the circle is a room of the islands so remote that there's no regular transport in or else it'll be a week before our plane returns if we're lucky. it's a stunning place. hides a dark secret. i. m. yes. this is a place whose atomic past is seed into its present the people of in a way talk were forced into exile by the atomic full elf allowed to return after three decades and new generation is learning about the traditions and customs of this place. they have also been told about america's top sick legacy

and how it lies under a giant dharm. on em. they are interesting some are they understand that we have a voice in our you know island that is what they called by using. they noted there's a tomb because they have been there so the dawn you call it the term we call it that. we set out the next morning to see for ourselves. of the nearly two hours we approach one of in a way talking assholes for. what we've come to see is hard to spot from the beach only from. the air can you get

a true sense of the sky of what the united states military calls. the dollar is actually a dump it contains the toxic leftovers of some of the most powerful atomic bombs in history america's cold war legacy it is a tomb of nuclear waste the dome is completely unlabeled there's no fence there no guards there people can go there if they want and there's nobody to stop them but they let me up and make you worry about them i am i going to have a matter. of fact. i. for nine hundred forty six to nine hundred fifty eight the united states detonated dozens of atomic bombs in the muscle islands. and was in

a way talkies hardly knowing its closest neighbor three hundred kilometers to the east became synonymous with nuclear fallout. its name is became. beyond my own point on the water you wave coming toward the camera but. from the kids. right now i don't think i'll be able to come in it's just not clean enough for us it's not. one of the countries loves traditional never gave his else and kellen is adrift living in exile because he's not allowed to return home to bikini. ahead of the atomic testing there in the one nine hundred forty s. the united. states told elson killen's family and the one hundred sixty seven

people of his asshole that they had a duty to the world to leave their islands. and it was a moment film by the military's p.r. unit and i want to thank you. all right now james when you come that the united states government now wants to try and write it up for us and there's something good for man. and that this experiment here are the first step in that direction and i was. reading good women. in britain. where you found them many things you did everything being in god and it cannot be other than go there ah and here by the way i had i was thinking i am i should leave now you are my. god.

and i well yeah. there was the impacts of twelve years of nuclear testing in the marshall islands included increased rates of thyroid and other cancers and the permanent exile of people from their home islands. in one thousand nine hundred six is part of a deal to give the marshall islands independence the u.s. paid one hundred fifty million dollars later an independent tribunals awarded more than two billion dollars to victims of the testing program list than four million was if a paid. to tribunals office in the capital murder oh is no longer operating with most claims unresolved sitting in files gathering dust. the u.s. government policy on. the nuclear weapons legacy in the marshall islands is

to simply downgrade and dismiss health hazards as not existed or in significant. johnson is the publisher of the marshall islands journal the country's only newspaper for three decades he's been a passionate advocate for the local people his wife. was a famous nucleus of five who died of cancer aged just forty five it really makes us wonder if marshall islanders will ever get justice from the nuclear weapons tests that were conducted here and just this is the right word it's really important to understand that that a lot of nuclear contaminated material was tossed into a crater left over from a bomb test a coral atoll essentially and a coral atoll by its nature is porous. when the us was

getting ready to clean up i believe in the one nine hundred seventy s. they picked the pit that had been left by one of the smaller atomic explosions and dumped a lot of this plutonium and other radioactive waste into the pit and covered it over with an eighteen inch thick dome and left. the dome was never meant to be anything but a temporary solution to the problem of atomic waste at almost every stage of its construction safety was sector face to save money. michael gerard is a u.s. climate change specialist who's visited the dome the bottom of the dome is just what was left behind by the nuclear weapons explosion. it's permeable soil there was. no effort to line it and therefore the sea water is

inside the dome already they see sometimes washes over it and you know you know our storm and united states government has acknowledged that a major typhoon could break it apart and cause all of the radiation in it to disperse. you can see why ruin its remoteness made it seem like a good place for the contaminated contents. but like most of the islands of the marshal's route it is bailey a major above sea level at its highest point when this dome was built in the light nine hundred seventy s. there was no factoring in sea level rises caused by climate change now every day when the tide rolls out as it is now ready o. active isotopes from underneath the dime roll out with it that though it's the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change which it will be very

devastation even. if it were really it we're not talking just a marshall islands we're talking. sweet ocean. i think it's really telling. that the ocean is rising and it's and it's it's making this nuclear waste leak out because in a lot of ways this climate change issue has also been revived revitalizing a lot of conversations about our nuclear legacy every time someone talks about climate change you can't ignore our nuclear legacy is while it's linked. is a poet and climate change activist. she's proud of her heritage. it's my home it's where i'm from that's where my family's from my ancestors they've been here for thousands of years and and there's also just nothing like you and your else and it's part of why. you have.

a rising leader of a nation kathy jett no kid you know was invited to the twenty fourteen united nations climate change summit in new york to speak about. the front line in the battle against rising sea levels the marshall islands encompasses more than two million square kilometers of ocean i mean it's the united nations these are world leaders from all over and it was the first time that i was able to share something that i was i cared about you know something about the islands and what she shared was a poem about climate change dear much of a poem addressed to her infant daughter who are a seven month old son rise a smile or bald as an egg and bald as the buddha you are thighs that are thunder shrieks that are lightning so excited for bananas hugs and our morning walks along the. i want to tell you about the.

against the sunrise men say that one day that look. they say it will not the shoreline to at the roots of your bread fruit trees gulp down roads the walls and crunch through your island shattered bones. don't cry mommy promises you no one will calm and devour you no one is drowning no one's moving no one's losing their home no one's going to become a climate change refugees. in a place known for soda speeches and poker face diplomacy heavy jet gnocchi gin is pledged to her daughter to fight climate change moved me to tears. i mean when they all stood up i kind of thought they were just being polite but i just found out here that's not that doesn't happen all the time.

some estimates put the sea level rise here in excess of sixty centimeters by the end of this century that's enough to inundate three quarters of the country so. now we're on alert every time there's a high tide is the water will come over and flood our houses you know crushed and homes are destroyed homes it will dry the crops and you know that didn't ever happen before you know we're getting a lot of more extreme weathers like droughts too and so it's just gotten a lot worse in the past couple years. it will kill a reef so we kill so reef kill so fish kill so food and you know marshall has a very very limited line so this really nothing for us to survive on. so i would say that there are a short time i cannot give you the year but. we will gradually

probably start moving. to the clock is ticking before you hit release it is ticking . for many marshallese the dome on route island remains a potent symbol of the threat of climate change it may be made from half meter thick concrete panels but as we've seen elsewhere the ocean is likely to win out over concrete every time. the radiation levels of the people of in a we talk the supposed to be monitored here in this space age us built lab on the main island but when we visit the machine for assessing radioactive exposure isn't working. and as we're about to find out it's not just the people of the marshall islands who are living with the fallout from what happened here all those years ago. this was the side of the largest nuclear cleanup in united states history four thousand young soldiers

toiled here for years to fill in the bomb crater underneath this dime among the more than eighty thousand cubic meters of contaminated soil and debris with plutonium one of the most toxic substances on the planet. the many of the young soldiers who worked here there was a high price to pay. those young men and now in their fifty's and sixty's and few in the united states know storing. the suburban sprawl of less vegas feels like another world away from the remote emptiness of in a way talk at all but the dawn is something former u.s. soldier g.-man drole can never forget and neither can he forgive i've never even heard of it only took an hour or two that there were forty three nuclear tests and in those radioactive the story landed. everybody kind of pretty much flipped out on

a phone no because right after the radioactive. i was told i was going to visit a tropical paradise for the last six months of the service. a specialist in the army's eighty foals in geneva talian mandrel was one of thousands of u.s. soldiers sent to help clean up in a way talk at all in the one nine hundred seventy s. a thousand workers from the u.s. armed forces are giving the northern islands a facelift striving to dig and scrape away the radioactive soil and debris this u.s. news story shows soldiers on an away talk wearing radiation suits b.g. mandrel says this was just a show for the t.v. cameras there was no special gear issued we were just issued our normal oh warm weather here which were a bit short teacher tat in the jungle boots and that's all and were you given right away dave decontamination truck no none whatsoever was there any safety equipment

no if people do come back to rhode island they'll be risking perhaps the hottest radiation on earth this island won't be fit for human habitation again for at least twenty four thousand years unrooted island site of the daum soldiers were exposed to one of the most toxic substances known in the result of a bomb test gone wrong one of the attempted nuclear weapons explosions didn't work and so the who put tony and rather than having a nuclear blast was just broken apart by the conventional explosives leading to a about four hundred little chunks hope.