By Giff Johnson ,AFP March2,2014,12:11amTWN

Part of the intense Cold War nuclear arms race, the 15-megaton Bravo test on March 1, 1954 was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

It vaporized one island and exposed thousands in the surrounding area to radioactive fallout.

As those who remembered that terrifying day gathered in the Marshall Islands' capital of Majuro, along with younger generations, to commemorate the anniversary, many exiles refused to go back to the zones that were contaminated, despite U.S. safety assurances.

I won't move there, Evelyn Ralpho-Jeadrik, 33, said of her home atoll, Rongelap, which was engulfed in a snowstorm of fallout from Bravo and evacuated two days after the test. I do not believe it's safe and I don't want to put my children at risk.

People returned to live on Rongelap in 1957 but fled again in 1985 amid fears, later proved correct, about residual radiation.

One of the more than 60 islands in Rongelap has been cleaned up as part of a US-funded $45 million program, but Ralpho-Jeadrik said she has no intention of going back.

I will be forever fearful. The U.S. told my mother it was safe and they returned to Rongelap only to be contaminated again, she said.

It is not just their homes which have been lost, said Lani Kramer, 42, a councilwoman in Bikini's local government, but an entire swathe of the islands' culture.

As a result of being displaced, we've lost our cultural heritage our traditional customs and skills, which for thousands of years were passed down from generation to generation, she said.

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Islanders afraid to go home 60 years after Bikini Atoll