TO GO WITH Marshalls-US-nuclear-health by Giff Johnson This undated aerial photo received on March 4, 2010 shows Rongelap Island, one of more than 60 in a necklace of coral islands that was engulfed by a snowstorm of radioactive fallout on March 1, 1954. The US government is funding work to resettle the island’s village (at R). Fifty-six years after a US hydrogen bomb blast exposed Pacific islanders on Rongelap Atoll to radioactive fallout and forced them from their homes, the United States has given them an ultimatum to return. Washington wants the roughly 400 islanders living in a “temporary” community on Kwajalein Atoll, also part of the Marshall Islands, to return by October 2011 and has threatened otherwise to cut off their funding. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images)
