Title: Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1
Abstract: Reviewed by: Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1 David Lipset Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1. Documentary, 87 minutes, dvd, color, 2011. Written and directed by Adam Jonas Horowitz; produced by Adam Jonas Horowitz and Johanna Giebelhaus in collaboration with Pacific Islanders in Communications and the Kindle Project. Available for rent or purchase from Primordial Soup Company/Equatorial Films at http://www.nuclearsavage.com. Rental us $4.99. The Frankfurt School was among the first to analyze the deeply immoral capacities of modern rationality, bureaucracy, and capitalism. The state, on both sides of the Atlantic, has stood out as the exemplary figure of this Janus-faced contradiction. One thinks of Nazi Germany and the Jews, Zyklon B, and the “Final Solution.” Hawaiians, Native Americans, Vietnamese, and now Muslims would no doubt attest not just to the violence [End Page 270] but to the ignorant contempt with which the United States has exploited, or at least tried to exploit, them. In Nuclear Savage, Adam Jonas Horowitz, a filmmaker and environmental activist, presents a gripping and discouraging account of the United States’ moral disregard for Marshall Islanders over the course of nuclear tests on their atolls conducted during the first thirteen years after World War II. I suppose the rationale, from the government’s perspective, was that the radiation poisoning suffered by multiple generations of Marshall Islanders was acceptable as “collateral damage,” given the Cold War and their utterly marginal position in the bigger geopolitical picture. To whom would it matter if a few “primitives” suffered, and, anyway, who could possibly take the US military to task? This film exposes the huge “Bravo” test and explores “Program 4.1.” The former was the largest hydrogen bomb ever exploded in the atmosphere, while the latter was a research project on Islanders who lived just downwind from the 1954 test site. Told through a deft narrative, the video documents Horowitz’s dogged pursuit—stretching from Mejatto and Rongelap in the Marshall Islands to the United Nations in New York City—of facts and stakeholders. Horowitz weaves excerpts from 1950s propaganda films and network television reports together with grotesque images of burned skin and hair loss and with talking heads reciting genealogies not of kinship, but of cancers, neonatal birth defects, and cultural malaise. The experience of Rongelap people epitomizes the modern nightmare of violence and lies in which they have lived for more than six decades now. After the Bravo explosion, despite having been subjected to radiation levels “well above a lethal human dose,” they were not evacuated right away. Claiming everybody was healthy, the United States waited two days before removing the population to nearby Kwajalein Atoll. A senior Marshallese woman recalled then being sprayed down with a fire hose; “even the old ladies” were instructed to strip off their clothes. A few months later, everyone was returned to Rongelap, which had been declared “safe” for human habitation. They lived there for the next twenty-eight years as part of “Project 4.1,” the goal being to collect “ecological radiation data,” particularly with respect to the effects of eating foods grown in contaminated soil. Speaking in a voice-over while old images of Rongelap are shown, a woman recalls how, during a US military autopsy, her deceased grandmother was cut up “like an animal.” A contrasting excerpt from a propaganda video depicts Marshall Islanders in New York City at a barbecue hosted by their primary physician and given sightseeing tours. The Rongelapese asked the US government to evacuate them but were refused. They petitioned the environmental organization Greenpeace for assistance, and in 1985 Rainbow Warrior took them to live on Mejatto Island, 150 miles away. As they climb aboard, the video shows how crippled children have to be carried onto the boat. Christian Marshallese compare their departure to the Exodus from Egypt. Years later, while radiation levels remain high, an image of cemeteries, [End Page 271] now being reclaimed by the bush, remind us of what has been lost on Rongelap. In 2011, the US government demanded that the Rongelap people return home or lose funding. Elders declined, citing continued contamination, which Department of Energy officials denied...
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 2
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