They were marking Bikini Day and planned to spend a few days breaking ground for a nuclear clean-up program that might allow them to return home within as little as five years. As they walked around their island the sorrow of the Bikini elders was palpable, knowing as they did that this was just a temporary return. Many of the older women, now in their late seventies and early eighties, had not been back since their initial relocation. I don't share the emotional link to these islands that forms the identity of the Bikinians. Yet I've had the good luck to visit a dozen or more of the remote atolls in the Marshalls in the past 20 years.
Bikini Island has an added asset.
To say marine life is abundant is to be guilty of a gross understatement. The fish, virtually untouched by humans in 50 years, lined up to bite our hooks when we went fishing. If Kili is a penitentiary, Bikini is the penthouse suite. She was one of the 'lucky' ones who got to see her islands in the early 1970s. She came back after US scientists said the atoll was safe.