Dumb Marshall Islanders Lived in U.S. Test Zone

DIASPORA OF CONTAMINATED ISLANDERS ONE MORE TRAGEDY OF THE NUCLEAR ERA

Here's a suggestion: if the U.S. Government ever asks you to relocate to nearby island so they can bomb the one you live on, move to another continent. On March 1, 1954, a 15-megaton thermonuclear device was detonated during a nuclear test on the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific. This sumbitch, code-named BRAVO (so the Russians wouldn't know what it was), was 1000 times more powerful than that little Hiroshima device. The Bravo blast (so called because the simple islanders applauded after the explostion and cried "Bravo" in Polynesian) vaporized the test island, eradicated parts of two adjacent islets, and punched a mile-wide crater in the reef. The fireball could be seen for hundreds of miles. Damn. Call National Geographic and have them change the maps.

The crew of the Lucky Dragon, a Japanese tuna ship sailing outside the proscribed safety zone, suffered radiation poisoning, touching off another internation incident that was ignored in the U.S.

This was only one of about 66 nuclear tests that took place in this one time paradise. The total yield of these tests is equal to exploding one and a half Hiroshima size bombs every day for twelve years.

Among the problems with this scenario was that people were already living on Bikini and Eneweta where the tests were performed. The U.S. moved them to Rongelap and other islands, but apparently not far enough away. They have since experienced health affects such as nausea, vomiting, hair loss, skin burns, and itchy skin and eyes, not to mention insanely high levels of birth defects and retardation. Bravo!

POISONED ISLANDS STILL RADIOACTIVE:
Because radioiodine concentrated in the coconut milk and crabs on the islands, the some were driven to the edge of starvation because there main sources of food were radioactive. It was sort of a good news - bad news thing. The good news it was easy to find coconuts at night. The bad news was they would kill you if you ate them.

For decades, the Atomic Energy Commission maintained that the contamination of Rongelap was due to a last-minute change in wind direction. But when the relevant documents were finally declassified, they showed that the commission knew the winds had shifted 72 hours before the test. Kind of makes you proud to be an American.

In the 1960s, Washington told the people of Bikini and Rongelap it was safe for them to return home. But while background radiation had dropped to normal levels, radioactive elements remained in the soil, in plants, fish and fruit, and the bodies of the people themselves. Doctors ordered a second evacuation of Bikini in 1978, and Greenpeace evacuated the Rongelapese a few years later.

EDITORIAL ADDENDUM
This would all be less troubling to us as Americans if we weren't told in our classrooms and in the daily blither of politicians that we are champions of justice and the global defenders of democracy. As our children are still pressured to recite a Pledge of Allegiance each school day, would it not be nice if it were true. Those of us on the Editorial Board of a certain age could easily have dealt with the reality of things: that we as an empire take what we want and always operate in our own best interests. Just as all nations do. It's the constant insistence that we are BETTER than other nations in all things that leads to this gnawing disappointment.

2011 UPDATE:
In 2011, S. 342 was introduced in the Senate by Jeff Bingamin, (D-NM). The Republic of the Marshall Islands Supplemental Nuclear Compensation Act of 2011 is intended to provide supplemental ex gratia compensation to the Republic of the Marshall Islands for impacts of the nuclear testing program of the United States. On Feb 14, 2011 the bill was Read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, where it will die along with its predecesors.

As the outcome of Japan's nuclear catastrophe remains to be seen, Alson Kelen, Mayor of Bikini Atoll held a press comference to remind the world of unfinished business on his Pacific island paradise. Kelen reminded his bomb tests have affected not only former Bikini islanders suffering from radiation-induced illnesses, such as thyroid cancer, but many on Kili Island who suffer from malnutrition and diabetes.

Prior to the first test, 167 people living on the atoll were told to leave their islands. Their descendants are estimated to number around 4,500 but none can live permanently on Bikini Atoll as the area is still heavily contaminated with radioactive materials from the nuclear tests.

Today, the survivors and their descendants are still waiting to return home and to receive any kind of fair compensation for the crime committed against them. Although the islanders have received a whopping $90 million in compensation, the U.S. continues to fight paying out the kind of money that would actually clean up the island. Compare this payout to the $9 billion already spent on the Hanford cleanup - and very little has actually been accomplished at Hanford, home of the radioactive rabbit.

Godzilla, Nukes and Blue Oyster Cult.

Unlucky Dragon: another little known incident of our nuclear past.

Read an personal account by a
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How the U.S. nuked it's own "Low Use Segment" citizens.

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