Paradise

‘About 50 miles over there, on the other side of the atoll, is where they did it’ comments the taxi driver with a gesture to the north.
The door-less taxi rattles along the waterfront drive offering its passengers a typical tropical scene. Coconut palms, bright sun, clear water and a reef. This could be any Pacific atoll marketable as a tourist paradise, but it’s not.
The taxi passengers expectantly follow the driver’s direction. All they can see is a paradise minus the resorts.
The local school is a converted 1950’s US army barracks. Strangely reinforced with concrete and steel, it dominates the other structures on the Island. The waterfront drive haphazardly follows the beach past a Christian church, a shop and a community centre. Apart from the distant roar of the guardian reef, there is a noticeable silence. A man-made silence.
The taxi bumps inland past a memorial inscribed with Japanese writing. The coconut trees are smaller here and have been planted in an orderly fashion. There hasn’t always been silence here.
‘You know the Japanese owned us once though the Americans came during the war and killed them. They killed many of us too. Then the Americans owned us for a while and after the war the American scientists came. They nearly killed us all!’
The coconut trees have been re-planted and the undergrowth is returning. Slowly consuming the discarded machinery of war. Eniwetak and her Micronesian people have survived the superpowers. Both still need a very long time to recover and their future is not certain.
‘We can’t grow our own food yet, not for another thousand years but we can eat the fish. We don’t see Americans that much anymore but they still give us money. I guess they still own us in some sort of way.’