Remembering Castle Bravo Means Fighting the Return of Nuclear Testing
by Robin Narruhn
74 years ago today on March, 1st, 1954, the United States detonated the largest nuclear bomb in its entire testing history at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test caused widespread radioactive fallout that still affects generations of Marshallese people to this day. A 15-megaton thermonuclear detonation, it was 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, creating a 4.5-mile-wide mushroom cloud, and a 6,510-foot-wide crater. A radioactive plume extended over seven thousand miles from the test, contaminating the inhabited islands of Rongelap, Rongerik, and Utrik, as well as the crew of the Lucky Dragon, a Japanese fishing vessel. It was one of 67 nuclear bombs detonated in the islands, and one of 2,056 nuclear explosions worldwide. Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day, a national holiday in the Marshall Islands, is observed to commemorate the victims and survivors of U.S. nuclear testing.
My father fled the brutality of Japanese colonization of the Marshall and Kiribati Islands. Like life under occupation, my father never spoke of the nuclear testing he knew was occurring in our homeland. It was as if he wanted to protect me, or if it was just too terrible to bear. Growing up in Seattle on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, I spent many years isolated from the Marshallese community, this disconnection is what war does after all, but over the years, more and more of my community members have immigrated to Washington state. As a nurse, professor, and researcher, I studied healthcare access in the Marshallese
community. In my paper "I've Never Been to the Doctor, Healthcare Access in the Marshallese Community", I saw firsthand how my people, having been poisoned by US testing, were denied the medical care they were promised. As an advocate with Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility's Nuclear Weapons Abolition Task Force, my advocacy has taken me to the offices of members of Congress, to the gates of the Bangor Base, to Hiroshima, Japan with these stories in my heart. I do not take threats to resume nuclear
testing lightly.
This history should prompt urgent diplomacy to avoid repeating past mistakes on a larger scale. There is a difficult truth we rarely discuss: our community does not openly talk about the horrors of our nuclear past. Like many survivors, our elders often avoid burdening their children with these memories. This silence can make it easier for American politicians to ignore our stories, exclude them from history books, or dismiss them in court when we seek justice. Sometimes, this avoidance seems strategic, allowing accountability to be deferred. To highlight the risks of nuclear armament, it is important to examine what is happening in the world of nuclear weapons today.
Russia, China, and the United States, along with other major countries, have become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Global understanding disintegrates, fostering a winner-takes-all mentality in great power competitions. Furthermore, the breakdown of international dialogue is manifest in the failure to reach consensus on updated nuclear non-proliferation treaties during recent summits. This undermines international cooperation, critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, and the misuse of biotechnology. The Nuclear Doomsday clock is at 85 seconds to midnight in
2026, and with the increase in bellicose behavior, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has cited the collapse of nuclear norms as a key driver.
In late 2025, President Donald Trump suggested restarting U.S. nuclear explosive testing to match efforts by Russia and China, challenging a voluntary moratorium in place since 1992. While the U.S. maintains the capacity to test at the Nevada National Security Site, such a move would violate decades of policy and exacerbate a global arms race. Experts generally agree that the current Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship program keeps the arsenal safe and effective without testing. Furthering this risky proposition is the New START treaty, which capped U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals at 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 launchers and expired on February 5, 2026. Following its expiration, President Trump opted against extending the pact, calling for a "modernized" treaty to be negotiated instead, while Russia indicated it is no longer bound by its obligations. As global understanding unravels, a winner-takes-all mentality is taking hold in great power competitions. We are
perilously close to global disaster, and any delay in reversing course increases the probability of catastrophe. The proposal to increase nuclear testing and creation in the US by the current administration is a harrowing prospect. We at Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility are prioritizing urgent diplomacy to de-escalate nuclear tensions before history repeats itself on a global scale. Explosive nuclear testing is an existential threat to health. It's time for leaders like Senator Murray, Senator Cantwell, and Representative Jayapal to move to block funding for the resumption of nuclear testing, so that more communities don't suffer this terrible legacy.
