Missile base construction crammed displaced Marshallese into Ebeye, denser than Mumbai today.

Evidence

Between the end of World War II and the 1960s, the U.S. military displaced hundreds of people to create a missile testing base in the Marshall Islands’ Kwajalein Atoll. Most were deported to the small island of Ebeye, where the population increased from twenty people before 1944 to several thousand by the 1960s living on 0.12 square miles of land. In 1967, with overcrowding a major problem, governing U.S. authorities removed fifteen hundred people from Ebeye. Following protests from the Marshallese government, they were later allowed to return. By 1969, Newsday called Ebeye “the most congested, unhealthful, and socially demoralized community in Micronesia.” A population of more than forty-five hundred lived in what has widely been called the “ghetto of the Pacific.” Today, there are around ten thousand people living on the island, making its population density greater than that of the world’s densest city, Mumbai. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 205

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• SEED: The Ebeye density figure exceeding Mumbai is a vivid, citable fact for writing on military base displacement.

Related

• US missile testing displaced Marshallese to extreme overcrowding on Ebeye (similarity 0.97)
• Kwajalein displacement created Ebeye’s density exceeding Mumbai’s. (similarity 0.95)