America's forgotten nuclear migration: The Marshallese displaced by US bomb testing face new challenges
In the past several decades, thousands of Micronesian migrants displaced by the grim conditions in the bomb testing aftermath have been arriving in the United States. Jonithen Jackson remembers the stories his mother and grandmother used to tell him before bed, Marshallese folk stories teaching lessons of hope and kindness. Embedded in these stories, Jackson tried to understand why his people couldn’t live on their home island anymore. “Everybody's sick; they get sick and die young,” Jackson told ABC News. “When the bomb is erupted, the white powder they come to on the water… everybody realize, ‘oh, that's the poison.’” Jackson’s home island is Enewetak Atoll, where the United States tested 43 nuclear bombs from 1948 to 1958. Mushroom cloud forms over Bikini Lagoon in the Marshall Islands, May 1946. AP Photo In the past several decades, thousands of migrants have been arriving in the United States from the South Pacific, a region called Micronesia. They often arrive in search