Humans have inhabited the atoll since about 1,000 B.C. The islands were first settled by Austronesian islanders. The first European colonizers to Enewetak, Spanish explorer
Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón, arrived on 10 October 1529. He called the island "
Los Jardines" (The Gardens). In 1794, sailors aboard the British merchant
sloop Walpole called the islands "Brown's Range" (thus, the Japanese name "Brown Atoll"). It was visited by about a dozen ships before the establishment of the German colony of the
Marshall Islands in 1885.
The World Wars With the rest of the Marshalls, Enewetak was captured by the
Imperial Japanese Navy in 1914, during World War I and mandated to the
Empire of Japan by the
League of Nations in 1920. The Japanese administered the island under the
South Seas Mandate, but mostly left affairs in hands of traditional local leaders until the start of World War II. The atoll, together with other parts of Marshall Islands located to the west of 164°E, was placed under the governance of
Pohnpei district during the Japanese administration period, separately from the rest of the Marshall Islands. In November 1942, the Japanese built an airfield on Engebi Island. As they used it only for refueling planes between
Truk and islands to the east, no aviation personnel were stationed there, and the island had only token defenses. When the
Gilberts fell to the United States, the
Imperial Japanese Army assigned defense of the atoll to the
1st Amphibious Brigade, formed from the 3rd Independent Garrison, which had previously been stationed in
Manchukuo. The 1st Amphibious Brigade arrived on January 4, 1944. Some 2,586 of its 3,940 men were left to defend Eniwetok Atoll, supplemented by aviation personnel, civilian employees, and laborers. However, they were unable to finish the fortifications before the American attack came in February. During the ensuing
Battle of Eniwetok, the Americans captured Enewetak in a five-day amphibious operation. Fighting mainly took place on Engebi Islet, site of the most important Japanese installation, although some combat occurred on the main islet of Enewetak itself and on Parry Island, where there was a Japanese seaplane base. Following its capture, the anchorage at Enewetok became a major
US Naval Advance Base with
Service Squadron 4 and Service Squadron 10 stationed in the lagoon. The daily average of ships present during the first half of July 1944 was 488; during the second half of July, the daily average number of ships at Enewetak was 283. Naval Base Eniwetok was part of the vast
Naval Base Marshall Islands. US Navy
Seabees of the 110th Naval Construction Battalion arrived on February 21 and 27 to begin construction of Stickell Field. In June 1945, the 67th CB arrived to build a 35,000 man recreation center to be turned over to CBMU 608. The first
hydrogen bomb test, code-named
Ivy Mike, occurred in late 1952 as part of
Operation Ivy; it vaporized the islet of
Elugelab and created two new elements:
Fermium and
Einsteinium. This test included
B-17 Flying Fortress drones to fly through the
radioactive cloud to test onboard samples. B-17 mother ships controlled the drones while flying within visual distance of them. In all, 16 to 20 B-17s took part in this operation, of which half were controlling aircraft and half were drones. To examine the explosion clouds of the nuclear bombs in 1957/58, several rockets (mostly from
rockoons) were launched. One USAF airman Jimmy Robinson was lost at sea during the tests. Robinson's
F-84 Thunderjet crashed and sank short of the island. Robinson's body was never recovered. . The dome is placed in the crater created by the "Cactus" nuclear weapons test in 1958.
Radiological cleanup A radiological survey of Enewetak was conducted from 1972 to 1973. In 1977, the United States military began
decontamination of Enewetak and other islands. During the three-year, US$100 million cleanup process, the military mixed more than of contaminated soil and debris from the islands with
Portland cement and buried it in an atomic blast crater on the northern end of the atoll's
Runit Island. The material was placed in the deep, wide crater created by the May 5, 1958, "
Cactus" nuclear weapons test. A dome composed of 358 concrete panels, each thick, was constructed over the material. The final cost of the cleanup project was US$239 million. The military members who participated in that cleanup mission are suffering from many health issues, but the U.S. Government refused to provide health coverage until 2022 with the passage of the
Honoring our PACT Act. The 2000 environmental restoration award included funds for additional cleanup of radioactivity on Enewetak. Rather than scrape the topsoil off, replace it with clean topsoil, and create another radioactive waste repository dome at some site on the atoll (a project estimated to cost US$947 million), most areas still contaminated on Enewetak were treated with
potassium. Soil that could not be effectively treated for human use was removed and used as fill for a
causeway connecting the two main islands of the atoll (Enewetak and Parry). The cost of the potassium decontamination project was US$103.3 million. However, in November 2017, the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that rising sea levels caused by climate change are seeping inside the dome, causing radioactive material to leak out.
U.S. relations with Marshall Islands Section 177 of the 1983
Compact of Free Association between the governments of the United States and the Marshall Islands establishes a process for Marshallese to make a claim against the United States government as a result of damage and injury caused by nuclear testing. That same year, an agreement was signed to implement Section 177, which established a US$150 million trust fund. The fund was intended to generate US$18 million a year, which would be payable to claimants on an agreed-upon schedule. If the US$18 million a year generated by the fund was not enough to cover claims, the
principal of the fund could be used. A
Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal was established to adjudicate claims. In 2000, the tribunal made a compensation award to the people of Enewetak consisting of US$107.8 million for environmental restoration; US$244 million in damages to cover economic losses caused by loss of access and use of the atoll; and US$34 million for hardship and suffering. ==Education==