Wow, just started watching it. I had no idea the Marshall Islands were settled thousands of years ago. Horrifying that they just detonated atomic bombs there and let people deal with the fallout...
It's literally a big middle finger to the American government. It's America's flag but with some black stars hanging out amongst the stripes:
"The three black stars in the upper right represent the three islands that were disfigured in March 1954 during the 15-megaton Bravo test by the United States. The two black stars in the lower right corner represent where the Bikinians live now, Kili Island, 425 miles to the south of Bikini Atoll, and Ejit Island of Majuro Atoll. These two stars are symbolically far away from Bikini's stars on the flag as the islands are in real life (both in distance and quality of life)."
And in large black letters, the text "Everything is in the hands of God."
Let's just say they didn't appreciate their home being irradiated.
- better them than us, let this small island deal with it
- nobody will ever find out about this (read as not enough people will find out for it to matter) and even if they do then we don't really need to deal with much of a consequence because it's a small island, what are they early going to do about it
- let's evacuate everyone off the island, throw some cheap concrete dome on it, and by the time it starts failing the world will have forgotten about this
Not just let them deal with the fallout. These islanders were intentionally used as human guinea pigs for radiation experimentation like other pacific island peoples - including the japanese civilians in hiroshima and nagasaki. Some of these islanders were intentionally relocated to nuclear testing sites in order to poison them with radiation and see the effects.
Then I guess it was a "happy accident" and the US got lucky that the Marshallese got exposed to radiation and we had the chance to conduct experiments on them without their informed consent.
It would be like someone wanting to test the effects of electrocution and placing a live wire on the street. Someone "accidentally" steps on it and you can conduct your experiments on the victim. But it wasn't intentional since you didn't tell the victim to go step on the live wire.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "intentional". Did they douse Marshallese directly? Did they blow up the nukes hoping some of the radiation landed on some unsuspecting Marshallese so that they can see the effects and conduct experiments? To me both are intentional, though some could argue only the former is intentional.
Assuming it's true the US Did nuke fallout experiments on people 7 years after the end of a war, you need to keep in mind, that's what happens after a war. People who are put into combat situtuations look at human life as a numbers game; the experiment on them would have been justified along those lines. Kill some marginal population in horrific ways in a worthwile experiment to save more lives in the future; to a soldier this makes perfect sense.
The problem with war is not the war itself, it's the weapons, including people, you leave laying around after. Once you get the bad lines of thinking started they perpetuate.
You'd do very well for yourself to remember that while you're re-writing the history of WW2. It's one heck of a spin to call the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "an experiment"; there was a war going on. The Americans knew exactly what was going to happen from the nuke; kill lots of Japs and hope they surrender and given the belligerance of both sides, I'd say they were probably right.