Project 4.1 was the designation for a medical study and experimentation conducted by the United States of those residents of the Marshall Islands exposed to radioactive fallout from the March 1, 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test at Bikini Atoll, which had an unexpectedly large yield. Government and mainstream historical sources point to the study being organized on March 6 or March 7, 1954, less than a week after the Bravo shot.
In the wake of the Castle Bravo detonation, a new research section was added to the Castle Bravo Weapons Effects research section. Program 4, "Biomedical effects," was to include one project, Project 4.1, titled "Study of Response of Human Beings exposed to Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation due to Fall-out from High-Yield Weapons." Eugene P. Cronkite of the National Naval Medical Center was designated as Project Officer. [1] Cronkite's instructions stressed the importance of secrecy surrounding the project:
... the project is classified SECRET RESTRICTED DATA. Due to possible adverse public reaction, you will specifically instruct all personnel in this project to be particularly careful not to discuss the purpose of this project and its background or findings with any except those who have specific "need to know." [2]
The purpose of the project, as a 1982 Defense Nuclear Agency report explained, was both medical as well as for research purposes:
The purposes of [Project 4.1] were to (1) evaluate the severity of radiation injury to the human beings exposed, (2) provide for all necessary medical care, and (3) conduct a scientific study of radiation injuries to human beings. [3]
As a Department of Energy Committee writing on the human radiation experiments wrote, "It appears to have been almost immediately apparent to the AEC and the Joint Task Force running the Castle series that research on radiation effects could be done in conjunction with the medical treatment of the exposed populations." [4] The DOE report also concluded that "The dual purpose of what is now a DOE medical program has led to a view by the Marshallese that they were being used as 'guinea pigs' in a 'radiation experiment.'" [4]
Organizations involved in the project included the Naval Medical Research Institute, the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, Patrol Squadron 29, the Naval Air Station, Kwajalein, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Applied Fisheries Laboratory at the University of Washington, and Hanford Atomic Power Operations. Three U.S. Navy ships were used in the project: USS Nicholas , USS Renshaw , and USS Philip . [3] The primary study of the Marshallese was terminated around 75 days after the time of exposure. In July 1954 a meeting at the Division of Biology at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission decided to complete 6- and 12-month follow-up exposure studies, some of which were later written up as addendums to Project 4.1. [5]
Some Marshallese have alleged that the exposure of the Marshallese was premeditated. In 1972, Micronesian Representative Ataji Balos charged at the Congress of Micronesia that the exposure during Bravo was purposeful so that the AEC could develop medical capabilities for treating those exposed to fallout during nuclear war, and charged that the Marshallese were chosen because of their marginal status in the world at large. According to a U.S. internal transcription of Balos' talk, Balos alleged that "The U.S. chose to make guinea pigs out of our people because they are not white but some brown natives in some remote Pacific islands. Medical treatment that Rongelapese and Utrikese have been receiving is also highly questionable." [6] The AEC issued a staff comment denying these charges.
In 1994, a 1953 Castle Bravo program prospectus was found which included reference to Project 4.1 apparently written before the Bravo shot had occurred. The U.S. government responded that someone had gone back into the project list after the Bravo test to insert Project 4.1; thus, according to the U.S. government, the acts were not premeditated. All other U.S. documents point to Project 4.1 having been established after the Bravo test—most sources point to its having been organized on March 7, 1954. [7] The final Project 4.1 report began in its preface with the statement that "Operation CASTLE did not include a biomedical program" (it mentions this in discussing the ad hoc nature by which the project personnel were assembled). [8] All official and mainstream historical accounts of the Bravo test indicate that its high level of fallout was a result of a miscalculation in relation to its design and was not deliberate (see the Castle Bravo article for more information on the alleged accident).
Barton C. Hacker, the official historian of U.S. nuclear testing exposures (who is, in the end, very critical of the U.S. handling of the Bravo incident), characterized the controversy in the following way:
In March 1954, the AEC had quickly decided that learning how the Marshallese victims of Castle Bravo responded to their accidental exposure could be of immense medical and military value. Immediate action centered on seeing them evacuated and decontaminated, then cared for medically. But studies of their exposures and aftereffects also began. That effort became project 4.1 in the Castle experimental program. This unfortunate choice of terminology may help explain later charges that the AEC had deliberately exposed the Marshallese to observe the effects. Like the American radium dial painters of the 1920s and the Japanese of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the Marshallese of 1954 inadvertently were to provide otherwise unobtainable data on the human consequences of high radiation exposures. Findings from project 4.1 soon began to appear in print. [9]
Controversy continues however, fed by the legacy of mistrust sown by American nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, which involved relocating hundreds of people and rendering several atolls uninhabitable. While most sources do not think that the exposure was intentional, there is no dispute that the United States did carefully study the exposed Marshallese, but never obtained informed consent from the study subjects. This study of the Marshallese was in some cases beneficial for their treatment, and in other cases not. In these ways, the study of the exposed Marshallese reflects the same ethical lapses as were undertaken in other aspects of the secret human radiation experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1940s and 1950s, which came to light only after the end of the Cold War.
According to the Final Project 4.1 report, the Bravo test exposed 239 Marshallese on the Utirik, Rongelap, and Ailinginae Atolls to significant level of radiation, and 28 Americans stationed on the Rongerik Atoll were also exposed. Those on the Rongelap Atoll were the most seriously affected, receiving approximately 175 rads of radiation before they were evacuated. Those on Ailinginae received 69 rads, those on Utirik received 14 rads, and the Americans on Rongerik received an average dose of 78 rads. [11] [12] [13] [14]
The results of the original Project 4.1 were published by the study's authors in professional medical journals in 1955, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association. [15]
In 2010 it was calculated that by sub-population, the projected proportion of cancers attributable to radiation from fallout from all nuclear tests conducted in the Marshall Islands is 55% (with a 28% to 69% uncertainty range) among 82 persons exposed in 1954 on Rongelap Atoll and Ailinginae Atoll. [16]
Most of the individuals exposed did not immediately show signs of radiation sickness, though within a few days other effects of significant radiation exposure manifested: loss of hair and significant skin damage, including "raw, weeping lesions", among the Rongelap and Ailinginae groups. The lesions healed quickly, however, consistent with radiation exposure. The report abstract concluded that "estimates of total body burden indicate that there is no long term hazard." [8]
Additional follow-up checks on the Marshallese studied in Project 4.1 were conducted at regular intervals afterwards every year since 1954. Though the Marshallese experienced far milder immediate effects than the Japanese fishermen exposed to Bravo fallout on the fishing boat Daigo Fukuryū Maru , the long-term effects were more pronounced as they depended largely on subsistence living and were relocated to the site of the testing in Bikini, Ene Wetak, and Rongelap while the Japanese fisherman were returned to Japan. For the first decade after the test, the effects were ambiguous and statistically difficult to correlate to radiation exposure: miscarriages and stillbirths among exposed Rongelap women doubled in the first five years after the accident,[ medical citation needed ] but then returned to normal; some developmental difficulties and impaired growth appeared in children,[ medical citation needed ] but in no clear-cut pattern. In the decades that followed, though, the effects were undeniable. Children began to disproportionately develop thyroid cancer (due to exposure to radioiodines), [17] and almost a third of those exposed developed neoplasms by 1974. [9] [ unreliable medical source? ]
The demographics of the Marshall Islands include data such as population density, ethnicity, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust and ash created when a nuclear weapon explodes. The amount and spread of fallout is a product of the size of the weapon and the altitude at which it is detonated. Fallout may get entrained with the products of a pyrocumulus cloud and fall as black rain. This radioactive dust, usually consisting of fission products mixed with bystanding atoms that are neutron-activated by exposure, is a form of radioactive contamination.
Bikini Atoll, known as Eschscholtz Atoll between the 1800s and 1946, is a coral reef in the Marshall Islands consisting of 23 islands surrounding a 229.4-square-mile (594.1 km2) central lagoon. The Atoll is at the northern end of the Ralik Chain, approximately 530 miles (850 km) northwest of the capital Majuro.
Operation Castle was a United States series of high-yield (high-energy) nuclear tests by Joint Task Force 7 (JTF-7) at Bikini Atoll beginning in March 1954. It followed Operation Upshot–Knothole and preceded Operation Teapot.
Ebeye is the most populous island of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, as well as the center for Marshallese culture in the Ralik Chain of the archipelago. Settled on 80 acres of land, it has a population of more than 15,000. Over 50% of the population is estimated to be under the age of 18.
Rongelap AtollRONG-gə-lap is an uninhabited coral atoll of 61 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its total land area is 8 square miles (21 km2). It encloses a lagoon with an area of 1,000 square miles (2,600 km2). It is historically notable for its close proximity to US hydrogen bomb tests in 1954, and was particularly devastated by fallout from the Castle Bravo test. The population asked the US to move them from Rongelap following the test due to high radiation levels with no success so they asked global environmental group Greenpeace to help. The Rainbow Warrior made four trips moving the islanders, their possessions and their homes to the island of Mejato in the Kwajalein Atoll, 180 kilometers away.
Castle Bravo was the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as part of Operation Castle. Detonated on March 1, 1954, the device remains the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States and the first lithium deuteride-fueled thermonuclear weapon tested using the Teller-Ulam design. Castle Bravo's yield was 15 megatons of TNT [Mt] (63 PJ), 2.5 times the predicted 6 Mt (25 PJ), due to unforeseen additional reactions involving lithium-7, which led to radioactive contamination in the surrounding area.
Rongerik Atoll or Rongdrik Atoll is an unpopulated coral atoll of 17 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and is located in the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands, approximately 200 kilometers (120 mi) east of Bikini Atoll. Its total land area is only 1.68 square kilometers (0.65 sq mi), but it encloses a lagoon of 144 square kilometers (56 sq mi).
Utirik Atoll or Utrik Atoll is a coral atoll of 10 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and forms a legislative district of the Ratak Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its total land area is only 2.4 square kilometers (0.94 sq mi), but it encloses a lagoon with an area of 57.7 square kilometers (22.29 sq mi). It is located approximately 47 kilometers (29 mi) east of Ujae Atoll. The population of Utirik Atoll was 264 at the 2021 census. It is one of the northernmost Marshall Islands with permanent habitation.
Ailinginae Atoll is an uninhabited coral atoll of 25 islands in the Pacific Ocean, on the northern end of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its total land area is only 2.8 square kilometers (1.1 sq mi), but it encloses a lagoon of 105.96 square kilometers (40.91 sq mi). It is located approximately 13 kilometers (8.1 mi) west of Rongelap Atoll. The landscape is low-lying with only the top 3 meters (9.8 ft) above sea level. The two entrances into the lagoon are 'Mogiri Pass' and 'Eniibukku Pass'. These are 1.45 and 0.48 kilometers wide respectively.
Bikar Atoll is an uninhabited atoll in the Ratak Chain of the Marshall Islands. It is one of the smallest atolls in the Marshalls. Due to its relative isolation from the main islands in the group, Bikar's flora and fauna has been able to exist in a relatively pristine condition.
The Pacific Proving Grounds was the name given by the United States government to a number of sites in the Marshall Islands and a few other sites in the Pacific Ocean at which it conducted nuclear testing between 1946 and 1962. The U.S. tested a nuclear weapon on Bikini Atoll on June 30, 1946. This was followed by Baker on July 24, 1946.
Philip Jarvis Dolan was an American physicist. He graduated from West Point in 1945, was assigned to the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos in 1948, and received his MSc in physics from the University of Virginia in 1956.
Since the discovery of ionizing radiation, a number of human radiation experiments have been performed to understand the effects of ionizing radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body, specifically with the element plutonium.
Jeton Anjain was a Minister of Health and a senator of the Marshall Islands Parliament. He received the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1992, for his efforts to help people from the Rongelap Atoll, which was subject to nuclear contamination after the test of the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb in 1954. In 1991, he and the Rongelap People were awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "their steadfast struggle against United States nuclear policy in support of their right to live on an unpolluted Rongelap island."
James Matayoshi is the mayor of Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands. He was appointed as Rongelap's mayor in 1995 and has served as chairman of the Marshall Islands Ports Authority since 2008. As the mayor of Rongelap, Matayoshi was noted for his activism on calling for the United States government to render assistance to Marshall Islanders suffering from radiation sickness as a result of a series of nuclear tests carried out under Operation Castle in the 1950s.
Lijon Eknilang was a Marshallese activist and nuclear fallout survivor. Eknilang advocated on behalf of residents of Rongelap Atoll, who were victims of nuclear fallout stemming from the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in 1954.
Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll consisted of the detonation of 24 nuclear weapons by the United States between 1946 and 1958 on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Tests occurred at 7 test sites on the reef itself, on the sea, in the air, and underwater. The test weapons produced a combined yield of about 75 Mt of TNT in explosive power.
Stanton H. Cohn was an expert in osteoporosis and the head of the Medical Physics Division at Brookhaven National Lab.
Abacca Anjain-Maddison is a former Senator in the Marshall Islands and is now the Deputy Chief Secretary of the country. She is known as a campaigner against nuclear weapons and nuclear testing and in support of greater efforts by the United States to clean up islands it used for nuclear testing.
This is a list of reports made under Project 4.1. This list is not exhaustive.