[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 34 (Wednesday, March 17, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H1135-H1142]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RECOGNIZING MORE THAN 5 DECADES OF STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE
UNITED STATES AND THE MARSHALL ISLANDS
Ms. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the
concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 364) to recognize more than 5
decades of strategic partnership between the United States and the
people of the Marshall Islands in the pursuit of international peace
and security, and for other purposes.
The Clerk read as follows:
H. Con. Res. 364
Whereas on November 20, 2003, Congress, recognizing our
Nation's historical responsibilities over the Former Trust
Territory of the Marshall Islands and its successful
transition from Trust Territory status to full independence
in free association with the United States beginning in 1986,
approved the Compact of Free Association Amendments Act,
which was signed into law by President Bush on December 17,
2003, becoming Public Law Number 108-188;
Whereas the Compact of Free Association, as amended by
Public Law 108-188, embodies and extends the close political,
economic, and social partnership, as well as the strategic
mutual security alliance, between the Republic of the
Marshall Islands and the United States under the terms of the
bilateral association between our nations;
Whereas this partnership for peace and alliance for the
security of our nations and the world began in 1944, when the
heroic armed forces of the United States and its allies, with
the courageous assistance of the people of the Marshall
Islands at the risk of their own safety, liberated the
Marshall Islands from Japanese military occupation;
Whereas the friendship and cooperation between the United
States and the people of the Marshall Islands that began
during World War II continued during the next 4 decades,
during which the United States exercised powers of government
in the Marshall Islands under a Trusteeship Agreement with
the United Nations;
Whereas during the Marshall Islands trusteeship era the aim
of the United States was to promote international peace and
security through its nuclear weapons testing program which
was viewed as a critical element to the success of United
States global leadership during the Cold War;
Whereas the United States testing program conducted in the
Marshall Islands and the strategy of nuclear deterrence
sustained by the United States and its allies, was carried
out in the hope that understanding its destructive power
would be the strategy for which we could arm the world with
reasons for peace among nations;
Whereas from 1946 to 1958 the United States detonated 67
atmospheric nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands,
representing nearly 80 percent of all the atmospheric tests
ever conducted by the United States, and enabling atmospheric
tests in the continental United States to be terminated and
relocated at the greatest possible distance from large cities
and densely populated areas;
Whereas on March 1, 1954, the hydrogen weapons test code-
named Bravo yielded explosive power approximately 1,000 times
greater than the weapon used in the 1945 wartime nuclear
attack on Hiroshima, Japan;
Whereas the Bravo test created a mushroom cloud 25 miles in
diameter, and produced a crater 6,000 feet in diameter,
vaporizing 6 islands at the Bikini Atoll;
Whereas the Bravo test and the 12 year nuclear testing
program has been the defining experience of the modern era
for the people of the Marshall Islands, and these momentous
events created a common bond between the people of the
Marshall Islands and the United States military and civilian
personnel who shared hardships and suffering with the people
of the Marshall Islands during the testing program, as well
as the United States citizens in areas affected by the
mainland testing programs and weapons production industry;
Whereas the people of the Marshall Islands, having learned
first hand the dangers of nuclear weapons, freely chose in
United Nations observed acts of self-determination in 1982 to
enter into the Compact of Free Association in order to become
a sovereign nation allied more closely with the United Sates
than any other nation under any other alliance;
Whereas from the time of choosing self-determination, the
Marshall Islands worked closely with Congress and the
executive branch to bring about a strong understanding of the
unique relationship between their islands and the other
United States insular areas;
Whereas the United States nuclear testing program put the
people of these remote islands on the front line in the Cold
War struggle to preserve international peace, promote nuclear
disarmament, support nuclear nonproliferation, and provide
facilities critical to the development by the United States
of a deployable missile defense system to reduce the risks of
nuclear missile attacks; and
Whereas as a member state in the United Nations, the world
body that once had oversight of United States stewardship of
the trusteeship for the people of the Marshall Islands and
their island homelands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands
has an unmatched record of working in conjunction with the
leadership of the United States in the pursuit of
international peace and security, the rights and well-being
of the peoples of the world, and in the War on Terrorism:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate
concurring), That Congress recognizes as an historic
achievement of friendship more than 5 decades of strategic
partnership between the United States and the people of the
Marshall Islands in pursuit of international peace and
security, and recognizes with solemn regard for the cost of
preserving peace, the importance of the nuclear weapon test
code-named Bravo at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on
March 1, 1954.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from
Florida (Ms. Harris) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos)
each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Harris).
General Leave
Ms. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may
have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks
and include extraneous material
[[Page H1136]]
on the concurrent resolution under consideration.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentlewoman from Florida?
There was no objection.
Ms. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the gentleman from California
(Mr. Pombo), chairman of the Committee on Resources, for introducing
this timely resolution which commemorates the more than five decades of
friendship and strategic solidarity that the United States has shared
with the people of the Marshall Islands.
March 1 marked the 50th anniversary of the Bravo test, the largest of
the 67 atmospheric nuclear tests that the United States conducted in
the Marshall Islands. Those massive detonations, which represented
significant sacrifices by the Marshallese people, were critical to the
credibility and reliability of our nuclear deterrent during the Cold
War. They are perhaps the most vivid, visual examples of a strategic
partnership that stretches back to the Pacific campaign of the Second
World War.
Most recently, the United States reaffirmed and extended aspects of
its unique relationship with the Republic of the Marshall Islands in
the amended Compact of Free Association, which the Congress considered
and approved last year. That agreement continues and deepens our
strategic cooperation, both by reaffirming our mutual defense
obligations and by significantly extending United States access to our
missile defense testing facility at Kwajalein Atoll.
As we commemorate the anniversary of the Bravo test, it is fitting to
recall the mutual sacrifice that our peoples have shared during the
last half century and to committing ourselves to maintaining our
special friendship in the decades ahead.
I urge passage of this resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution, and I first
would like to commend the authors of this resolution, the gentleman
from California (Mr. Pombo) and the ranking member on the Subcommittee
on Asia and the Pacific, the gentleman from American Samoa (Mr.
Faleomavaega). We are grateful for their leadership on matters related
to the Pacific.
This resolution recognizes the 50th anniversary of the Bravo nuclear
weapon test which occurred in March 1954. It reaffirms the strong
relationship between the United States and the people of the Marshall
Islands. The timing of this resolution is particularly appropriate as
Congress last year approved legislation renewing the Compact of Free
Association. This compact is the guiding document for our relations
with the Marshall Islands and with Micronesia.
Mr. Speaker, the beginnings of our Nation's close relationship with
the people of the Marshall Islands are etched in history. In 1944, we
joined with the Marshallese people to liberate the people from Japanese
military rule.
At the end of the Second World War, the United States began a
decades-long trustee relationship with the Marshall Islands,
culminating in Marshallese independence in 1982.
{time} 1245
During the trusteeship period, the United States conducted 67
atmospheric nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, the largest of which
was Bravo, which occurred in March 1954, a half a century ago. This
test yielded approximately 1,000 times greater explosive power than the
bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Our nuclear testing program did enormous,
long-term damage to the health of the Marshallese and the environment
of the islands. Yet rather than turning away from the United States,
the people of the Marshall Islands sought a close political, strategic,
and social relationship with our Nation. As we speak, Mr. Speaker,
Marshallese soldiers are serving with our troops in Iraq.
The Compact of Free Association amendments recently enacted into law
will further solidify U.S.-Marshallese ties by ensuring that the U.S.
contributes to the economic and educational development of the
Marshallese people for the next 2 decades and that we continue to
operate the Kwajalein test facility on the islands.
So as we remember the 50th anniversary of the Bravo test, we also
celebrate 6 decades of friendship and amity between the American and
Marshallese people. I urge all my colleagues to support H. Con. Res.
364.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
California (Mr. Pombo).
Mr. POMBO. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of House Concurrent Resolution 364,
which I introduced recently to formally recognize a political, social,
and strategic relationship that is very unique to the history of the
United States. The House Committee on Resources has witnessed this
relationship over the years and has a unique understanding of the
issues that affect the insular areas, having oversight over all of the
former United Nations trust territories.
Today we consider this legislation in light of both the strong
history between the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the United
States as well as the common ties that will keep our nations closely
connected for decades to come. For over 50 years, the United States has
enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the citizens of
Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan
proposed a new status for the trust territories of the Pacific through
negotiated Compacts of Free Association. After having status as a
United Nations trust territory for many years, in 1986 these islands
chose to become sovereign states. Starting in 1986 when Congress passed
the Compact Act, we made the agreement to strive to continue to
maintain both economic and political stability in this region,
including working to advance economic self-reliance in these islands.
Congress also strongly endorsed the continuation of this relationship
when we passed H.J. Res. 63, the new Compact of Free Association, by a
strong bipartisan vote last year with the help of the House Committee
on International Relations and numerous other House committees.
About 2 weeks ago, the citizens of the Marshall Islands, as well as
many others, recognized a moment in time that was significant in
American history and was a part of the daily lives of Marshallese
citizens from 1946 to 1958. During this period, the United States was
performing nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands that would prove
primary to the success of our country during the Cold War. The
contributions of the Marshall Islanders during these years further
helped bring a positive and peaceful end to the Cold War that saw true
democracies established across the globe.
In particular, H. Con. Res. 364 points to the significance of the
nuclear weapons test that was code-named Bravo and its role in the
half-century relationship that still exists between our countries. On
March 1, 1954, the United States tested this weapon at Bikini Atoll in
the Marshall Islands. It was the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated
by our country. Its explosive power was nearly 1,000 times greater than
the weapon used in 1945 in our attack on Hiroshima, Japan. This event
and the success that came from our nuclear testing program will forever
link the United States in history with the Marshall Islands. But the
Marshallese continue to show their support for our country, as seen in
80 of their citizens serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. Our common
pursuit of peace through working closely together through political,
diplomatic, and strategic ties continues to this day.
I was fortunate to have recently been able to travel to the Marshall
Islands with Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton, as well as
other members of the House Committee on Resources. The openness and
kindness with which we were received will not be forgotten, as we were
able to talk to some of the survivors of these nuclear tests and
comprehend better the level of understanding that remains between the
Marshallese and our government to this day. In fact, two Bikini
citizens are here with us today to see this legislation move to the
House floor: the Mayor of Bikini, Mr. Eldon Note, and Senator Juda from
Bikini as well.
[[Page H1137]]
This bond should not be understated. I hope that other Members of
this body will also show their recognition of this alliance in
supporting H. Con. Res. 364 today. We continue to work with the
Marshallese in both a socioeconomic and national defense standpoint. Be
it the new schools being built with Compact of Free Association moneys
or the critical work being done at the Ronald Reagan ballistic missile
defense test site, our mutual ties founded in democracy and freedom
can, with this legislation, be properly acknowledged.
I would like to thank the House Committee on International Relations
for their help in bringing this legislation to the floor of the House
in such an expeditious manner and look forward to the strong bipartisan
support of this concurrent resolution by my colleagues.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 6 minutes to my good
friend, the distinguished gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo).
Ms. BORDALLO. Mr. Speaker, over 7,000 miles due west from our
Nation's Capitol at a location roughly 2,700 miles southwest from the
Hawaiian Islands and 2,000 miles southwest from Guam lies a nation of
more than 50,000 people. The Republic of the Marshall Islands comprises
30 atolls and 1,152 islands, an area that in total land mass represents
roughly the equivalent in size of Washington, D.C. but straddles an
area of about 770,000 square miles of the western Pacific Ocean.
Today the people of the Marshall Islands, their culture, their
history, their special relationship with the United States, which this
resolution seeks to appropriately recognize, is largely unknown and
overlooked by most Americans. Their special relationship with the
United States is embodied in a Compact of Free Association and the
unique partnership the compact establishes between our two nations.
Last year, we as a Congress renewed this compact with the Marshalls
for another 20 years, and we take this opportunity today to recognize
the beginning of a new era in our strategic partnership. I am proud to
have taken part in the compact's renewal and in the work on this
legislation as a Member of this House. As our colleagues from Hawaii
stated last year when the compact legislation was brought to this
floor, this may be an issue of little note for many of the Members of
the House. It would be easy, he said, to say that the compact
represents an area of forgotten people, of the never noticed, perhaps
lost in the vastness of the world's largest ocean, a people, a culture,
an area that was undiscovered by the Western World until the Spaniards
arrived in 1529 seeking a western route for trade. Over the centuries,
their culture has flourished and the world has now taken notice.
The United States' relationship with the Marshallese began 5 decades
ago during World War II. Allied forces, led by the U.S. Navy and
Marines, drove the Japanese Imperial forces from their islands.
Following the war, U.S. naval bases were established on the atolls of
Kwajalein and Majuro. In 1946, Bikini Atoll was the site for Operation
Crossroads, the first postwar atomic weapons tests. Fifty years ago
this month, the United States detonated the historic Bravo shot, a 15-
megaton hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb
that was dropped on Hiroshima. For 12 years, the United States
detonated more than 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshalls during the
development of our Nation's strategic arsenal. The testing in the
Marshalls left a legacy that we continue to address to this day. We
recognize the important contributions of the Marshalls in our national
security programs, and we know that the Free World owes a debt of
gratitude to them for their role in the development of our national
strategic deterrent. I am hopeful that we will soon address all these
issues that the testing era brought for the benefit of our strategic
partnership and special relationship.
In January, I was fortunate to have participated in a congressional
delegation led by the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo). I was very
grateful that he decided to visit the Marshalls as well as other
Pacific islands. While in Majuro, we met with President Kessai Note and
elected officials from other islands, as well as with the Nuclear
Claims Tribunal. This visit was important given the recent renewal of
the compact, the anniversary of the Bravo blast, and the security
issues facing our world today.
The people of the Marshall Islands have made tremendous sacrifices
and contributions on behalf of the United States in the pursuit of
peace and freedom around the world. Today, the Marshall Islands are
among the United States' greatest friends and most reliable allies. I
want to recognize and congratulate the Marshalls' Ambassador to the
United States for his efforts in strengthening the relationship between
our governments, the Honorable Banny de Brum. I also again want to
thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the gentleman from
West Virginia (Mr. Rahall), and the Secretary of Interior, Mrs. Norton,
for their leadership in recognizing the value of the strategic
partnership with this resolution. Mr. Speaker, I urge its unanimous
adoption by this House.
Ms. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Arizona (Mr. Flake).
Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this
time. I appreciate the chairman of the Committee on Resources for
bringing this forward. I had the good fortune to travel to the Marshall
Islands a couple of months ago on the CODEL with the Secretary of the
Interior and some of my colleagues. We were able to meet with President
Note and the elected leaders of many of the surrounding atolls. It was
our good fortune to go to Kwajalein, to be able to watch what we are
doing there at the Ronald Reagan test site, to see how important our
relationship is with the Marshall Islands.
The U.S. nuclear testing program put the people of these remote
islands in the front line of the Cold War. For many, many years testing
went on. From 1946 to 1958, the U.S. detonated 67 atmospheric nuclear
weapons in the Marshall Islands. Most Americans have no idea the
contribution that the people of the Marshall Islands have made to our
peace and our security. Hopefully, this resolution will go some
distance in expressing our gratitude and our appreciation for that
relationship. We have an obligation to the people of the atolls that
were affected by these tests that we are still carrying through. I was
pleased to support the Compact of Free Association, or the extension of
it. This is a good start. It represents a good foundation for a
continued strong relationship. We ought to appreciate strongly the
Marshall Islands for their support for our position in the United
Nations. No nation on this Earth, I think, supports us more, more
frequently and is with us more than the Republic of the Marshall
Islands. For that we should be grateful.
Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this resolution, and I am glad to
speak on this topic.
Mr. ABERCROMBIE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Con. Res.
364, a resolution to recognize the decades of strategic partnership
between the United States and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
In 1947, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) became one of six
entities in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands established by
the United Nations with the United States as the Trustee. This began a
decades long relationship between the United States and RMI that has
proven to be resilient and enduring.
In particular, I'd like to highlight the United States nuclear
testing program in RMI which began in 1946. Over the years, the United
States detonated 67 nuclear weapons on the islands of Bikini and
Enewetak. These tests comprise 80 percent of all atmospheric tests
conducted by the United States and allowed a majority of all tests to
be conducted as far from densely populated areas as possible. This
testing includes the detonation of Bravo, the most powerful hydrogen
bomb ever tested by the United States, on Bikini Atoll. Radiation from
the test forced the evacuation of Marshallese and U.S. Military
personnel on Rongelap, Rongerik, Utirik and Ailinginae.
Over the years, the Marshallese have faced very serious consequences
as a result of the nuclear testing. The health and property effects
have proved to be extensive and in many cases, immeasurable. The United
States has recognized this and set up a fund to compensate those
affected by the testing. However, the consequences of this testing,
especially the health of the Marshallese people, continue to be
impacted.
Mr. Speaker, I am sure that our countries will continue to work on
this issue and find a resolution. I also have no doubt that the
relationship between our governments will continue to be productive and
mutually beneficial.
[[Page H1138]]
Last year, this body worked on reauthorizing the Compacts of Free
Association, an agreement between the United States and RMI, to
continue our defense and economic alliance that has benefited both
countries for 17 years. As a result of this work, the United States and
RMI will continue this alliance for another 15 years.
I urge my colleagues to join me in recognizing our relationship with
RMI and commend their dedication to international peace and security.
Mr. CASE. Mr. Speaker, I stand today in grateful support of this
resolution, which I am proud to have cosponsored.
This resolution is about three things. First, re-acknowledgement of
that region of our world in which the present and future of our Nation
and so many others lie: the Pacific and Asia. Second, recognition of a
proud people and culture whose future lies now not only in their home
islands, but in our own country. Third, responsibility for our actions
which, like the consequences of those actions, will extend down through
the generations.
On re-acknowledgement, as a product of the Pacific, I confess to a
Pacific-centric view of our world. But can anyone doubt that our own
future is inextricably tied to that of the Pacific? And as we look to
the Pacific, we cannot overlook its island nations, whose strategic
value and loyalty to democratic principles are unquestioned.
Foremost among these nations is the Republic of the Marshall Islands,
with a proud history and culture dating back thousands of years. We
celebrate in this resolution the mutually beneficial relationship we
have enjoyed for more than half a century.
We also celebrate its people, who at home are striving to build a
modern and sustainable island nation. And the emigration of many to new
lands and new opportunities, especially in our country, are
strengthening communities beyond their homeland.
My own state has especially benefited, with a Marshallese community
of some 5000 strong poised for a major breakthrough into the mainstream
of political, economic and social participation in Hawaii's affairs.
And, of course, we cannot forget that the Marshallese and their
counterpart Pacific nations today have their sons and daughters serving
with our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lying grievously
wounded defending our joint freedoms in military hospitals.
And lastly, this is a resolution of remembrance, of the dire
consequences to a whole people and their aina, or land, of 66 nuclear
tests, virtually all open air, from 1946 through 1958, including, 50
years ago, BRAVO, the world's first hydrogen bomb. Few of us, even
today, can imagine the force and devastation released by just one such
device, much less 66.
I have my own recollection, as a boy of just six, sitting on my
grandparents' porch on the Island of Kauai, on a dark night, watching
the entire sky light up from a single explosion 2,300 miles away. But
the Marshallese lived through it, and they are still living through it,
and will live through it for generations to come.
These stories are being told elsewhere, by Beverly Keever, in a
February 25, 2004 article in the ``Honolulu Weekly,'' and by James
Matayoshi, Mayor of Rongselap, in recent remarks on BRAVO day. I append
these for the Record and commend them to your attention.
But today, we simply remember what happened and recommit ourselves to
remedy that which must be remedied.
Mr. Speaker, there are lots of people to be thanked for this
resolution. Chair Pombo and Ranking Member Rahall, for their
commitment, Chair Hyde and Ranking Member Lantos for bringing this to
the floor, and Chair Leach and Ranking Member Faleomavaega for their
advocacy. But mostly, we thank the people of the Marshall Islands, for
their friendship and support. We will not forget.
Mr. Speaker, I submit the following articles for insertion into the
Record in connection with H. Con. Res. 364.
Suffering, Secrecy, Exile: Bravo 50 Years Later
(By Beverly Deepe Keever)
[From Honolulu Weekly, Feb. 25, 2004]
Almira Ainri was 10 years old when she was catapulted into
the atomic age.
In June of 1946, as the U.S. Navy readied the first atomic
bomb in peacetime--just the fourth in history--Ainri and
about 100 other inhabitants of Rongelap Atoll, in the
Marshall Islands, were sent south by ship to Lae Atoll, where
it was thought they would be safe from the effects of the
explosion 100 miles away, at Bikini Atoll.
Eight years later, in 1954, Ainri and other Rongelapese
weren't as lucky.
Fifty years ago this week, on Bikini Atoll, the U.S.
detonated the Bravo shot, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb 1,000
times more powerful than the bomb it dropped on Hiroshima.
The most powerful bomb in U.S. nuclear history, Bravo had a
radioactive cloud that plumed over 7,000 square miles, an
area about the size of New Jersey. A hundred or so miles
downwind, near-lethal fallout powdered at least 236
inhabitants of the Rongelap and Utrik atolls, contaminating
their ancestral homelands. The Bravo-dusted islanders entered
history as unique examples of the effects of radioactive
fallout on humans.
Ainri, who now lives in Honolulu, is one of 118 survivors
of the Bravo shot. For her and other islanders, the bomb's
detonation set off a chain reaction of events over the last
half century. They became unwitting subjects in secret U.S.
research on the effects of nuclear fallout and ultimately
were forced to leave their idyllic homeland, which remains
uninhabitable to this day due to radioactivity.
Archeological finds on Bikini Atoll suggest that the first
Micronesians likely arrived in the Marshall Islands between
2,500 and 4,000 years ago. Germany annexed the islands in
1885. Japan captured them in 1914. Allied forces captured and
occupied them in World War II; the war's end left them in
U.S. hands. The U.S. began nuclear testing there the next
year.
The Marshall Islands were declared a Trust Territory by the
United Nations in 1947, with the U.S. as the administrator,
an arrangement that did not end until 1991. The following
treatment of the irradiated islanders raises doubts about the
behavior of the U.S. government:
U.S. officials failed to evacuate Ainri and other islanders
before the Bravo shot and then delayed their removal for more
than 50 hours after the fallout.
On March 7, 1954, six days after the Bravo shot, Project
4.1, ``Study of Response of Human Beings Exposed to
Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation due to Fallout from High
Yield Weapons,'' established a secret U.S. medical program to
monitor and evaluate islanders exposed to radiation, turning
them into experimental human subjects without their consent.
Ainri and other islanders were allowed to return to their
irradiated homeland in 1957. It was later deemed unsafe for
human habitation.
Marshall Islanders were injected with or fed radioactive
tracers without their consent, contrary to medical
recommendations made by U.S. medical officers six weeks after
the Bravo shot that the islanders should receive no more
exposure to radioactivity in their lifetimes.
The research projects arising from Bravo were begun just
seven years after war crimes tribunals convicted German
medical officers for their horrific experiments with
concentration camp inmates during World War II. Those
tribunals led to the Nuremberg Code, an international
standard for experiments involving human subjects, which
stipulated that the voluntary consent of the subject ``is
absolutely essential.'' The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
established similar standards, requiring the consent of human
subjects and the expectation that an experiment would benefit
the subject, but they had little distribution or effect in
the U.S. bureaucracy.
Did U.S. bureaucratic bungling and operational obstacles
cause the mistreatment of the islanders or, as so many
islanders and others say, did U.S. officials make the
islanders guinea pigs to study the effects of radioactivity?
like needles over my whole body
At about 6 a.m. on March 1, 1954, Almira Ainri was awakened
by the brightness and noise of an inferno as hot as the core
of the sun. Ainri was 18 then, married, and pregnant with her
first child.
The island shook, she recalled. The air was gray. Snowlike
particles fell from the sky.
A day later, U.S. soldiers with Geiger counters arrived and
found people of Rongelap weak and vomiting. Fifty hours and
more after Bravo's detonation, the 236 inhabitants on or near
Rongelap and Utrik atolls were evacuated to the military
clinic at Kwajalein Atoll. There, they were scrubbed every
day with special soaps. The pressure of the water on Ainri's
blistered skin felt ``like needles over my whole body,'' she
said--``like I was burning.''
After the blast, Ainri gave birth to a son, Robert. His
thyroid glands were so damaged that he became dwarfed. The
glands were later removed, consigning him to a lifelong
regimen of medication. Ainri got pregnant again and gave
birth, she said, to ``a bunch of grapes, that had to be
pulled out of me.'' Twice more Ainri got pregnant, she said,
and gave birth to children who appeared normal but died
several days later. Another son, Alex, survived, but again
with damaged thyroid glands. Ainri herself has thyroid
problems; two new growths recently appeared there.
The suffering of Ainri and her family is hardly unique.
Within a decade of the Bravo shot, more than 90 percent of
the children who were under 12 years old at the time of the
explosion developed thyroid tumors. Today, Marshall Islanders
have one of the world's highest rates of abnormalities of the
thyroid, which often result in cases of retardation,
cretinism and stunted development.
For these and other conditions that the U.S. government
presumes were caused by its nuclear weapons testing, the U.S.
pays compensation. Those with leukemia or cancer of the
esophagus, stomach, small intestine, pancreas or bone are
awarded $125,000. Islanders with severe growth retardation
due to thyroid damage get $100,000.
By the end of 2002, a U.S. trust fund had paid about $79
million to 1,808 islanders, but because the trust fund could
not cover all its obligations, 46 percent of affected
islanders
[[Page H1139]]
died before they were fully paid for their injuries.
Rongelap Atoll comprises 61 islets with a combined land
mass of about three square miles and a lagoon of 388 square
miles. Because it is still too radioactive for humans, its
former residents are scattered. In Honolulu, Ainri lives in a
home where her pandanus floor mats mingle with a caller-I.D.
phone and a television set.
Under a 1996, $45-million agreement with the U.S., projects
are underway to prepare for the return of Rongelapese to the
five southernmost, least-contaminated islets of the atoll. A
glisteningly white church has been refurbished, complete with
striking lapis trim. An airstrip, desalinization plant, field
station, power plant and docks have been constructed or
installed. Phase 2 calls for the construction of 50 four-
bedroom homes, a dispensary and a hospital, school building,
residences for doctors and teachers, a library, a town hall
and a municipal building. All that is missing is a date when
the resettlement will occur.
the three surprises
Corporal Don Whitaker hardly could have imagined the
worldwide surprise his letter home would create. Writing to
his hometown newspaper, in Cincinnati, in March 1954,
Whitaker told of seeing distraught Marshall Islanders arrive
at a navy clinic on Kwajalein after the Bravo shot. It was
one of three surprises that shocked the world, and members of
President Eisenhower's administration.
The first surprise was the magnitude of the Bravo bomb's
blast. Its 15-megaton yield was more than twice what U.S.
officials had expected. Set off from Bikini Atoll, it
vaporized three of the atoll's 23 islets. The test was
expected, however.
Whitaker's letter was the next surprise. In it, he revealed
the evacuation of islanders that U.S. officials had tried to
keep secret. Published March 9, eight days after the blast,
Whitaker's letter prompted the Atomic Energy Commission to
issue a press release the next day, masking the magnitude of
the Bravo shot and its radioactive effects with a bland
announcement. But Bravo was hardly the ``routine atomic
test'' the release described, and the phrase ``some
radioactivity'' did not come close to describing the
islanders' dosage, which was the equivalent of the amount
received by Japanese citizens less than two miles from Ground
Zero at Hiroshima, lawyer-historian Jonathan M. Weisgall
writes.
Twenty-eight years later, the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency
would call the Bravo shot ``the worst single incident of
fallout exposures in all the U.S. atmospheric testing
program.''
The third surprise came just days after the AEC had assured
the public that the irradiated islanders were fine. A
Japanese tuna trawler, the No. 5 Fukuryu Maru (``Lucky
Dragon''), was 112 miles east of Bikini Atoll at the time of
the Bravo explosion, well outside the danger zone announced
by U.S. officials. Yet Bravo's staggering detonation powdered
the boat's 23 crew members with what is known in Japan as shi
no hai--``ashes of death.'' When the Fukuryu Maru reached its
home port of Yaizu, about 120 miles south of Tokyo, on March
14, the crew was suffering from a radiation sickness that
stunned the world.
The crewmen's sickness and the subsequent panic over
radioactive tuna in the U.S. and Japanese fish markets led to
an international furor. The Japanese government and people
dubbed it ``a second Hiroshima'' and it nearly led to
severing diplomatic relations. A U.S. government doctor
dispatched to Japan blamed the Japanese press for
exaggerating the condition of the fishermen, who, he
predicted, would recover completely in about a month.
Six months later, Aikichi Kuboyama, the 40-year-old radio
operator of the Fukuryu Maru, died. He was ``probably the
world's first hydrogen-bomb casualty,'' said The New York
Times.
It was this triple-play of surprises--Bravo's tremendous
force, Whitaker's letter and the plight of the Fukuryu Maru--
that chinked the U.S. government's usual policy of secrecy.
Instead, the word fallout entered the world's lexicon. For
the first time, people in Japan and Russia, London and Bonn,
New York and Milwaukee, were aware of a danger that could not
be smelled, seen, felt or heard.
the sun rising in the west
The Bravo shot was the first U.S. hydrogen device that
could be delivered by airplane. It was designed to catch up
with the Soviets who, in August 1953, had exploded their
first hydrogen bomb deliverable by aircraft.
The Bravo shot was so dangerous that it could not be
detonated in the continental United States. Nor could it be
set off at Enewetak Atoll, where the U.S. conducted nuclear
blast tests from 1948 to 1958, for fear it would wipe out the
extensive U.S. equipment and installations there. So it was
tested at Bikini Atoll.
Even before the Bravo shot, experts knew that the
radioactive dust of atmospheric nuclear weapons explosions
was invisibly and unknowingly powdering the continental
United States and touching others worldwide. The U.S.
government's failure to move the Rongelap and Utrik Islanders
in advance of the Bravo shot is painfully ironic because
Almira Ainri and other Rongelapese had been moved before the
first peacetime atomic test, in 1946--and Bravo was 1,000
times more powerful. Yet the islanders were not moved in 1954
because of ``the high cost and logistic problems . . . in
supporting such an operation,'' according to U.S. medical
officers.
Six hours before Bravo, U.S. officials knew that the winds
had shifted, putting Rongelap and Utrik Islanders in the path
of fallout, but they proceeded with the detonation anyway.
That knowledge, coupled with the lag of several days after
the detonation before islanders were evacuated, led to
speculation that the U.S. deliberately used the islanders as
guinea pigs.
A month after the Bravo shot, Atomic Energy Commission
chair Lewis Strauss told reporters that allegations that the
evacuation of the Marshall Islanders had been deliberately
delayed were ``utterly false, irresponsible and gravely
unjust to the men engaged in this patriotic service.'' He
also said that he had just visited the islanders at the
Kwajalein clinic and they ``appeared to me to be well and
happy.''
Bravo was detonated at 6 a.m. Within four hours, the 28
U.S. weathermen on Rongerik Atoll, in the Marshall Islands,
saw a mist from the blast. Seven hours later, the needle of
their radiation-measuring instrument went off the scale. They
were evacuated the next day.
Clouds of snowlike particles moved over Alinginae,
Rongelap, Utrik and Ailuk atolls. The clouds deposited
radioactive fallout on the people below and irradiated them
with doses of ``cloud shine,'' radiation produced by the
blast itself, which Rongelapese described as being like ``the
sun rising in the west.''
About two-thirds of the Rongelapese were nauseated for two
days, according to a U.S. medical officer who examined them a
week after Bravo. Roughly one in ten were vomiting and had
diarrhea. Some had itching, burning skin that turned into
black-pigmented areas and lesions, some of which became
ulcerated and infected. Hair fell out. Blood counts fell.
The Bravo-dusted islanders disappeared from the news for
the next year, because of the AEC's clampdown on information.
But if they were not making news, they were making medical
history.
guinea pigs
Within days of the Bravo shot, irradiated islanders were
unwittingly swept into a top-secret effort to research the
effects of radioactive fallout on humans. ``Never before in
history had an isolated human population been subjected to
high but sub-lethal amounts of radioactivity without the
physical and psychological complexities associated with
nuclear explosion,'' said scientist Neal O. Hines. Islanders
would not learn the true nature of the experiment for 40
years, until 1994, when President Clinton ordered thousands
of documents declassified in the wake of a national scandal
involving human radiation experiments.
Four months before the Bravo shot, a then-secret U.S.
document listed research Project 4.1 among 48 tests to be
conducted during and after the explosion. ``(D)ue to possible
adverse publicity reaction, you will specifically instruct
all personnel in this project to be particularly careful not
to discuss the purposes of this project and its background or
its findings with any except those who have a specific `need
to know,' '' the document said.
The purpose of Project 4.1 was to study the effects of
fallout radiation on human beings.
Three days after Bravo, Project 4.1 began to unfold in
Washington, D.C., where top medical officials decided that
the victims of its hazardous debris would be appropriate
research subjects. A week after the blast, 25 officials of
the AEC's medical program arrived at Kwajalein Atoll. Six
weeks after the blast, Project 4.1 workers recommended a
lifelong study of the affected islanders. After thyroid
nodules began to appear on Rongelapese and Utrik islanders in
1963, they were studied every year.
They began to complain that they were being treated like
guinea pigs rather than sick humans needing treatment. A
doctor who evaluated them annually came close to agreeing
when he wrote, 38 years after Bravo, ``In retrospect, it was
unfortunate that the AEC, because it was a research
organization, did not include support of basic health care of
populations under study.''
return to rongelap
In 1957, U.S. officials assured Rongelapese that their
homeland was safe and returned them there. Upon their return,
U.S. medical officers shifted the emphasis of their study to
what researchers who studied the documents released in the
1990s described as ``the formation of an integrated long-term
human environmental research program to document the
bioaccumulation of fallout and the human effects of this
exposure.'' In sum, U.S. officials knew they were placing the
Rongelapese in a radioactive environment, even though the
islanders had already sustained more than a lifetime's worth
of radiation.
A 1982 U.S. Department of Energy report indicated that some
inhabited areas of Rongelap were as contaminated as the parts
forbidden to humans. It was the first report prepared for the
Rongelapese in their own language and it shocked them. ``All
we needed to see was the center fold-out and our worst fears
were confirmed!'' Marshall Islands Senator Jeton Anjain told
the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in
1991.
Rongelap, their principal island of residence since their
1957 return, had been assigned a level ``3'' of
contamination, meaning it was unsafe for human habitation.
[[Page H1140]]
In 1984, Rongelapese representatives asked the U.S. to
evacuate them. The U.S. refused.
The next year, the Rongelapese left anyway. ``It was by no
means an easy decision, for our people knew that it might
mean they and their children would never again know life on
their ancestral homeland of the last 4,000 years,'' Anjain
told the U.S. Senate committee.
``But the safety of our children and the unborn was more
important.''
After living on radioactive Rongelap for 28 years, 70
islanders were moved by Greenpeace to Majetto Island, 100
miles away. Confirming their fears, a 1988 study authorized
by the U.S. government and subsequent official testimony
recommended that part of Rongelap Atoll be considered
``forbidden'' territory and that the remaining part would be
safe only if inhabitants ate imported food for the next 30 to
50 years.
the only thing I could think of was nazi germany
Residents of Rongelap and Enewetak atolls were also used in
human radiation experiments involving radioactive tracers of
tritiated water and chromium-51 injections, Marshall Islands
Foreign Minister Phillip Muller told the U.S. Senate
Committee on Governmental Affairs in 1996.
The U.S. Department of Energy withheld critical information
about the adverse effects of U.S. weapons tests from the U.S.
Congress and Marshallese officials, Muller said, and medical
research without the consent of Marshallese subjects
continued.
Marshallese Senator Tony de Brum told the committee that
U.S. doctors 50 years ago pulled healthy as well as unhealthy
teeth of islanders without their consent, for use in
cesium, strontium or plutonium studies. Even in the mid-
1990s, islanders were unsure whether they were being cared
for or studied by U.S. medical personnel, de Brum said.
In 1999, Muller's allegations of human radiation
experiments were confirmed by the Department of Energy, the
successor agency of the Atomic Energy Commission.
Declassified documents showed that U.S. officials included
the irradiated islanders under the umbrella of its extensive
biological program. Its worst known cases included x-raying
the male organs of Oregon and Washington state prisoners,
feeding radioactive fallout materials to university students,
giving small doses of radioactive iron to pregnant women and
feeding Quaker Oats laced with radioactive traces of iron and
calcium to supposedly mentally retarded boys in a
Massachusetts state home. Upon first learning about these
kinds of experiments in 1993, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary
said, ``The only thing I could think of was Nazi Germany.''
who will pay?
Under the U.N. Trusteeship, the U.S. government was to
prepare the people of the Marshall Islands for self-
government. In 1986, President Reagan signed the Compact of
Free Association after its ratification by the Marshall
Islands government and Congress. Its provisions expired in
2001. New provisions for the compact were agreed upon earlier
this year, but they are silent on U.S. funding that has since
become inadequate to cover the spiraling claims of those
harmed by U.S. nuclear weapons testing, including Bravo's
fallout.
There may be a ray of hope for the Marshallese, however.
The compacts say that nuclear testing damages to persons or
property discovered after the original 1986 agreement can be
covered in a new request to the U.S. Congress with
documentation that circumstances have changed.
One changed circumstance is that the U.S. government did
not disclose to the Marshallese government the yield of 44 of
the 66 U.S. nuclear weapons tests detonated in its republic
until 1993. The next year, a comprehensive list of 1,054 U.S.
nuclear weapons tests worldwide and their yields was made
public by the Department of Energy. It shows that the yield
of 82 tests in the U.S.-administered Bikini, Enewetak and
Johnston Atolls and Pacific waters from 1946 to 1962 was at
least 128,704 kilotons. That's the equivalent of 8,580
Hiroshima-sized bombs, or 1.47 such bombs per day for 16
years.
A second changed circumstance is that the personal-injury
and property claims arising from nuclear weapons testing have
exceeded the capacity of the $150 million trust fund
established to pay them.
The people of Enewetak and Bikini have been awarded just
over $1 billion for property damages, radiological cleanup,
loss of use and hardship and suffering, but as of the end of
2002, less than one percent of that money could be paid. And
class-action damage claims for the people of Rongelap and
Utrik are still pending.
About 5,000 claims seeking a combined $5.75 billion for
radiation-related damages arising from U.S. weapons testing
in the Pacific have been pressed. The U.S. has paid $759
million.
In 2000, invoking the ``changed circumstances'' provision
of the compact, the Marshallese government asked the U.S.
Congress for more funds and services to meet health costs and
property damages. (Its petition can be viewed online at
www.rmiembassyus.org_click ``nuclear'' and then
``petition.'')
In November 2001, the Marshallese government's petition was
resubmitted to a new U.S. Congress and President Bush. As of
early this month, the U.S. has yet to take any action.
____
Remarks of Mayor James Matayoshi, Bravo Day, March 1, 2004
Today I stand before you as mayor of Rongelap, but more
importantly, I stand before you as a son of Rangelap--a true
son of the ``survivors''. You are here because you have
determined that today, as we commemorate the terrible and
terrifying event of March 1, 1954, it is important that you
come. We are grateful to you for being here.
We are especially proud to welcome our friends from the
World Councils of Churches, our friends from Japan, Europe,
and America. We know of friends here from as far away as New
Zealand and Puerto Rico. We thank you all. We welcome you
all.
Some of you are from the islands which have born this
tragedy for 50 years and more. . . . Some of you represent
organizations and communities of people who feel strong ties
to those of us who survived Bravo. Some of you represent
governments and important organizations from throughout our
world. Many of you have come to show solidarity with us today
when we take a solemn pause to memorialize events of the
past. . . . Events which forever changed our lives, and by
the fact that you are here, your lives as well.
Throughout this day, and as you interact with each other
during these commemorative services, you will undoubtedly
hear various accounts of events surrounding Bravo. From this
long list of stories and anecdotes, you will witness the
horror of the bomb, hear the multitude of reasons why this or
that happened, and draw your own conclusions as to what to
believe. Of course, you will hear from the apologists who
will try as they always do to explain away our suffering and
sorrow as byproducts of the cold war. The ``accident''
theorists will tell you about sudden shifts of wind and
stronger yields than expected. Others will write of us as
allies just bearing their share of the burdens of the cold
war.
Local witnesses will tell you personal versions of what
they saw and felt from the eyes and the understanding of
human beings and not scientists or soldiers or politicians.
They will tell you of how as children they ran and cried,
then played in the milky dust that fell on them. They will
tell you of confusion, of fear, of thinking that the world
had ended.
Leaders will tell you how they tried to do all they could
do to deal with the matter. Representatives of governments
will try to assure you that all that could be done to bring
the matter to closure have been done. They will tell you that
Washington no longer sees these islands on their radar screen
and therefore our quest for fairness and justice is all in
vain.
I wonder if they will tell you about project 4.1: The Study
of Humans Exposed to Radiation. We began learning more about
this program when previously classified documents pertaining
to the testing program were released to us in 1994 under the
Clinton administration. Among the thousands of documents
declassified we discovered this frightening program plan.
Drawn in 1953 for the planned 1954 Castle Nuclear Test
Series, Project 4.1 contemplated the study of exposed human
beings months before Bravo.
Throughout the years our people have had misgivings about
the annual medical examinations they were subjected to by
scientists from the United States. Our discovery of these
descriptions of project 4.1 have reinforced our conviction
that we were being studied, not treated by the scientists who
examined us. If project 4.1 was conceived, planned and funded
prior to March 1, 1954, where were the study subjects
supposed to come from?
We have pictures showing ``subjects'' of the 4.1 study as
early as March 16, 1954. Could this project have been put in
place in a matter of 2 weeks without requisite technical and
logistical planning? American doctors have testified that
they were treating our injuries and that the studies were an
integral part of the treatment. Yet it was general knowledge
from the beginning that they would not treat conditions which
they considered unrelated to the tests and would refer such
patients to the Trust Territory medical authorities.
We have documents pertaining to studies where certain
radioactive materials were given to subjects both ``exposed''
and ``unexposed.'' This resulted in previously unexposed
subjects being exposed for the purpose of comparison and
exposed persons getting even more radiation than they had
been getting from the bomb. If project 4.1 was not a study
why were there ``control groups''?
Many documents pertaining to the tests have yet to be
released. Others, like the photographs in the Office of the
District Administrator here in Majuro were removed and set on
fire by agents of the United States Government. Several other
fires involving medical records of Marshallese exposed to
radiation have been reported through the years.
Sufficient information regarding weather conditions
surrounding Bravo has been gathered to convince us that there
was no unexpected change in weather that caused radioactive
fallout to reach inhabited areas. The generals and scientists
in charge of the testing chose to ignore weather studies and
forecasts which predicted unsafe conditions for the testing.
On earlier occasions, people were moved for safety reasons
for prior tests with much smaller expected yield. For Bravo,
there was no such precautionary relocation. People were left
where they were, unaware that
[[Page H1141]]
they were in harm's way, totally at the mercy of the most
powerful nuclear device ever detonated by man.
For all these years under American guidance, we have
learned principles of democracy and human rights under which
all men aspire to live. Yet, when we seek to be treated with
honor and dignity, we are denied the means to assure that
fairness and justice is guaranteed to all. The United States
continues to be less than forthcoming in its handling of
information and dissemination of facts pertaining to the
testing program.
Here we are, 50 years after Bravo, and the people forcibly
removed from their homes for the atomic tests, with the
exception of Utrik, have yet to return home. The question of
exposure as it affects other atolls of the Marshalls has yet
to be fully addressed. Many claims are still being prepared.
Adjudicated claims have not been paid in full as agreed
upon by the United States. Medical and monitoring
programs, promised by those who exposed us, have been
severely curtailed or abandoned. Making ``non-exposed''
Marshallese responsible for the medical needs of
``exposed'' Marshallese is not a just solution. America
must own up to the problems it created.
Bravo is not over. The people of Kwajalein, who sacrificed
their home and society for America's nuclear ambitions, still
live in squalid conditions on Ebeye, unable to live in peace
and comfort in their own homeland. They have been subjected
to many of the same treatments the islands of the tests
suffered: displacement, loss of traditional skills, social
disruption, and the contamination of their lands and seas.
We became dependent on the U.S. because the U.S. claimed
the power to govern us. We did not ask for it, but when it
happened we came to understand the choices we had. After
decades of living with the good and the bad under American
rule, we decided that the greater good would be to cast our
lot with the U.S. under the compact of free association.
Today we are America's allies in the war on terrorism. We
are America's allies in the development of the missile
systems. We are allies in the U.N. and vote with you when all
your other allies abandon the U.S. on issues of great
importance. We do that of our own free will, without the
exercise of extra ordinary U.S. powers under the compact.
For all these reasons, I can say we appreciate and
understand America. We understand what Fourth of July means
to Americans. We understand what Ford Theater and December 7,
1941 mean to America. We understand what November 22, 1963
means to America. We understand what September 11 will always
mean to America.
What we are here today to ask is that America understand us
as well as we understand it. For our people, for the Marshall
Islands, March 1, 1954 is the defining moment in world
history.
That is the Fourth of July, the assasination of President
Lincoln and Kennedy, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 all wrapped into
one.
That is the day the world stood still and also changed
forever. That is the day we went from being an occupied
nation to becoming a dependent nation. That is the day we
went from being survivors of the World War to victims of the
Cold War.
March 1, 1954, is the day that defines a legacy that would
not end when the testing ended. This on-going legacy is
recognized under Section 177 of the Compact of Free
Association. The ``full and final settlement'' under Section
177 is not limited to the number of dollars deposited in the
nuclear claims trust fund. The full and final settlement
includes the on-going political and legal process recognized
under the Section 177 agreement as the path to reach truth
and justice. That includes the Article IX changed
circumstances process as a matter left to be resolved by the
U.S. Congress. It also includes the adjudication of
additional claims under law by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal.
So what we ask today on this 50th anniversary is not just
that we remember the past. We ask that the U.S. remember its
commitments. We ask Americans to understand us as well as we
understand them. We think they do. We think the U.S. is a
great Nation that can do the right thing.
It is too simple to say that the wrongs done to us were
justified by the good that the U.S. has done for the Marshall
Islands and the world. There must also be justice for our
people.
We believe it is significant that former U.S. Attorney
General Dick Thornburgh independently concluded the Nuclear
Claims Tribunal operated by the U.S. judicial standards. And
we are pleased that Senator Domenici announced during
hearings on the compact renewal that the U.S. Senate will
hold hearings on the nuclear testing legacy.
At a time when the U.S. is spending billions to study
nuclear clean up at mainland weapons production sites, and
hundreds of billions to make the world a safer place, the
U.S. has a legal and moral obligation to finally resolve the
legacy of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. A
democratic ally on all fronts in the current war that asks
for nothing except just compensation for judicially
determined claims.
That is all we ask. We respect and trust the United States
to do what is right when it has the facts. Now is a moment in
history when the facts can come out. The truth can be told.
Our story needs to be told and the American people need to
hear it.
So today, I tell you my friends--Bravo lives on. The
terrible disruption it wreaked upon the lives of the people
of Rongelap and the Marshall Islands still haunts us. But we
shall not let that dampen our hopes or our determination to
seek justice wherever we shall find it. We have survived the
greatest weapon of war man has ever devised. We will survive
whatever is before us and we shall not rest until our quest
for justice is found. That is our promise. That is our goal.
With your help, and the help of free people everywhere, with
the blessing of God, we shall prevail.
Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, I rise in my capacity as the ranking
Democrat of the Committee on Resources to support H. Con. Res. 364;
recognizing more than five decades of strategic partnership between the
Republic of the Marshall Islands and the United States.
Historically, the Committee on Resources held oversight jurisdiction
of the former Trust Territory of the Marshall Islands when the United
States first took responsibility for the islands and her people shortly
after World War II as part of a United Nations trusteeship agreement.
Though we prevailed in war, our country was still healing from the
pain and suffering associated with battle. Yet we were mindful that the
security of our Nation, and that of the world, depended on our
understanding of the destructive nature of our nuclear arsenal.
It is within this context that the people of the Marshall Islands
made a sacrifice that is unimaginable for us Americans. On islands
where their ancestry could be traced back thousands of years; where
their culture flourished, and where they lived in relative peace; the
people having been convinced it was ``for the good of mankind''
voluntarily left their homes.
On military ships we loaded their canoes and personal belongings and
moved them hundreds of miles away to other islands, safe from nuclear
fallout.
Our nuclear testing program commenced and lasted for twelve years,
between 1946 and 1958. Within that time, we detonated 67 nuclear
devices. One of the 67, detonated on March 1, 1954, in the Bikini
Atoll, was the largest ever explosion to occur. Code-named BRAVO, the
hydrogen bomb was 1,000 times greater than the weapon used against
Japan in 1945.
Shifting winds in the Marshall Islands caused those that were placed
out of harm's way to be exposed to nuclear fallout. We have continuing
responsibilities for their care and rehabilitation. We continue to work
with the Marshall Islands government to resolve issues of healthcare,
environmental remediation, and eventual resettlement of atolls still
contaminated by nuclear fallout.
After the U.S. nuclear testing program, we continued to assist the
trust territory in their political, economic, and social development,
consistent with the United Nations trusteeship agreement.
In the mid-1980's, in an act of self-determination, the Marshall
Islands chose to become a sovereign nation in free association with the
United States. This political partnership fulfilled the U.N.
trusteeship agreement and built upon the relationship established
during the trust territory period. It continues to this day.
In November of last year, Congress continued our Nation's
relationship with the Marshall Islands by approving amendments to our
existing Compact relationship. The term of the amended Compacts is for
the next 20 years. However, given our history, I imagine that our
political partnership will outlive such timeline.
We may never fully understand the personal hardships our nuclear
testing program caused to the people of the Marshall Islands, and more
specifically those directly affected communities from the atolls of
Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap, and Utrok.
And we should always remember the sacrifices made by the good people
of the Republic of the Marshall Islands to strengthen our Nation and
make the world more secure.
I thank Chairman Pombo for working with me to recognize the U.S.
relationship with the Marshall Islands and to mark the fiftieth
anniversary of the BRAVO test with this resolution. I also thank the
Committee on International Relations for expediting this resolution so
that it could be considered by the House.
I urge all my colleagues to support H. Con. Res. 364.
Mr. FALEOMAVAEGA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House
Concurrent Resolution 364 which recognizes more than 5 decades of
strategic partnership between the United States and the people of the
Marshall Islands in the pursuit of international peace and security.
During World War II, the Marshall Islands were a strategic
battleground. In 1944 and as a result of the heroic efforts of U.S.
Armed Forces as well as the courageous assistance of the people of the
Marshall Islands, the islands were successfully liberated from Japan's
oppressive regime and a new cooperative partnership between the United
States and the Marshalls was forged.
By 1947, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) became one of six
entities in the
[[Page H1142]]
Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) established by the United
Nations and administered by the United States. This alliance obligated
the United States to foster the development of self-governance and
promote economic, social, and educational advancement of the people of
the RMI.
However, on March 1, 1954, at 6:45 a.m., at the Bikini Atoll in the
Marshall Islands, the United States detonated the Bravo shot, a 15
megaton hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped
on Hiroshima. Acknowledged as the greatest nuclear explosion ever
detonated, the Bravo test vaporized 6 islands and created a mushroom
cloud 25 miles in diameter.
While U.S. servicemen on Rongerik Atoll were evacuated within hours
of the blast, Marshallese residents of Utirik and Rongelap were left
behind for at least a day, resulting in their exposure to significant
radiation. At the time of their removal, the people of these atolls
were already suffering burns and loss of hair.
Also returned prematurely to their atolls, the people of Rongelap and
Utirik received additional exposure causing many to believe that they
were used to study the effects of radiation on human beings. Recently
declassified information contains strong indications that human
experimentation using the people of the exposed atolls was indeed part
of the nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands.
These tests exposed the people of the Marshalls to severe health
problems and genetic anomalies for generations to come. Yet the United
States has not made good on its promise to compensate citizens of the
Marshall Islands for loss or damage to property and person resulting
from the nuclear testing program which the Government of the United
States conducted in the Marshall Islands between June 30, 1946 and
August 18, 1958.
From 1946 to 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear weapons in
the Marshall Islands, representing nearly 80 percent of all atmospheric
tests ever conducted by the United States. If one were to calculate the
net yield of these tests, it would be equivalent to the detonation of
1.7 Hiroshima bombs every day for 12 years.
Conducted in peacetime, the effects of the U.S. nuclear testing
program in the Marshall Islands continues to be devastating and funds
provided by the United States under the Compact of Free Association are
grossly inadequate to provide for health care, environmental
monitoring, personal injury claims, or land and property damage. I
believe the survivors of U.S. atomic tests conducted in the Marshall
Islands deserve just compensation and I am pleased that at a minimum H.
Con. Res. 364 recognizes the historic contribution the people of the
Marshall Islands have made in the cold-war struggle to preserve
international peace and promote nuclear disarmament.
Today, the RMI provides use of its islands for the United States to
develop a deployable missile defense system to reduce the risks of
nuclear missile attacks and this is just another example of the RMI's
unmatched record of working in conjunction with the leadership of the
United States in pursuit of international peace and security. I commend
the people of the Marshalls for their commitment to the rights and
well-being of the peoples of the world and I recognize with solemn
regard the sacrifices they have made so that you and I and future
generations may live in peace.
I commend Chairman Richard Pombo of the House Resources Committee for
introducing this legislation of which I am an original cosponsor. I
thank my good friend for his leadership and for recently leading a
congressional delegation to the Pacific Territories where we met with
island leaders, including those from the Marshall Islands. Chairman
Pombo invited Secretary Gale Norton to accompany us on this visit and I
commend both the Secretary and the chairman for traveling to the
Pacific Territories to see firsthand the difficulties we are facing in
the region.
As the ranking member of the House International Relations
Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, I also want to thank Chairman Jim
Leach of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific for sponsoring this
legislation and for working with Chairman Pombo and me to move this
legislation to the International Relations Committee for mark-up. I
also thank Chairman Henry Hyde and Ranking Member Tom Lantos of the
International Relations Committee for their support.
Finally, on behalf of the people of American Samoa, I again recognize
with solemn regard the sacrifices our Pacific Island cousins have made
in pursuit of international peace and I am hopeful that one day the
U.S. Congress will declare March 1 as a national day of remembrance for
the survivors of U.S. nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I
yield back the balance of my time.
Ms. HARRIS. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I
yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bass). The question is on the motion
offered by the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Harris) that the House
suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution, H. Con. Res.
364.
The question was taken.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds of
those present have voted in the affirmative.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be
postponed.
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