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Tragedy of the displaced Bikini Atoll residents, following atomic bomb tests

PARADISE WITH AN ASTERISK, OUTSIDE MAGAZINE,  OCTOBER 17, 2012“…”………WHAT HAPPENED TO THE displaced islanders after 1946 was a tragedy of neglect. There was never enough food on Rongerik: the reef fish were poisonous; a fire damaged the island’s coconut trees. There was not enough water. By 1948, they were starving to death, even though the United States had committed to taking care of them. In March of that year, the Bikinians were moved to Kwajalein Island, home to a new U.S. naval base, where they camped miserably on a small strip of grass next to the runway. A few months later they were relocated yet again, this time to the island of Kili.

This was a disaster, too, but of a different kind. Kili was a true island, which meant that there was no ring of coral, no protected lagoon, no jungle-fringed outer islands to fish and hunt, just the big waves of the Pacific crashing up against rugged shores. Fishing was nearly impossible. “It was just a small piece of rock in the middle of the ocean with some coconuts growing on it,” says Alson. Once again food supplies were intermittent. At one point, the island’s new inhabitants required an emergency airdrop. The Bikinian exile continued for another 20 years, long after the last bomb, code-named Fig, was detonated in August of 1958……

The final devastating blow came in 2010, when the Bikinians lost their largest lawsuit against the U.S. government. In 2001, the Nuclear Claims Tribunal—a body established in 1983, as part of the Compact of Free Association, to handle Marshall Islands complaints—awarded the Bikinians $563 million in compensation. But the tribunal was never adequately funded to pay a claim of that size. The Bikinians sued to force payment, but the effort failed when the Supreme Court refused to hear the case in 2010, claiming it doesn’t have the right to rule over international agreements. The U.S. courts are now closed to them. “It was absolutely devastating,” says Niedenthal. “We always had the idea and the hope that we were fighting for something. When we got the final rejection by the Supreme Court, that was it. We’re done.”http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/Paradise-With-An-Asterisk.html?168980656

November 6, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | indigenous issues, OCEANIA