To preserve the postcolonial imaginary that informs American national identity, Kwajalein must be forgotten (or never remembered). The United States’ colonialism must be situated firmly in the past and present relations with the Marshallese smoothed over. To achieve this goal of reprieve and redemption, Americans utilize what Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang in their groundbreaking essay “Decolonization is not a metaphor” term “settler moves to innocence” or “those strategies or positionings that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege, without having to change much at all.”[1] In this second section I will examine two examples of how Americans seek to ease their guilt over the dislocation and exploitation of Kwajalein’s indigenous inhabitants. Rather than being misguided yet harmless attempts at reconciliation, these “settler moves to innocence” are the vehicles of contemporary colonialism on Kwajalein. By “righting” past wrongs with a few dollars and a smile, they normalize the United States’ military presence on Kwajalein and the Marshallese’s segregation on the overcrowded island of Ebeye. These “settler moves to innocence” are critical to understanding how the United States maintains modern colonialism.

[1] Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 10.

Kwajalein is still used to test anti-ballistic missile systems.  In a historic test on May 30, 2017, the U.S. “successfully intercepted” an ICBM launched from Kwajalein.