Nothin' Sez Somethin': Marshall Islands

12 September 2013

Marshall Islands

The Cactus Dome: A Good Place to Test Your Geiger counter

During the 1940s & 1950s, The Marshall Islands in The Pacific Ocean were the site of numerous, some very large, atomic bomb tests. During those years most Americans were unaware that a group of very flat islands (or atolls) that lie about 3 feet above sea level were being pounded down below sea level & poisoned to an extent that the island's inhabitants had to leave some of the atolls, never to return.

In the 1970s when nuclear weapons testing started becoming unpopular in the public eye, the U.S. Government decided to scoop up over 100,000 tons of radioactive debris & dump it in a huge hole already created by a nuclear test years before on Runit Island that was codenamed ‘Cactus’ (or Terminal Beach). This they did between 1977 & 1980.

The debris is now covered by a concrete dome almost two feet thick & almost 100,000 feet in diameter. Fittingly, it's called the Cactus Dome. Technically, the site is off limits. Signs on the island warn of the radioactive danger.

Enewetak Atoll (or Eniwetok Atoll, in Marshallese: Ānewetak) is a large coral atoll of 40 islands in the Pacific Ocean, one of these being Runit Island. Eniwetak's 850 people forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its land area totals less than 2.26 sq. miles, not higher than 5 m & surrounding a deep central lagoon, 50 miles in circumference. The U.S. government referred to the atoll as "Eniwetok" until 1974, when it changed its official spelling to Enewetak.

From Terminal Beach by JG Ballard:

The Catechism of Goodbye

Somewhere in the Shifting center of the maze, Traven sat with his back against one of the concrete flanks, his eyes raised to the sun. Around him lines of cubes formed the horizon of his world. At times they would appear to advance towards him, looming over him like cliffs, the intervals between them narrowing so that they were little more than an arm’s length apart, a labyrinth of narrow corridors running between them. Then they would recede from him, separating from each other like points in an expanding universe, until the nearest line formed an intermittent palisade along the horizon.

Time had become quantal. For hours it would be noon, the shadows contained within the motionless bulk of the blocks, the heat reverberating off the concrete floor. Abruptly he would find it was early afternoon or evening, the shadows everywhere pointing fingers.

“Goodbye, Eniwetok,” he murmured.

Somewhere there was a flicker of light, as if one of the blocks, like a counter on an abacus, had been plucked away.

“Goodbye, Los Alamos.” Again a block seemed to vanish. The corridors around him remained intact, but somewhere, Traven was convinced, in the matrix superimposed on his mind, a small interval of neutral space had been punched.

Goodbye, Hiroshima.

Goodbye, Alamogordo.

Goodbye, Moscow, London, Paris, New York…

Shuttles flickered, a ripple of integers. Traven stopped, accepting the futility of this megathlon farewell. Such leave-taking required him to fix his signature on every one of the particles in the universe.

Total Noon: Eniwetok

The blocks now occupied positions on an endlessly revolving circus wheel. They carried him upwards, to heights from which he could see the whole island and the sea, and then down again through the opaque disc of the floor. From here he looked up at the undersurface of the concrete cap, an inverted landscape of rectilinear hollows, the dome-shaped mounds of the lake system, the thousands of empty cubic pits of the blocks.

Goodbye, Eniwetok.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Marshall Islands (officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands or in Marshallese Aolepān Aorōkin M̧ajeļ) is an island country located in the Pacific Ocean, part of the larger island group of Micronesia. It incorporates over 34 low-lying coral atolls, comprising 1,156 individual islands & islets. The islands share maritime boundaries with the Federated States of Micronesia to the west, Wake Island to the north, Kiribati to the south-east, & Nauru to the south. The most populous atoll is Majuro, which also acts as the capital.

String bands were popular through the 80s, with many traditional bands incorporating roro music (a kind of traditional chant, usually about ancient legends, usually performed to give guidance during navigation & to strengthen mothers in labor) into their style. Although drums are not generally common in Micronesian music, one-sided hourglass-shaped drums are a major part of Marshallese music. These were added to the roro sound to create a more modern style. Since the 80s, the Marshall Island sound has become basically more electronic keyboard driven, but there are still numerous ukulele youth bands.

A hallmark of both eras seems to be tight vocal harmonies in two or three parts. Guitar is the instrument of choice for the earlier groups, but ukuleles progressively gained favor with youth bands throughout the past two decades, due in large part to increased travel between Hawaii & the Marshall Islands.