Dr. Natalie Nimmer, the Republic of the Marshall Islands’ Commissioner of Education, delivered the following address at an observance of the International Day Against Nuclear Tests held Friday, 28 August 2026, at the College of the Marshall Islands.

Natalie has lived and worked in the Marshall Islands for much of the past 24 years, first as a WorldTeach volunteer at Northern Islands High School on Wotje, later as a principal of Majuro Cooperative School, and currently as Commissioner of Education. Her regional experience also includes serving as an education advisor to the Federated States of Micronesia’s National Department of Education and helping implement the University of Hawai‘i’s Pacific Master in Education program for educators in the Marshall Islands and Chuuk. She holds a doctorate in education from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where her research documented a Marshallese Indigenous Learning Framework. She has served as Commissioner of Education since 2024.

The Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission invited Nimmer to speak at the event. Her remarks reflect on how the nuclear legacy has shaped the fears and questions of people both within and far beyond the Marshall Islands—and on the responsibility of educators to ensure that future generations understand this history.

After the event, several people asked Nimmer to share her address. Her speech is published below.

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Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear and thermonuclear tests at Bikini and Enewetak atolls. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. Their combined explosive yield was equivalent to detonating approximately 1.6 Hiroshima-sized bombs every day for 12 years. (That’s a combined yield of 108.5 megatons compared to a yield of 15 kilotons for the Hiroshima bomb. See figures cited here RMI statement to the United Nations.) The testing displaced communities, exposed Marshallese people to radioactive fallout and left health, environmental and cultural consequences that continue today.

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I’d like to thank God for bringing us together on this important occasion, to acknowledge President, Dr. Hilda C Heine, Ministers, Senators, traditional leaders, religious leaders, CMI’s Interim President Meitaka Kendall-Lekka, current CMI Acting Interim President Dr. Elizabeth Switaj, Chairperson Ariana Tibon from the National Nuclear Commissioner, the CMI Nuclear Institute and the CMI community. In addition, I’d like to recognize the UN Special Rapporteur, who came to my office yesterday and who jogged some of the memories that I will share with you today. Most importantly, I’d like to acknowledge the students who are here today–that you care enough to be here today gives me hope for the future. A future that will be characterized as more just, more peaceful, and more fair for all people. Iọkwe kom aolep.

Today, on the International Day against Nuclear Tests, I want to begin by acknowledging the particular position from which I speak.

I am an American. I was born and raised in the United States. But over the last 24 years, I have repeatedly chosen to live and work here in the Marshall Islands. This country and its people have profoundly shaped my understanding of education, history, justice, and responsibility.

That positionality matters today.

For Marshallese people, the nuclear legacy is part of family history, community history, national history—and, in many ways, lived experience.

I first began to understand that in a very personal way during the 2002–2003 school year, when I was a young World Teach volunteer at Northern Islands High School in Wotje.

One day, one of my students—a 15-year-old boy from Utrik*—came to me and showed me a bump on his knee. He asked me a simple question:

“Is it from the poison**?” (Utrik is one of the 4 atolls that the US Government acknowledges were effected by the health impacts related to nuclear testing. “Poison” is the word local people often use to refer to radiation.)

I believed it was probably the result of getting hurt playing basketball. But I have never forgotten his question.

Because what struck me was not the bump on his knee. It was that a 15-year-old child, decades after nuclear testing had ended, could look at something wrong with his body and wonder whether it came from radiation.

That is part of the nuclear legacy.

It is not only what can be measured in soil, water, medical studies, or historical records. It is also fear. Uncertainty. The question in the back of your mind about what might happen to your body—or the bodies of the people you love.

Fast forward to March 2015.

I was in an examination room at Kaiser Permanente in Honolulu when I was diagnosed with cancer. I called my older sister in rural Missouri. She had never even been to the Marshall Islands.

Her first question to me was:

“Is it because you lived in the Marshall Islands?”

Think about that.

The psychological impact of the nuclear legacy had traveled thousands of miles—from these islands, across the Pacific, to a woman sitting at the other end of a telephone in rural Missouri, hearing that her baby sister had cancer.

I am not saying that my cancer was caused by living in the Marshall Islands. I do not know that, and I have no basis to make that claim.

But that is exactly the point.

One of the impacts of nuclear testing is the uncertainty itself. The trails of this history extend far beyond what gets recorded in environmental studies or history books. They extend into families, fears, questions, assumptions, and memories.

That is one reason education matters so much.

Last month, the National Board of Education adopted our newly revised Social Studies Curriculum for Kindergarten through Grade 8. The curriculum places much greater emphasis on Marshallese history, culture, identity, government, and the experiences that have shaped this nation.

And the nuclear legacy is intentionally included throughout that learning.

Even in Kindergarten, students are expected to learn about significant observances in Marshallese history, including Nuclear Remembrance Day.

By Grade 5, students are expected to demonstrate an understanding of the nuclear legacy, interview their own households about it, and consider the nuclear issues affecting the RMI today.

By Grade 7, they examine whether the rights of Marshallese people were respected during the nuclear era, including relocation and the destruction of islands and oceans.

And by Grade 8, students examine the history of nuclear testing, consider the perspectives of displaced Marshallese citizens, the RMI Government, the U.S. Government, and human-rights advocates, and develop their own position on the treatment of Marshallese people during the nuclear era.

As an American serving as Commissioner of Education, I think that responsibility is especially important.

I cannot speak for the experience of Marshallese people. But I can listen. I can acknowledge the actions of my own country. And I can help ensure that Marshallese students are given the knowledge, evidence, history, and space to form their own understanding and speak in their own voices.

There will come a day when none of the people who personally witnessed the testing era are still with us. When that day comes, our students must still know what happened here, why it matters, and why its consequences cannot be reduced to a number of tests, a radiation reading, or a chapter in a textbook.

Because sometimes the legacy is also a 15-year-old boy pointing to his knee and asking, “Is it from the poison?”

And sometimes it is a woman in rural Missouri, thousands of miles away, asking whether her sister’s cancer came from having lived in the Marshall Islands.

Those questions are part of the legacy too.

Our responsibility as educators is to make sure the next generation understands enough of this history to ask their own questions, examine the evidence, listen to their elders, and carry this story forward.

We will remember. We will teach. And we will make sure this history is not forgotten.

Kommol tata.