Monster

                                      by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner

                                  A spoken voice poem 

Sometimes I wonder if Marshallese women are the chosen one

I wonder if someone selected us from a stack. Drew us out slow, methodical and then issued the order.

Give birth to a nightmare.

Show the world what happens when the sun explodes inside you.

How many stories of nuclear war are hidden in our bodies?

574- the number of miscarriages and stillbirths after the bombs. Before the bombs- 52.

Bella told the UN she could no longer have children. They say their friends give birth to ugly things.

Derek gave birth to something resembling the eggs of a sea turtle 

and Flora gave birth to something resembling intestines.

She told this to a committee of men who washed their hands of this sin-

These women who gave birth to unholy things -

created from exploding spit and ugly things.

And how these women buried their nightmares. Beneath a coconut tree. Pretended it never happened.

Sinister.  Hideous. Monster.  More jellyfish than child. 

And yet.  They could see the chest inhale. Exhale.  Could it be human?

 Kathy is a poet and climate activist in the Marshal Islands.  I don't think anyone could better describe the impact of atomic bomb testing on mothers and babies in the Marshal Islands and the impact of their continued use.  I struggle to write this blog in the midst of the pandemic that faces the world.  But I know the virus, like these babies, is the earth crying; the earth asking us to pay attention,  be kinder, gentler and more generous.

   Everything we put in the air, the soil and the water ends up in a developing fetus.  In my country, we pollute the growing babies with air, water and soil pollution.  We run gas and oil pipelines through vulnerable communities.  The harm done to the developing child, is not always as apparent as what happened in this poem.  Babies are born premature or with severe learning disabilities.  Removed and displaced over and over again, their parents struggle to provide stable and secure lives.  The poverty that inevitably results from environmental degradation, is quickly followed by discrimination, shunning and class based isolation.   

I leave this poem with you, my sometime reader, with a sad heart.  Isn't it enough to watch emergency hospitals constructed in New York City's Central Park?  Isn't it enough o be sheltering in place?  And so, I would reflect that it is all connected.  This poem, these stories of mothers after atomic bomb testing and this virus that is embedded in our communities.  

At dusk, we sing to our neighbors.  We bang on pots and bans.  We say, "We are still here."  We say, "We will survive this."   And I might offer, that our survival in ways I wish I could document with science, our connected to the survival of the Marshal Islands and Haiti and the people of New York City.  

That when we sing, that when we pray, that when we shout- it is for all the world's people.

Nuclear Bomb Testing and It's Impact on Birth Outcomes in the Marshal Islands

The impact of nuclear testing on the newborns of Marshal Islands


During World War II, the United States drove the Japanese out of the Marshal Islands in order to set up airfare bases for future military battles in the Pacific Theatre.  The islands were heavily bombed in 1934-1944.  Following this, the Marshall Islands were put under the care of the United States.  One of the first things, the United Sates decided to do was to use the islands to test nuclear bombs.

They began testing in 1946, dropping 23 nuclear bombs and conducting 67 tests.

Through religious messaging, they convinced the residents of Bakini Atol to leave their island so the United States could conduct nuclear testing.  They were told they could return after the tests.

However, the bombs were 1,000 times more powerful than Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.  It created a four mile firewall with heavy winds and thunder. The radiation covered the surrounding islands and people for years to come, impacting pregnant women and their newborns.

Babies were born with many birth defects.   The United States never fully acknowledged the harm done to the people of the Marshal Islands.

Atom Bomb testing in the Marshal islands.  It was the same as dropping the Hiroshima Bomb every day for 12 years.  It took many years for the United States to agree to testing and that the islands were not safe to live on.  Perhaps it is the US policy that if you don't test, an illness does not exist and therefore no actions needed.

 It is painfully hard to reconcile the cruelty of this atomic testing.  And yet, we must.  It is part of our history and every day in history contains within its arms, the birth of the next generation.  As Henry Kissinger said, "Who gives a damn?"

Coral and The Marshal Islands

In the Marshal; Islands, I walk on the skeletons of corals from the minute I wake up till the time I go to bed.  They are everywhere.  Small, rock like corals of every size, shape and shade of white.  Crunch, crunch, crunch.  They are so ordinary, so common and yet here in Portland I will never walk on coral all day.

So, I have asked you"who gives a damn" and to trust me that this will all one day relate to mothers, babies and midwives.

The Marshal Islands are coral islands.  They are made of millions of years of coral deposits; of coral being born, growing, setting out into the sea and landing on a coral skeleton that has created a nesting place for the future generations.

I come to understand that these islands are very flat and very small.  You can at times see both the lagoon and sea at the same time.  They are dependent on the coral growing to maintain their islands.  If the seas rise, with climate change, and the coral dies, the future of these mothers and children is at risk.  If the coral dies, the coral fish and crabs cannot not survive so you can see, in any place, understanding the life cycle of critical species is vital to the health of the humans who share that habitat.

Coral polyps have babies every year.  Their eggs and sperms are released in mass out into the perfect, clear waters of the Pacific.  Each fertilized egg becomes a baby coral called a planula. Once it comes a planula it must find a home. Covered with tiny hairs, this baby coral swims along until it finds a perfect place in a shallow, healthy lagoon that is sunny but not too hot.  Once our baby coral, finds a place to attach, it grows twelve little tentacles for catching food.  They build a hard white skeleton and make other polyps that are all connected.   Life for this baby is rich with other sea animals and the friendly algae that lives inside their skin.  It takes thousands of years to build a coral reef or a coral island.   Year after year, the cycle of baby planula and new polyps and hiding places for sea life and safety for the people of the Marshal Islands.

The coral reefs and the very fabric of Marshalese Culture is dependent on us caring about coral.   The people of the Pacific Islands have thrived, on these islands for thousands of years, without destroying their coral reefs.  In these posts I will tell this story but wanted to start with the building block of their culture- coral.

Birth of baby corals 

Birth of an Atol

You may wonder, my friends, how I came to see birth from a geological perspective?  How I came to be curious about the forces that formed the landscape where  midwives and mothers walk.  I came to see that certain geological events such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and glaciers would determine food sources, clean water and the ability to get to a clinic for care.   Mountains, rushing rivers, droughts and the extraction of minerals would play a role in maternal health,  beyond my imagination.  I gained a curiosity about geology and the role it played in a community's health.

In my community, we live with the certain inevitability of earthquakes and volcanoes.  Fossil fuel pipes, trains and tanks line our river.  It is our geological landscape.  The mothers of Haiti lived through earthquakes and must cross mountains and rivers just to get food, water and healthcare.

Our geological story offers opportunities and challenges.  It contains the stories of our ancestors, of lost communities and migrations for the benefit of future generations.   Mothers and fathers for tens of thousands of years, walked and crossed seas for the sake of their unborn children.   Mothers fled geological events and sought safer landscapes.  This included and includes wars fought over minerals buried deep within the ground.



The Marshal Islands are home to one of the world's most remarkable geological stories. This is a story of undersea volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean; volcanoes that erupted millions years ago and then sunk back into the sea.  The rim of the volcanoes remained and corals slowly grew on the sides of the volcano and finally up onto the rims to create beautiful Atols.  The Atols are now lovely circles of blue lagoons surrounded by coral islands and reefs.  The Marshal islands are composed of twenty-nine of such Atols.  The islands are part of Micronesia in the broader geographic region of what we call Oceana.  It is between the Philippines and Hawaii.

It is where I begin the story of mothers, midwives and babies on the Marshal islands.  It has come to be where I like to start all birth stories; with the story of how the earth gave birth to there landscape which then became the place of the stories.   Without this it will be hard to understand what I will come to share with you.

I enjoyed scribbling down this poem, written from the perspective of the volcano that gave birth to the Atol.

Birth Poem of An Under the Sea Volcano in the Pacific Ocean 


I have opened
my heart for you,
brought forth the
burning fires
of my desire.

Broken down the hard layers
of resistance I carry
 in my soul

I have let the gentle rains
fill the hollow bowl of
my waiting womb
with warm, clear water

Where corals climb
into my arms
laying down layer after
layer of nesting places
of earth and sky and sea

I have opened my heart
for you
watched birds and coconuts
and women in flying
boats rest upon my shores

I have opened up my
heart for you.
Islands in the deep
blue sea floating
beyond time.

My children, my home
My hopes and dreams.

The Marshal Islands - "Who gives a damn?"

In 1969, Henry Kissinger, when discussing the future of the Marshal islands, said the following:
"There are only 90,000 people out there.  Who gives a damn?"

And so these Blog Posts are about what it means to "give a damn" and the many forms it can take.
When I think about the Marshal Islands, a country of 50,000 people spread over many islands and 29 Atols, I think of the Dr Seuss Book, Horton Hears a Hoo.  I think of a small island, with children calling out, "We are here."

I think of an unsuspecting, sustainable culture being caught in the middle of world wars, atom bomb testing, international trade and now climate change.  It was and is, in many ways, the world's Sacrifice Zone.

I write this, in the midst of fear about a spreading virus and a presidential election.  My own neighborhoods spill over with people camping on the streets.  We have much to care about within our own country.  So, how do we, with the  Heart of a Midwife, care about this story?   How do we tell the stories of World war II with the people on the ground, watching bombs fall, as the main characters?

What does it mean to create a way of life, of education, of policy that forever gives a damn for everyone.  I hope these few stories fill in the holes we all had in our education about the Pacific Islands and in particular, the Marshal Islands.

One way that we can "give a damn" when there is so much to care about,is to simply bear witness, to take a moment to say in your heart.  "I understand what happened."

And to know that you can never, ever drop bombs, ignore climate change, pollute an ocean without it hurting mothers and children.   The first thing we do, as midwives, in walking into a birth space, is to assure safety, privacy and cleanliness.  When the world, becomes the birth room, we notice the air, the water, the food and the assurance of a fair and safe future.

Beautiful children on the Marshal Islands, play beside the life giving lagoon, so essential to their culture and way of life.