Why we have spent $$ in the Marshall isialnds

I thought I'd share something I posted recently somewhere else. Maybe some tman people have had family members that have had history with the Marshall Islands sometime since the 1940s.It takes some effort to get to these fairly remote islands. Full disclosure, I have never been there and probably never will.

Some of my work center people, both current and former, stop by a downtown Soo Foo ale house on "First Thursdays" of the month and with more that cleared out the third week of April and another who had retired the day before, I stopped by as well.

One of my former colleagues, probably a world renown elevation mapping expert, had on an interesting shirt. It had the flag of the Republic of the Marshall Islands on the back and on one of the sleeves, the lat/long coordinates of probably its little capital city. Notice how close to the equator that the RMI are, less than 8 degrees north latitude. There is nothing even close to being that far south in the northern hemisphere as part of the United States proper, Hilo, Hawaii is at almost 20 degrees (19.7) north. And yet, my colleagues, actually several of my colleagues, have spent a good amount of time mapping the elevation of these small specks of land deep in the central Pacific Ocean that only have a population of about 60,000 people. Why...?

Two words, ok maybe three: Bikini (and Enewetak) and Kwajalein. Some people may have heard about the Marshall Islands while reading about WWII. They were the next island chain to be liberated from the Japanese military after the U.S Navy and Marines learned a bloody lesson about assaulting coral reef rimmed islands at Tarawa in the nearby Gilbert Islands half a year or so before taking several key islands in the Marshalls. Thus, the U.S. was controlling the Marshall Islands when the dawn of the nuclear age occurred in 1945.
USG officials decided that the Marshall Islands would be a good place to test nuclear weapons. Between 1946 and the later 1950s, almost 70 nuclear bombs were exploded in the Marshalls, most of them in the Bikini atoll but also some on Enewetak, including the largest above ground detonation (15 megatons) ever conducted by the United States. The local population on Bikini was relocated and was never allowed back to their former home, although the Bikini lagoon is now an international coral ecosystem protected area. Old military test ships that were sunk or later scuttled after several such explosions remain in various places within Bikini's lagoon.

Kwajalein (where one of the Marshall Islands WWII battles was fought) became important later, with Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" defense plan against incoming enemy nuclear ICBMs. It is from Kwajalein where the U.S. has tested its ability to intercept incoming enemy missiles. The test missiles are usually launched from Alaska or California and are intercepted in their free-fall stage over the northern Pacific. This U.S. test facility brings in a substantial amount of money to the RMI economy (remember, less than 60,000 people on the islands).

The Marshall Islands are now an independent nation but they, and several other WWII Pacific island groups, belong to the "Compact of Free Association of States" with the United States. These allow the people of the RMI certain "perks" that other foreign nationals don't easily get (until at least Prez Jo showed up), such as living in the U.S. without much paperwork and even the ability to join the U.S. military. It is now thought that there are more RMI people (or their descendants) living within the U.S. than still live on the islands. So, yeah, it seems a bit over the top that the my government agency has spent a good amount of time mapping aspect of the Marshall Islands but given the history of the past 80+ years, we probably owe its people a great deal. The islanders in the late 1800s would have never thought about or cared about great power geopolitics but such games can be played out in some very remote geographies. So it goes. ,