[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 20 (Tuesday, March 1, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
         THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF BRAVO TEST IN MARSHALL ISLANDS

  (Mr. UNDERWOOD asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, 40 years ago the United States conducted 
a test of a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb at Bikini atoll in the Marshall 
Islands. This test, called Bravo, was a significant event in the cold 
war arms race, and ensured that the United States would not fall 
precipitously behind the Soviet Union in developing this new generation 
of mass terror weapons.
  Unfortunately, for the people of Bikini, Rongelap, Enewetok, and 
Utirik atolls, as well as other far flung atolls of the Marshall 
Islands, Bravo signaled a different event of mass terror.
  The fallout from Bravo literally snowed radioactive particles on 
their islands. Some were subsequently evacuated from their islands; 
most had already absorbed the poisonous radioactive waste; the excuse 
for not moving the islanders: There was a sudden downwind which brought 
this cancerous snowstorm.
  Now, forty years later, as the Department of Energy begins to tell 
the secret story of radiation experiments, I join Chairman George 
Miller in calling for the complete story of the saga of the Marshall 
Islands nuclear tests, and of the Bravo shot in particular.
  In the 12 years of tests, 66 nuclear devices were detonated with the 
cumulative destructive force of 7,000 Hiroshima bombs on these 
islands--neighbors to my home islands.
  Let us open up the files, let us find out what really happened, what 
went wrong, and let us fulfill our moral responsibility to the people 
of the Marshall Islands and provide the necessary health assistance for 
the radioactive rain that we showered on their islands 40 years ago.

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