Rebecca Hogue’s childhood on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu was one of stark contrasts. There was the island’s natural surroundings — powdery white beaches, swaying palm trees, and turquoise water.
In contrast stood the U.S. military presence and its nuclear weapons testing program, with enormous concrete buildings, tall fences, barbed wire, and signs prohibiting access. “I grew up in the town Kailua, which has one of the world’s most beautiful beaches,” says Hogue, an assistant professor with the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Department of English.
“When you look out into Kailua Bay, you see Mōkapu Peninsula. I remember looking out there as a child. The entire peninsula is occupied by the military, prohibiting access to land that Hawaiian historians once described as ʻĀina Momona, meaning abundant lands. Now it's mostly concrete where many people can't go.”
It was this looming military presence and the decades-long detonation of nuclear weapons in the Pacific region that inspired Hogue to pursue literary studies.
“I work at the intersections of global Indigenous literatures, environmental humanities, gender and sexuality studies, and critical militarism studies,” says Hogue whose family, originally from Scotland, has lived in Hawaii for four generations.
“This extraordinarily beautiful place has incredible geologic, environmental, and Indigenous history, but it also has a history of settler occupation and environmental injustice. And I feel it’s my obligation — as a researcher and a university professor — to learn everything I can about the place that nourished me and my family. It’s also my responsibility to communicate the stories of that place to others.”
Hogue’s current research focuses on anti-nuclear writing by Indigenous women of the Pacific Islands.
“For them, nuclear war was not something that was a speculative event,” she says. “It was something they had already lived through and had already been deeply impacted by.”
Between 1946 and 1996 the United States, the United Kingdom and France detonated over 300 nuclear weapons in the Pacific Islands and Australia. The long-term impact has been nothing short of catastrophic.
The military took that land, or they destroyed coral reefs, or they put a landing strip over farmland. So much that had been part of an ecosystem that sustained communities is now no longer.
Before a bomb was detonated, military powers often seized large areas of land, displacing communities and destroying surrounding ecosystems residents relied on for survival.
“The military took that land, or they destroyed coral reefs, or they put a landing strip over farmland,” says Hogue. “So much that had been part of an ecosystem that sustained communities is now no longer.”
Once the bombs were detonated, Indigenous women’s lives and their communities were forever changed.
“It's environmental, physical, spiritual and psychological damage — and because of the longevity of radiation — it’s forever,” says Hogue.
In terms of the health of island residents, the effects of nuclear weapons brought a variety of deadly diseases and illnesses, including elevated cases of cancers such as leukemia, as well as congenital abnormalities, thyroid disease and other ailments. Women were also disproportionately affected by nuclear radiation in terms of reproductive health.
“A lot of these women took on writing projects through newspapers, poetry, novels and short stories. And now in the contemporary era, multi-generational affected community members are creating things like video poems. They’re documenting not only to show how nuclear weapons have impacted their communities, but also to advocate for nuclear abolition around the world.
“I’m interested in the ways these women are communicating their stories, not just to the broader public and to the powers that be, but also amongst themselves as a way for healing themselves and their communities.”
One such writer is Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner from the Marshall Islands.
“She's the first Marshallese woman to publish a book of poetry,” says Hogue. “She is a tour de force who is not only a nuclear justice advocate, but a climate activist as well.”
Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s best-known video poem, Anointed, addresses American nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands between 1946 to 1958. During that time, 67 weapons were detonated.
The poem ends with Jetn̄il-Kijiner holding white coral stones — a Marshallese funeral ritual — while standing atop a massive concrete dome built on an atoll containing 73,000 square metres of radioactive waste — a small fraction of the debris generated by the nuclear tests. The rest of the waste was never cleaned up.
Jetn̄il-Kijiner asks, “Who gave them this power? Who anointed them with the power to burn?”
In addition to researching and studying these writers and artists, Hogue is also working on her own book, Nuclear Archipelagos, that she hopes to complete by the end of the year.
The world's ignorance about the history of nuclear weapons in the Pacific is often an extension of the ways in which the Pacific has been rendered in global discourse as a vacation destination, a place of paradise.
The book delves into how nuclear empires have plagued the Pacific in order to extract, exploit and violate it. “But more importantly, it’s about Indigenous women's resistance to nuclear imperialism in the region,” says Hogue.
With attention given to narratives of birth, reproductive health, bodily sovereignty and maternity, the book highlights and celebrates women writers and artists from Fiji, the Marshall Islands, French Occupied Polynesia, Australia, New Zealand, and other parts of Oceania.
“These women are working together to communicate the ways that nuclear imperialism has impacted them and their communities — and how they turned to creative arts to tell the stories of their resistance and healing. I see it as an extension of my responsibility to find these writings and make them accessible to other researchers, the communities themselves, and for future generations.”
Within the Faculty of Arts & Science, Hogue teaches courses on Pacific Islands literatures, Introduction to Indigenous literatures, Nuclear Empires, and a graduate seminar on “Gender, Militarization, and Ecology.” And in her classes, she warns her students that she intends to paint a very realistic picture of the Pacific region.
“The world's ignorance about the history of nuclear weapons in the Pacific is often an extension of the ways in which the Pacific has been rendered in global discourse as a vacation destination, a place of paradise,” says Hogue.
“I say jokingly that part of my goal is to ruin any future vacations to the Pacific. I say that because what I aim to ruin is the imperial fantasy of Hawaii's story, or other places in the Pacific.
“Often these islands’ stories have been crafted by outsiders, not people who are Pacific Islanders. Instead, I want to share with them the histories, stories and knowledges of Oceania, well beyond what’s in a brochure.”