The  dropping of nuclear weapons feels somehow all too possible again.

The shadow of nuclear war fell over Hawaii through a mistaken missile alert. North Korea claims it is test firing bombs. And the president of the United States is boasting on Twitter about the size of his nuclear button.

In telling ourselves the history of the atomic bomb, we can too often think they were only dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But there were other bombs that fell — they just weren’t dropped on people. Not directly. They were dropped on islands.

Islands in the South Pacific. The Marshall Islands.

But that doesn’t mean they didn’t cause lasting and devastating damage for the islanders — and for their descendants.