nuclear-news

The Financial Legacy of the Nuclear Tests on Bikini Atoll

WSJ, 18 Aug 23

As part of the U.S. nuclear tests after World War II, a total of 23 nuclear weapons were detonated on and around Bikini Atoll. Eventually, the U.S. set aside funding to help the people of Bikini and their descendants. But, as WSJ’s Dan Frosch reports, those compensation funds have been drained.

TRANSCRIPT – (sections of)

“……………. Jessica Mendoza: One test site was the American territory of Bikini Atoll. Over 12 years, a total of 23 atomic bombs were detonated at and around the chain of islands. But before it was a nuclear test site, it was home to more than a hundred people. The US government evacuated those islanders ahead of the experiments. And for decades, they were nuclear nomads, hopping from island to island, often facing harsh conditions, sometimes starvation. Eventually the US government agreed to set aside funding to help the people of Bikini and their descendants. Descendants like Jessy Elmi, whose grandmother was 15 when she was forced to leave Bikini Atoll.

Jessy Elmi: Three islands were disintegrated and they can never go back. It’s radioactive.

Jessica Mendoza: Jessy now lives in Florida, but she has relied on the funds to help with everyday expenses.

Jessy Elmi: I would be able to get diapers or baby food or whatever. It would help pay for school books and papers and pens and things like that.

Jessica Mendoza: Those payments were dependable until earlier this year.

Jessy Elmi: In February, we just stopped getting our payments. The date came up, it passed, and then another two weeks passed by and now it turned into a month. And then after that, the next payment, and we’re like, “Hmm, so is there no money anymore? Something’s going on here.”

Jessica Mendoza: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I’m Jessica Mendoza. It’s Friday, August 18th. Coming up on the show, Compensation Funds were set aside for the descendants of Bikini Atoll. What happened to their money? Where exactly is Bikini Atoll?

Dan Frosch: It’s kind of in-between the Philippines and Hawaii. That’s sort of a good way of looking at it………………………………

Jessica Mendoza: Bikini Atoll is part of the larger chain of islands known as the Marshall Islands. More than 80 years after those nuclear tests, Bikini Atoll is still uninhabitable. So what would you find if you were to visit Bikini Atoll now? If you were walking around on the beach, what would you see? Can you drink the well water? Lay on the sand?

Dan Frosch: So you would find a largely deserted series of islands. You can’t drink the groundwater there. According to researchers, it is still radioactive, as are the coconuts. And you will see coconut crabs who typically feast on these coconuts, but are also radioactive because of the nuclear fallout from decades earlier.

Jessica Mendoza: There were 167 people living on Bikini Atoll ahead of the blasts. The US government relocated those families and told them two things. First, that the residents would be able to return to Bikini eventually. And second…

Anderson Jibas: What you’re doing is in service to humanity. It’s going to help.

Dan Frosch: I mean, they were told that their actions would help end all wars.

Jessica Mendoza: Quite a promise to be making……………………………..

Jessica Mendoza: The government set up two separate funds to help. The first pot of money was a $110 million trust fund.

Dan Frosch: Now, this money was initially intended to clean up Bikini Atoll and hopefully at some point get people back onto the islands chain to their homeland.

Jessica Mendoza: But it quickly became clear that cleanup from 23 nuclear bombs was not feasible. So that money went to the remote government representing the Bikinian diaspora spread across other islands.

Dan Frosch: And so the US government decided to let that money be used to help the Bikinians who are essentially living in existence in exile, operate their own government and pay for various expenses, schools, housing, scholarships, operating expenses for their government in the two places that they had largely resettled, which were Kili and Ejit.

Jessica Mendoza: Think of it as an operations fund. And the Bikinian government had some freedom to spend this money the way they wanted to. The second fund was for compensating Bikinians and their descendants.

Dan Frosch: We created something called the Bikini Claims Trust, a totally different fund. And the purpose of that fund was to disperse quarterly payments to Bikinians and their descendants, which in a single year typically amounted to about $500.

Jessica Mendoza: This fund allocated $75 million for Compensation. It was to be doled out every three months to some 7,000 descendants of those original residents. People now spread across the Marshall Islands and the United States. So the people of Bikini Atoll had two funds worth millions, one main operations fund for running the remote government and a second fund for compensation checks. For decades, the operations fund was overseen by the US Interior Department.

Dan Frosch: And every year, the Bikinian people would go to the Interior department and say, “We need several million dollars to help operate our government and to build houses on the island of Kili and Ejit where our people are living.” And there would be a back and forth and they’d finally come up with a figure and that money would be used for those purposes. And there would be a sort of an extensive auditing process to ensure that the money from that fund was used for exactly what the Bikinian people and their government said it was going to be used for. And that process went largely unencumbered until 2017. And then something happened in 2017 that would change everything for the Bikinian people and how that money was dispersed.…………………………………………………………………

Jessy Elmi: The United States promised to take care of the people of Bikini if they would move and leave their island, so that they could do their bomb testing. They trusted them and they failed them. Now, after all of that, their own leaders decided to let them down by not taking care of what little bit they had, and there they are. It’s just too sad. https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/the-financial-legacy-of-the-nuclear-tests-on-bikini-atoll/22abaedd-aa37-41d6-9966-991fabdaaa53

August 21, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | OCEANIA, PERSONAL STORIES