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Front Page » Archive » Vol
2 No 57 » here
The price of friendship with America
The US treatment of Marshall Islanders, subjected
to nuclear bombardment tests over decades, provides a strong
clue to what a US-run world promises.
by Lutz Scheler
The Republic
Nuclear weapons need to be tested before they can be used.
For most of its atmospheric nuclear tests, the USA used the
Marshall Islands, which it administered under a unique UN
mandate called "Strategic Trust Territory" from
1947 until 1986.
This American mandate is the first and only one of its kind
in the world, and to this day the Pentagon uses the territory
for testing and developing the anti-missile shield. The Trusteeship
Agreement provided, among other things, that the USA shall "promote
the economic advancement and self-sufficiency of the inhabitants,
. . . protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands
and resources [and] protect the health of the inhabitants" (Articles
2 and 3).
A year before its UN mandate began, the US exploded two
nuclear bombs on Bikini. From June 30, 1946, to August 18,
1958, the United States conducted a total of 67 nuclear tests
there, almost all atmospheric.
The most powerful of those tests was the "Bravo shot" at
Bikini atoll, a 15 megaton device detonated on March 1, 1954.
It was the first US hydrogen bomb—and it alone was equivalent
to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. Over 100 vessels of the former
Japanese navy were used as targets. The wrecks at the bottom
of the lagoon continue to pose significant risks because
of unexploded ordnance and fuel still leaking into the sea.
The 67 tests were the equivalent to more than 7,000 Hiroshima
bombs. Temporary storage facilities are still leaching radionuclides
into the marine ecosystem around Enewetok and Bikini. Portions
of four atolls remain off limits to human beings. The people
of Rongelap pleaded for years to be moved from their radioactive
atoll. If it hadn't been for the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow
Warrior, which evacuated them, they might still be pleading.
It has been suggested that the Marshall Islanders were deliberately
used as laboratory animals˙ to assess radiation exposure
effects on human health. 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 medical group to monitor and evaluate the Rongelap
and Utrik people.
To this day Marshall Islanders continue to die of radiation-induced
diseases. These include elevated rates of thyroid cancer,
cervical cancer mortality rates 60 times the US rate, breast
cancer mortality rates five times greater than in the US,
and reproductive complications involving high rates of miscarriage
and deformed babies that are stillborn. During the trusteeship,
the US administrators deemed the Marshall Islands a secure
area. Until 1968, outsiders could not visit the Marshall
Islands without first obtaining permission from the US Navy.
No foreign investment of any sort was allowed until 1973.
The country entered into a "free association" with
the US in 1986. However, to this day locals need permission
to go to the Kwajalein atoll where the missile test range
is. The New York Times wrote that "the Kwajalein range
is of one of the closest things the United States has to
a colonial relationship, one in which an almost idyllic small-town
America sits on a sand-covered sliver of Micronesian coral,
segregated from the overcrowded ghettos where native islanders
have been displaced in America's pursuit of greater security."
Section 177 of the Compact of Free Association provides
that "The Government of the United States accepts the
responsibility for compensation owing to citizens of the
Marshall Islands for loss or damage to property and persons
resulting from the nuclear testing program." To this
end, the US provided US$150 million to create a fund that,
over a 15-year period of the Compact, was supposed to generate
US$270 million in proceeds for disbursement "as a means
to address past, present and future consequences of the US
Nuclear Testing Program, including the resolution of resultant
claims."
Of course it's impossible to generate US$270 million in
income from US$150 million over a period of 15 years. It
was not even enough to pay everybody who suffered from radiation-induced
sicknesses a modest amount of money. There were some other
sums spent on cleaning up (about $300 million), but what
is most interesting is the fact that the treaty rendered
null and void the lawsuits Marshall Islanders had started
in the US.
An American court dismissed several billion dollars of lawsuits
first filed in 1980, saying that because of the Compact of
Free Association (only signed in 1986) the US had withdrawn
its consent to be sued for the damages caused by atomic testing
in the Marshall Islands.
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