For Pacific Islanders the name Bikini evokes memories and visions of a s/pacific historical and contemporary political reality. Nuclear testing is just one—albeit a most pernicious one—of the many colonial phenomena and processes that affect the Pacific region. In 1980 the United Nations reported that more than zoo nuclear bombs and devices had been detonated in the Pacific, but this figure did not include nuclear missiles launched into the Pacific by the United States, the Soviet Union, and China (Firth 1987, ix). Britain exploded 12 nuclear bombs on Johnston Atoll between 1958 and 1962, and in the 1950s conducted 12 tests at Monte Bello, Emu, and Maralinga in Australia.