Jerick Sablan | Pacific Daily News

Kyle Daly/PDN

A Texas-based company is facing backlash after it named a beer after Bikini Atoll, the site of U.S. nuclear tests that sickened and displaced islanders and led to contamination that remains today.

Manhattan Project Beer Company is facing criticism from Pacific Islanders from throughout the world, as well as the Republic of the Marshall Islands' government.

The company has several beers with nuclear names, including Half-life, Plutonium-239, Particles Collide and 10 Nanoseconds.

But the beer named after Bikini Atoll is facing criticism over the insensitivity to the Marshall Islanders who were exposed to high level of radiation. The atoll remains uninhabitable.

In 1946, the U.S. relocated 167 Bikinians to other parts of the Marshall Islands before detonating 23 atomic and hydrogen bombs at Bikini Atoll. The tests lasted until 1958.

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The testing had blasts 1,000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

The Bikinians were returned to their home atoll in 1969, but were evacuated again in 1978 because high levels of radioactive elements were found in their bodies.

Manhattan Project issued a statement on its social media and said it would take no further action on the matter.

"Our beer named Bikini Atoll was not created to mock or trivialize the nuclear testing that took place in the Marshall Islands," the company stated.

Through its brand and naming, the company argues that it is creating awareness of the wider impacts and implications of the U.S. nuclear research programs and the pivotal moment in world history that is often forgotten.

The company stated it has received "significant harassment and death threats."

On the company's website, under the description for the Bikini Atoll beer, it makes no mention of the nuclear testing done in the Marshall Islands.

It describes the beer as having "low hop bitterness, saltiness, and citrus flavors, the Bikini Atoll is often a favorite amongst our friends that think they don’t like beer. In contrast, the beer snobs out there love it as well. It is light and effervescent with high carbonation."

"Summers at the pool inspired this beer. There is nothing more refreshing in the Texas heat than a crisp and tart Gose," the description states.

Unacceptable

Republic of the Marshall Islands Secretary of Health & Human Services Jack Niedenthal wrote a letter to the company’s co-founder and co-owner, Misty Sanford, on Thursday.

“The bottom line is your product makes fun of a horrific situation here in the Marshall Islands – a situation, that I promise you is still ongoing – to make money for your company. This is unacceptable to us,” Niedenthal wrote.

He said Sanford should understand the pain and suffering the U.S. nuclear weapon tests have caused.

Niedenthal said his wife, children, and grandchildren are Bikini islanders.

“And now they have to read about how their beloved homeland, poisoned forever by the United States government, has a beer named after it,” he wrote.

Niedenthal wrote that he has had to eulogize many elders who suffered horrifically at the hands of the U.S. government.

He said if the elders heard that today an American company named a beer after their homeland, islands that are cherished as if they were human beings and are considered “gifts from God,” they would be appalled and thoroughly disgusted.

The people of the Marshall Islands have one of the highest cancer rates in the world and every family can tell a personal cancer story that can be traced directly to the nuclear testing period, Niedenthal wrote.