nuclear-news

I was stigmatized as a walking atomic bomb

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Sometimes they are born alive and live for a few minutes or hours, and you can see the blood moving through their bodies before they die. We give birth to babies with missing limbs, or their organs and spinal cords on the outside of their bodies. We never experienced these types of births before the U.S. testing program. We have complained about these births for decades and we are always told by the U.S. Government that they are not the result of radiation exposure.

Friday, 01 March 2013 15:47

The Oslo Times

Ursula Gelis – No-to-Nuclear-weapons

http://theoslotimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9068:i-was-stigmatized-as-a-walking-atomic-bomb&catid=139:op-ed&Itemid=645

Jelton Anjain (right) and Paul Ahpoy from Fidji. Hiroshima, 6^th of August 2012. Photo: Ursula GelisBikini, Rongelap and, and…”I was stigmatized as a walking atomic bomb”. Traveling with Jelton Anjain from Rongelap.
“Test sites are the grounds for unlimited human suffering”. Senator Anjain-Maddison, Republic of the Marshall Islands.

In July 1946, two atomic tests–code named “Operation Crossroads”–were conducted at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, at the Marshall Islands. These tests explored the effects of airborne and underwater nuclear explosions on ships [and] equipment. A fleet of 95 surplus and captured ships were used as targets, including the Saratoga […]. These tests were witnessed by hundreds of reporters, politicians, and international observers, along with 42,000 military and scientific personnel. The two bombs used in Crossroads were identical in design and yield to the bomb used on Nagasaki.

Jelton Anjain and I are crossing the bridge which links the Japanese islands Honshu and Kyushu. We are traveling from Hiroshima to Nagasaki talking about the humanitarian consequences of any nuclear weapons use.

Rongelap was Jelton’s home, one of the Marshall Islands located in the Central Pacific. His island was part of the US nuclear weapons testing program from 1946-58.  The Rongelap Atoll is near to the test sites’ ground zero. As the result of being so close to the epicenter where the bombs went off the people of the island became ‘bomb nomads’ and had to leave their sacred land.

Jelton dives back into history when the cobra trade brought German entrepreneurs to Rongelap. Intermarriage among Europeans and islanders was frequent, farming and fishing was the base to sustain families. Women were mainly tied up with housework and children.

Ditches were made by Jelton’s uncle for the Japanese during WWII. Japan “seized the islands in 1914 and later (after 1919) administered them as a League of Nations mandate. Occupied by the United States in World War II, […] the Marshall Islands were made part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands under jurisdiction of the United States in 1947.”

In 1944 the US had taken Micronesia after two years of fighting bloody battles.  A short while later the nuclear age arrived on the beautiful shores. Among the pearls taken was also the island of Tinian where the atom bombs for Japan were loaded.

Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, 1 March 1954

The UN trust authorized the US “to ‘fortify’ the islands. In return, the US promised to ‘protect’ the health of the inhabitants; to protect [them] against the loss of their land and resources’… (John May. Book of the Nuclear Age, p. 76). – It is questionable why the UN ‘trusted’ the US declarations to protect people after “Operation Crossroads” had already taken place in 1946…

Following their ‘promises’ given to the UN, the new rulers where looking for a suitable long-term test site for nuclear explosions! Bikini, an atoll of 36 islands in the Marshalls which includes Rongelap, was chosen and Jelton’s family was evacuated to Rongerik in 1947. There were told that “some military testing” would be carried out on their island. The islanders returned home the same year.

Globalization allows goods and ideas to travel the world. Colonizers implemented racism while occupying territories. Colonial genocides like on Tasmania are coming easily to mind. That this ‘spirit’ did not die out in the post WW II world is obvious if it comes to the locations of nuclear test sites around the globe.

With the nuclear age different forms of ‘extinction’ emerges: for scientific purposes innocent people were irradiated. We are witnessing different methods of long-term ‘extinction’ yet we see the same de-humanizing racist patterns as in old colonial times.

We are sipping ice coffee when Jelton starts talking about the “worst radiological disaster in the United States’ testing history.” The ‘Castle Bravo’ test took place on March 1, 1954. Its thermonuclear explosion had disastrous consequences. The yield was bigger than predicted and the fall-out contaminated the Bikini atoll.

Jelton explains that the people of Rongelap received no information about the upcoming test. The day before the shot meteorologists recognized changes in weather conditions and on the evening of the 29th of February winds changed to the South. Despite warnings the commander of the operation did not postpone the explosion and heavy fall-out contaminated the islanders. Only two days later they were evacuated from Rongelap. Their livestock remained.

Did this mean ‘to protect people against the loss of their land and resources” as mentioned in the trusteeship? The people of Rongelap spent three months on an US military base on Kwagalein which houses today the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site.

Kwajalein_Atoll

At the US base all contaminated islanders underwent blood checks. Apparently the US administration was keen to learn more about the effects of radiation exposure on humans.
Jelton remarks that only the Clinton administration later disclosed materials which made the ‘human material’ function of the effected population clear. – I remember the speech of Abacca Anjain-Maddison, the senator of Rongelap atoll, at the NPT conference in New York in 2010. She was talking about similarities between ‘BRAVO’ and the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. The true information of the effects of the bombing in 1954 was suppressed. The indigenous people were used as guinea pigs. The forced migration of the islanders, their deaths and illnesses due to radiation are consequences of the ‘Bravo’ shot. According to senator Anjain-Maddison test sites are the grounds for unlimited human suffering. In total 67 nuclear tests were carried out on the Marshall Islands.
The fall-out of the ‘Bravo’ test also reached the Japanese fishing boat.” The Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon) was a small Japanese tuna boat, fishing about 90 miles east of Bikini at the time of the test. About two hours after the explosion a “snow” of radioactive ash composed of coral vaporized by BRAVO began to fall on the ship. Within hours, the crewmembers began to experience burning and nausea. Within a few days, their skin began to darken and some crewmembers hair started to fall out. Upon returning to Japan, many were hospitalized and one eventually went into a coma and died. Though the U.S. denied responsibility, it sent the widow a check for 2.5 million yen “as a token of sympathy.”

In 1957 the people of Rongelap were told that it would be safe to go back. So they returned to contaminated soil. A year later diseases broke out and babies with serious birth defects, looking like “octopuses” were born. “To this day women in the Marshall Islands give birth to jellyfish babies, or babies born with no bones in their bodies and translucent skin.

Sometimes they are born alive and live for a few minutes or hours, and you can see the blood moving through their bodies before they die. We give birth to babies with missing limbs, or their organs and spinal cords on the outside of their bodies. We never experienced these types of births before the U.S. testing program. We have complained about these births for decades and we are always told by the U.S. Government that they are not the result of radiation exposure.

Yet, our language, our history, our stories have no record of these births before the testing program.  After the testing program we’ve had to create new words to describe the creatures we give birth to. […] September 13, 2012 was a historic day at the United Nations and in the Marshall Islands. The Human Rights Council considered for the first time the environmental and human rights impacts resulting from the radioactive and toxic substances in nuclear fallout. And, Marshall Islands citizens stood for the first time before the United Nations Council to offer survivor testimony on United States nuclear weapons fallout on the environment, health and life.”

During ‘Bravo’ “a total of 236 people were living on the atolls of Rongelap and Utirik, 100 and 300 miles east of Bikini, respectively. The residents of Rongelap were exposed to as much as 200 rems of radiation. […] After their evacuation, many experienced typical symptoms of radiation poisoning: burning of the mouth and eyes, nausea, diarrhea, loss of hair, and skin burns. Ten years after the blast, the first thyroid tumors began to appear. Of those under twelve on Rongelap at the time of BRAVO, 90% have developed thyroid tumors.

The US regularly did medical check up’s with the returnees but did not provide them with useful explanations about their health situation. Jelton’s parents died from cancer. There were nine siblings at home. He himself is now 44 years old and has a boy of ten and a girl of seven years. When I asked him whether he was afraid of becoming a father, he simply replied that “I did not think about potential dangers then.”
He sadly recalls that his fellow countrymen thought it is snowing when the fall-out come down on the island. Many Rongelap Hibakusha’s paid with their lives for playing in unexpected snow.
Jelton himself was stigmatized at school when merciless class mates labeled him as a walking atomic bomb and kept distance. He was eleven years old then. In those days he tried to understand what nuclear testing actually meant for people.

The year 1992 marked a turning point in Jelton’s life when his father, known to everybody as the ‘modern day Moses’, won a Peace Award in Germany. He was a leading figure for the traumatized islanders and guided them through difficult times. Jelton realized that education is crucial for an independent life. He left the atoll to study political science in Maryland, US. Since 1985 Jelton is again in exile. He lives on Ebeye, a tiny overpopulated island. This ‘forgotten place’ gives insights about the continuation of US racism.
Jelton would like to go home but Rongelap is still contaminated. The ambitious man worries about the next generation: from where to get the means for decent education? He wants local doctors helping and not only to wait for medical care from Fidji or the Philippines. He wishes to see many Japanese scientists there, Greenpeace and others in order to document the appalling circumstances.
Going home would mean to be dependent on imported supplies. Again, is this the US guarantee to protect the Marshallese, given in 1947? Jelton complains about the apathy of the ‘bomb nomads’. Only few are active to deal with the injustice inflicted on them by US ‘security policies’. The indifference is huge and only on Bikini day (a memorial day) people are showing up. Many simply do not want to talk about their misery.
Today Jelton works as a ‘distance education coordinator’ at the college of the Marshall Islands. Using online education will reach interested people from near and far. He smiles by saying that the energy to stand up against injustice comes from knowledge. He is by all means a convincing contributor to get the message across.
“If the curse of nuclearism is ever to be removed from human destiny, it will be the result of a popular movement from below, not an illuminating flash of moral and political insight from the commanding heights of power.” Oishi Matashichi. The day the sun rose in the West. 2011, p. VIII.). – He is a survivor of the Lucky Dragon.

This article is contributed by Ursula Gelis is a German political activist, a board member of ‘No-to-Nuclear-weapons’, Oslo section, a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), and a regular columnist of The Oslo Times.

WordPress has got some sort of glitch.. the headline link is wrong and if you were looking for the Chernobyl update it is to be found here:

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2013/chernobyl_roof_collapse_report

March 4, 2013 - Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized