Domestic Containment in the Marshall Islands: Making a Home for Cold War Workers in the US Imperial Pacific Available to Purchase

During the Cold War, the US military transformed the Marshallese Island Kwajalein into a missile range to test intercontinental ballistic missiles. To recruit American knowledge workers who would move their families to the central Pacific to operate the base, the military erected a suburban landscape on Kwajalein. Fulfillment of the promise to American knowledge workers that they could find home on Kwajalein entailed not only erecting a refuge mirroring American suburbia but also providing reassurance that American family life would not be threatened by other workers on the island. This article examines military surveillance policies on Kwajalein aimed at domestic containment: a Cold War security mission to protect the national home thousands of miles away and the local effort to secure a replica of that home in the central Pacific.