Nuclear Testing and Racism in the Pacific Islands
During the Cold War, between 1946 and 1996, the United States, United Kingdom, and France used Oceania as a laboratory for nuclear testing. The deserts and islands of Australia and the Pacific were perceived as vast, “empty” spaces, suitable for the testing of atomic bombs and thermonuclear weapons. More than 310 atmospheric and underground nuclear tests were conducted by the Western powers in their colonial dependencies or United Nations trust territories.
Debate over colonialism, racism, and ethnic identity was a central feature of this nuclear era. The policies of the Western powers promoted a “nuclear racism” against Pacific Islanders, based on a racialized hierarchy of “civilized” and “primitive” peoples. These notions of racial superiority opened the way for medical experiments on Pacific Islanders affected by radioactive fallout, without free, prior, and informed consent.
Beyond this, the radioactive contamination of land, water, and food had direct and indirect impacts on the cultural identity of Pacific Islanders. Cultural practices – from reliance on fishing and traditional root crops to the use of coconut oil in children’s hair – increased the risk of exposure to hazardous radioactive isotopes. The racialized hierarchy of the nuclear workplace also meant that colonial troops and local laborers were often allocated dirty, difficult, and dangerous jobs that increased their risk.
In turn, the long struggle for a nuclear-free and independent Pacific contributed to the creation of a collective sense of regional identity, as a defining element of contemporary Pacific cultural identity.
Reflection
15 February 2026
Emma-leigh Theobald
“The deserts and islands of Australia and the Pacific were perceived as vast, ‘empty’ spaces, suitable for the testing of atomic bombs and thermonuclear weapons.”
“The policies of the Western powers promoted a ‘nuclear racism’ against Pacific Islanders, based on a racialized hierarchy of ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive’ peoples.”
“While it is true that these people do not live, I would say, the way Westerners do, civilised people, it is nevertheless also true that these people are more like us than mice.”
“Independent authorities agree that … only very slight health hazard to people would arise, and that only to primitive peoples.”
“For civilised populations… the amount of activity necessary to produce this dosage is more than is necessary to give an equivalent dosage to primitive peoples.”
“Land means a great deal to the Marshallese… It is the very life of the people. Take away their land and their spirits go also.”
“The sense of a regional identity, being Pacific islanders, is felt most acutely [in] the movement towards a nuclear free and independent Pacific.”
“Living with the memory of human radiation experiments; of dirty, difficult, and dangerous jobs; of the pollution of land and waters… the nuclear racism of Cold War colonialism lingers on.”
Nic Maclellan’s Nuclear Testing and Racism in the Pacific Islands is not simply a history of nuclear testing — it is an indictment of the racial logics that made such testing possible.
From the outset, the framing is stark. Between 1946 and 1996, Oceania was treated as a “laboratory” for Western nuclear powers — its deserts and atolls imagined as vast, “empty” spaces. What Maclellan demonstrates with clarity is that nuclear testing in the Pacific cannot be understood apart from colonial hierarchy. The policies of the United States, United Kingdom, and France were underpinned by what he calls “nuclear racism” — a racialised distinction between “civilised” and “primitive” peoples that justified exposure, experimentation, and differential standards of protection.
The language is chilling. British officials preparing for hydrogen bomb tests noted that radiation hazards would arise “only to primitive peoples.” Dosage thresholds were explicitly differentiated between “civilised populations” and those deemed “primitive.”
The hierarchy was not implied — it was written into operational policy.
This racialisation extended into medicine. Marshallese communities were subjected to research under Project 4.1, often without free, prior, and informed consent. Scientists spoke of indigenous people as “more like us than mice.”
What makes this chapter particularly powerful is that it does not reduce the story to victimhood. It traces resistance. Petitions to the United Nations. Church networks. The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement. The forging of a regional identity grounded in the ocean itself. Hauʻofa’s argument that unity emerged most forcefully around threats to the ocean underscores that identity here is not abstract — it is ecological, relational, lived.
Land, too, emerges as central. The Marshallese petition to the UN after Bravo insisted that land was not simply property, but life itself: “Take away their land and their spirits go also.”
Reading this through my own research lens — particularly around nuclear veterans and Pacific sacrifice zones — the chapter reinforces something I return to often: exposure was not incidental. It was structured. The allocation of “dirty, difficult, and dangerous jobs” to colonial troops and local labourers was part of that structure. The differential valuation of lives shaped who carried risk.
And yet, alongside contamination and racism, Maclellan shows how the nuclear era forged solidarity. The struggle for a nuclear-free and independent Pacific became a defining element of contemporary Pacific cultural identity.
For me, this chapter is a reminder that nuclear history is not only about weapons and geopolitics. It is about hierarchy. It is about whose lands were deemed testable, whose bodies were considered research material, whose diets and cultural practices were treated as expendable. But it is also about how communities refused that framing — how they asserted identity against erasure. The scars remain — in contaminated lagoons, fractured atolls, and displaced communities. But so does the memory of resistance.