KILI ISLAND – Nuclear test refugees from Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands are now fleeing the effects of climate change on their second home, Kili Island.

The Bikini Island Council is appealing to the US for financial help with relocation after repeated king tide flooding and storm surges over the past four years on Kili.

The liaison officer for the people of Bikini, Jack Niedenthal, said the Marshalls’ Compact of Free Association, the US military airbase and historical ties, meant the US had a moral obligation to help the community of 700 people, who are facing homelessness.

“There’s a promise that they made to Bikinians, that the older people that I’ve known over the years recite like it’s right out of the Bible,” he said.

“This American stood up in front of them, Commodore Wyatt in 1946, and said, ‘don’t you worry. It doesn’t matter if you’re adrift on a raft at sea or on a sand bar, you will be like the children of America. We are going to take care of you.’”

Niedenthal said a third of the homes on Kili were now empty as people escaped the island.

The local population has lived in exile since the start of US nuclear testing at Bikini in 1946.

The US tested 24 nuclear weapons at Bikini, including its largest hydrogen bomb, Bravo, at 15 megatons in 1954.

The Resettlement Trust Fund for the People of Bikini was established in 1982 by US public law, to be used for relocation within the Marshall Islands.

Nearly 70 years after they were uprooted to make way for United States’ nuclear tests, Bikini Islanders have approved two new resolutions seeking Washington’s aid to relocate again -- including one citing the “psychological toll” of leaving their atoll.

For decades, Bikini islanders have struggled to survive on Kili, an inhospitable and isolated island with no lagoon for fishing or calm anchorage for boats.

Their hardship has worsened in the past four years with ocean water repeatedly flooding the land, and an airport runway that turns to mud when it rains.

It has reached an intolerable stage for the Bikini Council, which has now requested Washington’s assistance with relocating the people who have lived in exile since the start of the nuclear testing at Bikini atoll in 1946.

“We may have no option but to relocate,” Bikini Mayor Nishma Jamore said as he outlined the future for the 800 residents on the island.

“Climate change is real. We are feeling and experiencing it. In the future we will have no choice but to relocate.”

Jamore was speaking after the Bikini Council approved the two resolutions seeking to have the Resettlement Trust Funde, established by Washington in 1982, used for relocation outside of the Marshall Islands.

Most of the Bikini people want to move to the United States because of the deteriorating conditions, but the trust fund specifically restricts resettlement spending to the Marshall Islands.

The first resolution notes that since the resettlement to Kili in 1948, the change from an atoll environment to an island with no lagoon “continues to take a severe psychological toll on the people”.

Added to the problem of subsistence is the impact of rising sea levels on Kili and Ejit Islands, also home to people relocated from Bikini Atoll, which are “covered by high waves at least five times in the last four years, resulting in contamination of all wells on both islands”, the resolution said.

The second resolution says conditions on Kili “are similar to those facing the people of Bikini on Rogerik in 1946, of being placed on an island that cannot sustain the population”.

The people of Bikini spent two years on Rogerik before being moved to Kili in 1948 because they were starving.

The Bikinians believe the US government remains morally responsible for their welfare, claiming their home island has not been properly cleaned and repaired since the nuclear tests.

“They really need to clean up Bikini,” councillor Lani Kramer said. “I believe even if we don’t go back they should clean it up no matter what.”