News, views and top stories in your inbox. Don't miss our must-read newsletter Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Shocking claims have resurfaced today about "jellyfish babies" born "looking like a bunch of grapes" after their mothers were contaminated with radioactive fallout.

A bomb 1,300 times the force of the Hiroshima atomic bomb was dropped on the remote Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean on March 1, 1954.

The testing of atomic bombs by the US during the 1950s is well documented, but this particular case is back in the public eye after the archives of one of world's most famous feminist publications - Spare Rib - were released by the British Library.

An interview with Marshall Islands teacher Lemoyo Abon, and midwife Katerine Jilej, in a 1988 issue of the magazine contains the shocking details as to what happened to the islands' inhabitants after the bomb testing.

Midwife Jilej described 'through her tears' to the magazine that 'jelly fish' babies were born on the island of Rongelap "looking like a bunch of grapes", only recognisable as humans "because we could see the brain".

Katerine Jilej also gave an account of her own experience of losing a child: "My own baby was born in October 1960. He was born with a big lump on his head and died very, very young.

"I wasn't even on Rongelap (one of the Marshall Islands) the day the test happened but I went back there in 1957 (when the US told the Rongelapese it was safe to go back) and I was irradiated from eating the food. I think that's why my son died."

Rongelap is close to Bikini Island, where the bomb was dropped. Wind carried fallout from the blast over to Rongelap, dropping up to 1.5 inches of ash, which contaminated the food chain in the island.

(Image: British Library)

"By far the most contaminated place in the world"

The 'Bravo' bomb test on March 1, 1954, was the largest nuclear bomb test ever conducted by the US, and the United States Atomic Energy Commission later labelled the Marshall Islands "by far the most contaminated place in the world".

The islanders have subsequently received hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, but health problems continue, and the Marshall Islands have been changed forever, with one island wiped out entirely by the dropping of an atomic bomb.

And when the compensation fund was exhausted by the US, they simply stopped paying the islanders the money they had promised.

The Guardian reported last year that residents of Bikini, the island on which the 'Bravo' bomb was dropped, are still unable to return to their homes 60 years on, and are still living in exile.