The concept of domestic containment requires an “other” that must be held at bay. To create a refuge in the home, threats must be kept out. In 1950s America this took the form of racial segregation and persecution of “perverse” behaviors like homosexuality. On Kwajalein, it was the native Marshallese inhabitants who were contained. In 1951 the Navy prohibited Marshallese from living on Kwajalein, dislocating them to the nearby island of Ebeye. The American military base, however, still required Marshallese service labor. The military forced the Marshallese workers to commute to and from the island that had once been their home. To add insult to injury, the US Army subjected Marshallese to a curfew and security searches on these trips. The Marshallese were thus cast as “foreign” labor that threatened the secure American refuge on Kwajalein. For example, a 1961 Bell Laboratories welcome guide reassured recent American arrivals that “They [Marshallese service workers] are transported to Kwajalein in the morning and returned to their island (Ebeye) at the end of the day.”[1] By portraying the Marshallese as passive objects transported to and fro at the pleasure of Americans, this passage demonstrates how Americans dehumanized the Marshallese to preserve their sense of domestic tranquility.

Americans on Kwajalein willfully bought into the fantasy of “foreign” labor. They enjoyed the comforts of their secure middle class lifestyle and the availability of cheap labor. Dvorak suggests that it is “the potential revocation of those pleasures and rewards that has silenced many Americans from speaking up about countless injustices against indigenous people over the decades, or even noticing any injustice to begin with.”[2] As a kid on Kwajalein Dvorak reflects that he was aware of the comings and going of Marshallese labor. Still, in his mind Dvorak associated this colonial dynamic with home.[3] Denaturalizing the Marshallese gave Americans a sense of security and belonging on an island they had neither.

Children playing in Ebeye’s dump  Atomic Dust Vlad Sokhin

Unsurprisingly, this comfort came at a huge price for the Marshallese. Beyond the injustice of losing their land, Ebeye is hardly habitable. The tiny island of 0.36 square kilometers is packed with over 15,000 people. In fact, it is one of the most densely populated islands in the world, handily beating out Manhattan.[4] Before World War II Ebeye had few native inhabitants. However, in the 1940s and 1950s the United States forcefully relocated Marshallese from Bikini and Enewetak Atoll—where they were conducting nuclear tests—onto Ebeye along with the displaced inhabitants from Kwajalein. Known as the “Slum of the Pacific,” Ebeye suffers regular flooding, freshwater shortages, overflowing sewage, and disease outbreaks. The difference between life on Ebeye and Kwajalein could not be starker.

[1] Lauren Hirsberg, “Nuclear Families: (Re)producing 1950s Suburban American in the Marshall Islands,” OAH Magazine of History 26, no. 4 (2012): 4.

[2] Greg Dvorak, “Detouring Kwajalein: At Home Between Coral and Concrete in the Marshall Islands,” in Touring Pacific Cultures, ed. Kalissa Alexeyeff and John Taylor (Acton, Australia: ANU Press, 2016), 106.

[3] Greg Dvorak, “Detouring Kwajalein: At Home Between Coral and Concrete in the Marshall Islands,” in Touring Pacific Cultures, ed. Kalissa Alexeyeff and John Taylor (Acton, Australia: ANU Press, 2016), 110.

[4] Justin Delaney, “Top Ten Most Crowded Islands in the World,” Gadling, July 7, 2011.