Nearly 50 years after serving together during the cleanup of Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands, veterans from across the country reunited Saturday in Northwest Arkansas.
Northwest Arkansas is home to one of the largest Marshallese populations in the United States.
The group spent the day reconnecting in Springdale before wrapping up the reunion with dinner at the Arkansas Air & Military Museum in Fayetteville.
Philip Daggs, a Navy veteran, spent months organizing the reunion, and the day was about more than reminiscing. It was about bringing the people who understand each other the most back together.
“We became a brotherhood,” Daggs said. “We worked together. We played together. We worked hard. We played hard.”
Between 1977 and 1980, more than 8,000 U.S. service members took part in the cleanup of Enewetak Atoll, removing radioactive contamination left behind after decades of U.S. nuclear weapons testing.
The men say they spent six days a week in blazing hot weather cleaning up the island.
“My job as a Navy man was to drive the Mike boats, move the Army and materials around from island to island,” Daggs said. “We were involved in the cleanup of the Marshallese Islands, and we removed the radioactive material from the islands, dumped it out in the lagoon, and into a crater on Runit Island.”
Air Force veteran Robert Hoff says the reunion brought back so many memories to life.
“When you got off the islands, this was the first thing they gave you,” Hoff said while holding up the orientation packet he received after leaving Enewetak.
Preparing for the reunion also meant digging through boxes that hadn’t been opened in years.
“These pictures got put away a long time ago when I moved,” Hoff said. “When I knew I was coming to this reunion, I started digging through old tubs to pull these out, show these guys, which brought them a lot of memories too.”
Throughout the afternoon, veterans passed around the decades-old photographs and shared stories from their time on the islands.
Daggs says watching those conversations and reconnections unfold made all the months of planning worthwhile.
“I get a little sentimental about it. I gotta be honest with you, I have a hard time talking about it,” Daggs said. “These are my brothers, and they mean the world to me.”
After the day-part of the reunion, the veterans finished the night with food catered by the Marshallese at the Arkansas Air & Military Museum.
