Environmental Disasters - Topics Listings

CONGRESS FEELS "STICKER SHOCK" IN REPARATIONS FOR BIRTH DEFECTS AND DEATHS CAUSED BY 1954 TEST

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-widecrater in the reef. The fireball could be seen for hundreds of miles. Damn. Call National Geographic and have them change the maps.

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!

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.

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. The $250 million figure on the table is actually peanuts compared to the $9 billion already spent on the Hanford cleanup - and nothing has actually been accomplished at Hanford.

March 2008 Update

Read an personal account by a
resident.

But at least it isn't US citizens.

How well has the U.S. met its obligations?

Return to the Hall of Fame.