[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 15 (Tuesday, February 22, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
   URGING THE ADMINISTRATION TO INCLUDE THE MARSHALL ISLANDERS IN A 
               GOVERNMENT STUDY OF RADIATION EXPERIMENTS

  (Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks, and include 
extraneous material.)
  Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I want to comment on an issue that has 
bothered me for some time and that is finally getting proper attention: 
The sorry legacy of our Nation's nuclear testing program in the 
Pacific--which involved 66 nuclear explosions in the 1940's and 1950's.
  In particular, I have long believed that when the United States 
detonated the Bravo shot--a 17 megaton thermonuclear bomb--on Bikini 
Atoll, the people of the Marshall Islands, especially those residents 
on nearby Rongelap and Utirik Atolls, were deemed expendable. The U.S. 
Defense Department has admitted that when the explosion took place, it 
knew islanders were downwind and in the path of windborne radiation.
  Mr. Speaker, the Bravo explosion was equivalent to 1,300 times the 
destructive force of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
  From my discussions with Marshall Island leaders, they believe their 
people were used as guinea pigs and test subjects for U.S. radiation 
experiments. I share that belief.
  Recently, Government documents have come to light that give weight to 
that position.
  Archive documents released by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and 
related Federal agencies show that U.S. scientists callously viewed the 
Marshall islanders as little better than laboratory mice. According to 
recent press reports, an Atomic Energy Commission official discussing 
the Marshall Islands nuclear tests was quoted in 1956 as saying:

       While it is true that these people do not live, I would say 
     in, the way westerners do, civilized people, it is 
     nevertheless true that these people are more like us than the 
     mice.

  The same Government official further stated:

       They have been living on that island, now that the island 
     is safe to live on, but it is by far the most contaminated 
     place in the world.

  Mr. Speaker, I find these remarks by a representative of the U.S. 
Government to be disturbing and tragic, and I am gratified to see that 
my fellow colleagues have likewise been shocked.
  I especially want to commend Hon. John Dingell, chairman of the House 
Energy and Commerce Committee, who, based on these remarks, has 
requested President Clinton to include the Marshall islanders in the 
comprehensive investigation of Government conducted radiation 
experiments.
  I further commend Hon. George Miller, chairman of the House Committee 
on Natural Resources, who has called for hearings to look into the 
legacy of our nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands.
  Mr. Speaker, I applaud the Clinton administration's call for an 
intensive review of Government radiation experiments. It is about time 
that our great Nation faces responsibility for its nuclear 
experimentation and the devastating impact on countless numbers of 
innocent people, many of them Americans. Likewise, it is only just and 
appropriate that we include that Marshall islanders in this study, 
rectify our mistakes, and bring this tragic chapter in our history to a 
close.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the record a timely article on this 
subject in yesterday's Washington Times. I also include excerpts from 
an excellent book on the U.S. nuclear testing program in the Marshall 
Islands, ``Day of Two Suns,'' by Author Jane Dibblin, which detail the 
immense suffering endured by these people of the Pacific.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the following printed material.

               [From the Washington Times, Feb. 21, 1994]

     Nuclear Remarks Under Fire--1950's Talk Shocks 1994 Observers

                          (By Michael Hedges)

       Documents found in the archives of federal atomic agencies 
     reveal a callous attitude by U.S. scientists toward using 
     Pacific islanders as test subjects after atomic blasts in the 
     1950s.
       ``While it is true that these people do not live, I would 
     say, the way Westerners do, civilized people, it is 
     nevertheless true that these people are more like us than the 
     mice,'' said a scientist in the official minutes of a January 
     1956 meeting of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in New 
     York.
       ``They have been living on that island, now that the island 
     is safe to live on, but it is by far the most contaminated 
     place in the world,'' he said. The minutes of that meeting 
     were partially declassified in 1986. Last month more portions 
     were released.
       Those remarks have led Rep. John Dingell, Michigan 
     Democrat, to ask the Clinton administration to reconsider its 
     decision not to include Marshall Islanders in a widespread 
     study of possible radiation experiments by the government.
       The comments also may be raised at a hearing this week by a 
     subcommittee of the House Committee on Natural Resources.
       But the scientist quoted in the minutes said Saturday that 
     his remarks have been taken out of context and possibly 
     misstated. He warned of reaching conclusions in 1994 based on 
     things said with a world view of the 1950s--a warning others 
     have raised as the Clinton administration embarks on a review 
     of government radiation experiments during the early years of 
     atomic energy:
       ``I have seen those remarks; it is a mystery to me,'' said 
     Merle Eisenbud. Mr. Eisenbud, who now lives in North 
     Carolina, has been called to Washington to testify before the 
     House committee on Thursday.
       ``The whole thing is taken out of context,'' he said. 
     ``That was a two-day meeting, and as I remember I was doing 
     most of the talking. I may have been tired, or the 
     stenographer may have been tired. I may just have been 
     stupid,'' he said.
       But in any event, ``we were not looking for effects'' of 
     radiation poisoning, he said. ``The dose would have been too 
     low for that. We wanted to develop models for how strontium-
     90 worked in the environment. There was a critical need to 
     know that.''
       The Marshall Islands were the site of a U.S. hydrogen bomb 
     test on March 1, 1954, the Bravo Shot near the Bikini atoll 
     in the Marshalls that wafted radioactive ash throughout the 
     Pacific island chain.
       The remarks in the 1956 documents have led Mr. Dingell, 
     chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and its 
     oversight and investigations subcommittee, to petition the 
     Clinton administration.
       ``Recently, the subcommittee learned that the inhabitants 
     of Utirik Atoll [in the Marshalls] may have been used as 
     human guinea pigs,'' he wrote to Christine Varney, President 
     Clinton's executive assistant.
       ``Not only does this document suggest the existence of yet 
     another previously secret radiation experiment, it also 
     reflects extraordinary callousness on the part of U.S. 
     government officials,'' Mr. Dingell wrote.
       The minutes of meetings on Jan. 13 and 14, 1956, by the 
     U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's advisory committee on biology 
     and medicine total more than 300 pages. The parts that have 
     been released seem to show an ongoing government effort to 
     measure radiation effects in the Marshalls.
       Mr. Eisenbud told the panel, ``I want to re-emphasize that 
     the program you have heard today is a program that is in 
     progress now.''
       He continued: ``We think that one very intriguing study can 
     be made and plans are on the way to implement this. . . . 
     Utirik Atoll is the atoll furthest from the March 1st shot 
     where people were exposed, got initially about 15 
     roentgens.''
       He said there were plans under way to test the urine of 
     islanders, ``so as to get a measure of the human uptake when 
     people live in a contaminated environment.''
       ``Data on this type has never been available,'' he said. 
     ``So that is something which will be done this winter.''
       But on Saturday Mr. Eisenbud said that the government did 
     not follow up on plans to gather data on the Marshall 
     Islanders. ``Our analytic methods were not very good in 
     1956,'' he said. ``The fact that they were living in a 
     contaminated environment could have allowed us to make 
     measurements we couldn't make in New York or Paris or 
     London,'' he said. ``But in the end, we never followed up 
     on that.''
       The 15-megaton thermonuclear Bravo Shot was 1,000 times 
     more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan during World 
     War II. Utirik Atoll, and another inhabited island, Rongelap, 
     were directly downwind from the explosion, with Rongelap only 
     100 miles from ground zero. About 239 islanders were exposed.
       In a letter to Mr. Clinton in early January, Rep. George 
     Miller, California Democrat, noted that ``some Rongelapese 
     have said they believe they were used as ``guinea pigs'' to 
     further U.S. understanding of the effects of radiation on 
     humans.
       ``In light of recent disclosures regarding actual radiation 
     experimentation in the United States during this period, that 
     possibility cannot be ignored,'' he wrote.
       But the administration decided in January that the Marshall 
     Islands would not be included in the ongoing review by the 
     White House's Human Radiation Interagency Working Group 
     because there was no evidence that radiation experiments were 
     conducted on people living there.
       Mr. Dingell said in a letter to the White House on 
     Thursday: ``Not only does this document suggest the existence 
     of yet another previously secret radiation experiment, it 
     also reflects extraordinary callousness on the part of U.S. 
     government officials.''
       Ms. Varney could not be reached for comment Friday or over 
     the weekend.
       In his letter to the White House, Mr. Dingell emphasized 
     the ``mice'' comparison in the transcript. Mr. Eisenbud said 
     the remark was much more damaging isolated from a 300-page 
     document than in context. ``If you look at it, you see I said 
     the mice. Earlier in the conversation we had been talking 
     about an experiment using mice and I was referring back to 
     that experiment,'' he said.
       Since the 1980s the Defense Department has admitted that 
     officials knew the islanders were in the path of windblown 
     debris from the bombs.
       When the Marshalls became an independent country in 1986, 
     the United States said islanders had been compensated for the 
     high cancer rates that afflicted them after the war. The 
     Marshallese claimed the payments were inadequate and charged 
     information had not been released. According to some studies, 
     about 500 islanders or their children and grandchildren 
     suffer some effects of radiation poisoning.
                                  ____


                            Day of Two Suns

                           (By Jane Dibblin)

       At 6:45 on the morning of 1 March 1954, eight years after 
     testing in the Marshall Islands began, the U.S. detonated a 
     bomb codenamed ``Bravo'' on the Island of Bikini. The bomb 
     was equivalent to 17 megatons of TN, 1,300 times the 
     destructive force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and was 
     specifically designed to create a vast amount of lethal 
     fallout. That morning the wind was blowing in the direction 
     of two inhabited atolls, Rongelap and Utrik, roughly 100 and 
     300 miles from Bikini. During previous tests Rongelap and 
     Utrik had been evacuated. For some reason never yet divulged, 
     there was no attempt to evacuate them before Bravo.
       The first the islanders knew of Bravo was an intense light, 
     like a strange sun dawning in the west. Later they heard the 
     explosion. By mid-day the fallout, a fine powder which fell 
     from the sky, had reached Rongelap.
       Lemoyo Abon, now a teacher, shares her experience:
       I was 14 at the time and my sister Roko was 12. That day 
     our teacher had asked us--my sister and I and our two 
     cousins--to cook rice for the other children. We got up early 
     to do it. When we saw the bright light and heard a sound--
     boom--we were really scared. At that time we had no idea what 
     it was. After noon, something powdery fell from the sky. Only 
     later were we told it was fallout. With Roko and several 
     cousins, I went to our village on the end of Rongelap Island 
     to gather some sprouted coconuts. One cousin climbed the 
     coconut tree and got something in her eyes, so we sent 
     another one up. The same thing happened to her. When we went 
     home--ours was the main village on Rongelap--it was raining. 
     We saw something on the leaves, something yellow. Our parents 
     asked, ``What's happened to your hair?'' It looked like we'd 
     rubbed soap powder in it.
       That night we couldn't sleep, our skin itched so much. On 
     our feet were burns, as if from hot water. Our hair fell out. 
     We'd look at each other and laugh--you're bald, you look like 
     an old man. But really we were frightened and sad.
       The pale powder continued to fall until late afternoon, by 
     which time it was about one and a half inches deep. Later it 
     emerged that it was in fact particles of lime (calcium oxide) 
     formed when Bikini's coral reef (a formation of calcium 
     carbonate) melted in the intense heat of the bomb and was 
     sucked up and scattered for miles. The exact dose of 
     radiation received by the islanders was never measured, but 
     it was estimated that people on Utrik received 14 rem and 
     those on Rongelap 175 rem. The International Commission on 
     Radiological Protection now recommends that a maximum 
     permission total body dose to a member of the general public 
     be 0.5 rem a year.
       John Anjain, a magistrate on Rongelap at the time, tells 
     what happened over the next two days--and why his people 
     sometimes refer to the event as the ``Day of Two Suns'':
       ``On the morning of the `bomb' I was awake and drinking 
     coffee. I thought I saw what appeared to be the sunrise, but 
     it was in the west. It was truly beautiful with many 
     colours--red, green and yellow--and I was surprised. A little 
     while later, the sun rose in the east. Then some time later 
     something like smoke filled the entire sky and shortly after 
     that a strong and warm wind--as a typhoon--swept across 
     Rongelap. Then all of the people heard the great sound of 
     the explosion. Some people began to cry with fright. 
     Several hours later the powder began to fall on Rongelap. 
     We saw four planes fly overhead, and we thought perhaps 
     the planes had dropped this powder, which covered our 
     island and stuck to our bodies. The visibility was less 
     than one half mile at the time, due to the haze in the 
     sky.
       The next day, early in the morning, I looked at all of the 
     catchments with Jabwe [the health aide] and Billiet [the 
     school principal and we noted the water had turned to yellow. 
     I then warned the people not to drink from these water 
     catchments, and told them to drink only Ni [coconut milk]. 
     The people began to get sick with vomiting, aches all over 
     the body, eye irritations and general weakness and fatigue. 
     After the second day most of the people were unable to move 
     around as usual due to their fatigue. Just a few strong young 
     men were up and about at that time and I asked them to fetch 
     some coconuts for the rest of us to drink. On the evening of 
     the second day a seaplane arrived from Emewetak with two men 
     who brought some strange machines. They stayed only about 20 
     minutes and they took some readings of water catchments and 
     soil, then took off again. They really did not tell us very 
     much.''
       Not far from Rongelap, U.S. Navy ships were measuring the 
     intensity of radioactivity. They were not instructed to 
     rescue the Rongelap people; indeed, the task force command 
     ordered them to sail away from the area. Twenty-eight service 
     personnel stationed on Rongelap Atoll to provide hourly 
     weather reports were also exposed to radiation, and were not 
     told when Bravo would be exploded. It was two days before the 
     Navy arrived to pick up the Rongelap Islanders and the U.S. 
     personnel--two days in which they breathed, slept and ate the 
     fallout.
       ``No satisfactory answer has been given as to why they were 
     not rescued as soon as it was known that they had been in the 
     path of the fallout. Immediate decontamination on board ship 
     would have at least minimized some of the horrific effects of 
     radiation sickness. Instead, belatedly, the ships took the 
     Rongelapese to the U.S. military base on Kwajalein Island, as 
     Entry Enos explains:
       ``When we arrived on Kawajalein we started getting burns 
     all over our bodies, and people were feeling dizzy and weak. 
     At that time we did not know if we would ever return to 
     Rongelap and we were afraid. After two days something 
     appeared under my fingernails and then my fingernails came 
     off and my fingers bled. We all had burns on our ears, 
     shoulders, necks and feet, and our eyes were very sore.''
       Billiet Edmond kept a diary at the time. In one of his 
     entries he described the injuries as follows:
       ``After two days on Kwajalein, a group of military doctors 
     began their studying on the victims. Nausea, skin-burns, 
     diarrhea, headaches, eye pain, hair fall-out, numbness, skin 
     discoloration were among common complaints. It had been so 
     for quite a while. The children were more critical. My 10-
     year-old adopted son had severe burns on his body, feet, 
     head, neck and ears. I cannot help remembering those 
     sleepless nights we had to hold him down onto his bed as he 
     would have jumped up and down, scratching, rolling, as though 
     insane.
       ``Although I had also some burns on my back, feet and 
     hands, and my hair was falling out, I knew I had been the 
     least affected, and I deeply felt pity about those who 
     suffered the most.''
       ``On Kwajalein the Rongelapese were given medical 
     treatment. It was cursory, to say the least. Film footage of 
     that time shows lines of Marshalese people being `inspected'. 
     Jabwe Jojour, health aide on Rongelap, was angered by the 
     lack of information given to the islanders about their 
     injuries, and he states:
       ``When we arrived in Kwajalein we immediately showered for 
     several hours at the military base there. After some days a 
     medical team flew out from the U.S., and they are still 
     treating us today. After three days we had burns all over our 
     bodies, and our hair began to fall out; some people actually 
     went bald. When we asked the Atomic Energy Commission doctors 
     to help us understand what had happened, they did not tell 
     us, and today they do not tell us the truth about our 
     problems.''
       ``A Japanese tuna fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon, was also 
     caught in the path of Bravo's fallout. It was 100 miles east 
     of Bikini when the bomb was detonated. The crew members 
     suffered headaches and nausea and by the time they reached 
     Japan two weeks later all 23 were suffering from radiation 
     sickness, with skin blisters and falling hair. One of the 
     crew members, Aikichi Kuboyama, died of liver and blood 
     damage on 23 September. The fisherman's injuries caused an 
     international outcry and two years later the U.S. handed over 
     $2 million in compensation to the Japanese Government.
       For three years the people of Rongelap led an uncertain and 
     unsettled existence, shunted around different islands, first 
     Ebeye, then Ejit Island in Majuro Atoll, waiting to be told 
     it was safe to return home.
       The Rongelap people had a long wait before they saw their 
     land again, but they too returned with mixed feelings. Etry 
     Eno recalls:
       ``I was afraid to return to Rongelap in 1957 but they said 
     it was safe for us. We did not understand what `poison' 
     [radiation] was, and if we had we would not have returned. 
     Now we really understand that the `poison' is dangerous and 
     that Rongelap is contaminated. In 1957 [we were told] that we 
     could eat anything we wanted except the coconut crab. When we 
     ate the arrowroot it really burned our mouths. Everything we 
     were used to eating had changed color and we were surprised 
     that we were allowed to eat our foods in Rongelap, even 
     though we knew that the foods were unusual in colour.''
       John Anjain remembers:
       ``At the time of our return the High Commissioner and some 
     representatives from the United Nations Trusteeship Council 
     came to our island. We asked them if it was safe to return to 
     our island and they all agreed that there was still a little 
     bit of radiation left on Rongelap and that it might injure 
     our health, but not very much. With that slight reassurance 
     we returned, but we had much fear then.''
       ``For 22 years the people of Utrik were told that the dose 
     of radiation they allegedly received, 14 rems, was too low to 
     cause any concern. The exposed people were therefore examined 
     only once every year, and those not directly exposed to 
     fallout--who nevertheless returned to the atoll and were 
     living off irradiated food--were not examined at all. That in 
     itself caused resentment, with the `unexposed' group feeling 
     they too should be monitored and both groups feeling that 
     radiation was taking its toll.
       ``How exactly did radiation affect the health of the 
     islanders? Even before returning to Rongelap and Utrik, 
     people began to realize that the burns, intense itching, 
     nausea and hair loss they had experienced in the first weeks 
     after Bravo were not the end of their problems. One of the 
     most disturbing and terrifying effects was on women's 
     reproductive systems and on children yet to be born. Some 
     women who became pregnant in the years following Bravo found 
     they suffered an unexpectedly high number of miscarriages and 
     severely deformed babies, many of whom died. Almira Matayoshi 
     was 17 and living on Rongelap at the time of Bravo, and she 
     states:
       ``One of my babies was born in 1955 [the year after Bravo] 
     and it did not have any bones in its body. After that I had 
     problems with the next pregnancy and they had to rush me to 
     Kwajelein Hospital because I was bleeding. There they gave me 
     a D and C and it caused me so much pain that I was 
     temporarily blinded--they had to give me ten pints of 
     blood.''
       Mary Sampson was only seven when she was caught in the 
     fallout on Rongelap. When she reached child-bearing age she 
     suffered similar experiences:
       ``I have had very many problems with childbearing. My first 
     baby lived for a very short time--several minutes--but it was 
     not healthy and did not move around very much when it was 
     born. I was very sad and confused because I was healthy then, 
     and then when I thought about it I remembered that I had 
     `poison' in my body and that is why the baby died, later 
     another baby was born and it too died shortly after birth. 
     Then I had a miscarriage after four months. Now I am always 
     afraid when I am pregnant and this fear is shared by all 
     women on Utrik and Rongelap. Even my healthy children may 
     someday get radiation diseases.''
       ``Women on Wotje and Utrik too have had deeply traumatic 
     births. Kathe Judo lives on Wotje and describes what the 
     Marshallese women now call `jellyfish babies' ''.
       ``I saw three different women give birth to strange things 
     after the `bomb'. One was like the bark of a coconut tree. 
     One was like a watery mass that was not human-like. Another 
     was again like a watery mass of grapes or something like 
     that. I believe that these things are all caused by `the 
     bomb.'''
       Nelly Aplos was 19 when she heard bravo explode from her 
     home island of Utrik:
       ``Now I have lots of aches and pains in my body, notably in 
     my back, chest and under my breast. I have lost three babies 
     after 'the bomb'--and never had any problem before. The first 
     baby lived for two days and then the baby's skin turned blue 
     and it died. Later when I was six month pregnant the baby 
     died and I was very sick at the time. After that I was 
     pregnant for two months and then I had a jibun [miscarriage]. 
     I know now that I have a lot of poison in my body and I am 
     certain that this makes the babies weak. I was never sick 
     during any of my pregnancies (except after I lost my babies) 
     and this never happened before the bomb. I have heard from 
     other women in Utrik about many cases of jibun * * * I also 
     have heard of some babies who do not know how to suck from 
     their mother's breast and who eventually die of hunger.''
       When I spent time with the Rongelap people in 1986. I met 
     one evening with the women on Mejato. We talked about why I 
     was there, the problems they were facing and how women's 
     groups and peace group in the West could work with them. 
     Suddenly one woman who had been sitting silently in a corner 
     spoke up. She was Katherine Jilel, the midwife and a 
     grandmother. She spoke forcefully through her tears:
       ``We are very angry at the U.S. and I'll tell you why. Have 
     you ever seen a jellyfish baby born looking like a bunch of 
     grapes, so the only reason we knew it was a baby was because 
     we could see the brain? We've had these babies--they died 
     soon after they were born.''
       Later she told me about her own baby:
       ``Our first baby was born in October 1960, after the bomb, 
     when we'd returned to Rongelap. He was born with a big lump 
     on his head and died very, very young. All the food we were 
     eating was irradiated but we didn't know. I wasn't even on 
     Rongelap the day the test happened but I went back there in 
     1957 and I was irradiated from eating the food. I think 
     that's why my son died.''
       The testimonies of women who have given birth to an 
     unformed fetus or who have suffered repeated miscarriages are 
     too numerous to include them all here. Many women have chosen 
     not to show the babies to their partners; some cannot bear to 
     see them themselves, says Marshellese health worker Darlene 
     Keju-Johnson:
       ``When they die they are buried right away. A lot of times 
     they don't allow the mother to see this kind of baby because 
     she'll go crazy.
       Radiation can damage an unborn child in various ways: 
     firstly, a fetus can be damaged by being exposed to radiation 
     while in the mother's womb. Almost a Quarter of pregnant 
     women exposed within a mile and quarter of the explosion in 
     Hiroshima lost their pregnancies through miscarriages or 
     stillbirths. Of the live births, a quarter died when they 
     were less than one year old, and a quarter of the children 
     who survived had mental handicaps. Many children suffered 
     microcephaly: an abnormally small head circumference and 
     severe mental handicaps. Japanese Hibakusha (radiation 
     survivors) were mostly unable to have children during the 
     first three years after the bombing: Those who conceived of 
     then aborted unformed, unrecognizable fetuses late in the 
     pregnancy.''

                          ____________________