Darlene Keju

Who is Darlene Keju?

Darlene Keju, also known as Darlene Keju-Johnson, was a Marshallese public health educator and anti-nuclear activist born on Ebeye Island in 1951. Raised in a region downwind of the U.S. nuclear testing grounds at Bikini and Enewetak atolls, she lived for years in Hawaii, where she studied at the University of Hawai'i School of Public Health, earning a master's degree in public health before returning home to the Marshall Islands in 1984. Drawing on firsthand research in the outer islands, she was among the first to publicly document the connection between nuclear fallout and the birth defects, cancers, and other illnesses suffered by Marshallese communities, describing cases Marshallese called "jellyfish babies." In 1983 she addressed the Pacific Plenary of the World Council of Churches Assembly in Vancouver, telling a global audience that the radioactive contamination from the sixty-seven U.S. nuclear tests conducted in the Marshall Islands was far more extensive than officials had acknowledged. She went on to found youth health programs across the Pacific and became a leading regional voice for reproductive health and nuclear survivor rights before her death from breast cancer in 1996 at age forty-five. Her life is documented in Giff Johnson's biography, Don't Ever Whisper.

Sources: Johnson, G., Don't Ever Whisper: Darlene Keju, Pacific Health Pioneer, Champion for Nuclear Survivors (2013) · Wikipedia, "Darlene Keju" · Beyond Nuclear International, "The woman who tore up the curtain of silence" (2018)