On July 19th the “Changed Circumstance Petition for the Republic of the Marshall Islands” (http://www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRS/abstract.cfm?NLEid=64160) will be brought up yet again before the US Senate Energy Committee and the Senate Foreign Affairs Pacific Committee.
These hearings are essentially a legacy of US nuclear testing in the Pacific.
As Jonathan M. Weisgall speaking on behalf of the peoples of Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and Utrok explained to the US House Resources Committee on May 25, the US conducted 67 atomic and hydrogen bomb tests on a few small islands in the Marshall Island chain between 1946 and 1958. The total yield from these bomb tests was 98 times greater than the total yield of all such testing in Nevada. .
During these years, the Marshall Islands was a United Nations Trust Territory administered by the United States, which had pledged to the United Nations to “protect the inhabitants against the loss of their land and resources.” That protection of the inhabitants included forcing the people of the Bikini Islands from their homes. The protection also included the explosion of the equivalent of 7200 Hiroshima bombs.
That protection included, for example, the “accidental” irradiation on March 1, 1954 of inhabitants of Rongelap and Utrok Atools. President Eisenhower told a press conference that U.S. scientists were “surprised and astonished” at the test, and a year later the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) admitted that about 7,000 square miles downwind of the shot “was so contaminated that survival might have depended upon prompt evacuation of the area. . . .” As Weisgall says, “Put another way, if Bravo had been detonated in Washington, DC, and the fallout pattern had headed in a northeast direction, it would have killed everyone from Washington to New York, while near-lethal levels of fallout would stretch from New England to the Canadian border.”
That test led to an international controversy and eventually to the U.S. moratorium on atmospheric nuclear testing and the U.S.-U.S.S.R. Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
The Bikinians who were pushed aside have been in exile since 1946. Well, there was a brief period in 1968 which followed an announcement from President Johnson that the atoll was safe where the island returned home. They lived in their homeland until 1978 when medical tests revealed that the people had “ingested what may have been the largest amounts of radioactive material of any known population…” They were then taken away again. Scientists explained that they had made a “careless” mathematical error which threw off by a factor of 100 the radioactive dose the Bikinians would receive.
Meanwhile, Weisgall told the committee, “Approximately half the Enewetak population cannot return to their home islands in the northern part of the atoll, where radiation still renders the islands too radioactive.”
And, the tests, by the way simply vaporized all or part of four islands at Bikini and five at Enewetak.
Weisgall also told the Committee, “Although they were over 100 miles from Bikini, the people of Rongelap received a radiation dose from Bravo equal to that received by Japanese people less than two miles from ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
”The people of Utrok were returned to their home atoll a mere three months after Bravo (test) and were exposed to high levels of residual fallout in the ensuing years. This unnecessary exposure led to thyroid problems and other cancers.”
”The inhabitants of Rongelap and Utrok were the subjects of a medical research program designed to understand the effects of ionizing radiation, and they continue to suffer from radiation-related diseases. Indeed, recent Department of Energy whole body counting data has shown that the people living on Utrok are still exposed to radioactive cesium-137.”
Marshall Islands Foreign Affairs Minister Gerald Zackios told a May 25, 2005 Joint Hearing of the Full Committee Resources and International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific of the United States House of Representatives, "We experience the broad-reaching effects of the testing program on the most intimate and personal levels: from our home islands that we can no longer inhabit, to the sickness and death of our friends and family."
Congressman Dale Rohrabacher (R-California) noted that the Marshallese had paid a tremendous price for the ultimate security of the US compared to the average American citizen.
The United States has a moral obligation to the Marshall Islands, said Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, (D-American Samoa) at the same hearing. Rep. Faleomavaega who questioned the Administration's position, objected in what he felt was comparison of the US dollars to the tremendous sacrifice of Marshall Islanders.
For further information, please read Indigenous Presentation to the Delegates of the Seventh Review of the Non-Proliveration Treaty. Sources: PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT, YokweOnline, Waging Peace.org, Marianas Variety, Olekoi PALAU, Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice
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