese were "unexpectedly
exposed to some radioactivity. There were no burns. All were reported well."

Throughout the remainder of the 1950s, the U.S. government declared the islands safe
for rehabitation and returned the islanders to their homes.

The U.S. government gave the islanders money and set up trust funds to compensate
for the damages, and nuclear testing continued.

By 1963, the first thyroid tumors began to appear among those who had been exposed
to the Bravo test, and U.S. doctors noticed a higher than normal incidence of growth
retardation among young islanders.

In 1969, the Atomic Energy Commission stated, "There's virtually no radiation left and
we can find no discernible effect on either plant or animal life."

By the mid-1970s, it became clear that the damage was much more extensive than originally reported.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. government set up trust funds for the Marshallese residents and paid the victims millions of dollars in total.

On Memorial and Nuclear Victims Day, Marshallese people from the four atolls that were
affected by the bomb and fallout gather to pray and commemorate their atolls and those
who were killed during the bomb testing.

More info... https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Marshall+Islands+Memorial+and+Nuclear+
Victims+Day

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