ISLAS MARSHALL: 50 Years of Nuclear Testing Fallibility. Bravo? : CMI-PR

Human Fallibility

"Bravo" brought to light the consequences of human fallibility with regards to nuclear weapons. In preparing for the test, Los Alamos scientists missed an important fusion reaction and grossly underestimated the size of the explosion. The scientists expected that the test would yield the equivalent of five million tons of TNT, but instead "Bravo" yielded 15 megatons - making the destructive force three times larger than expected and more than 1,000 times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima that caused a total of some 135,000 casualties.

Human Consequences

Some 80 miles east of Bikini , a snow-like substance began raining down on 23 fishermen onboard a Japanese tuna fishing vessel called the Lucky Dragon. The fishermen had no idea that the ash was fallout from the hydrogen bomb test. When they returned to their home port of Yaizu in Shizuoka prefecture on 14 March, all of the fisherman were suffering from severe radiation sickness. In September 1954, the radio telegraph operator on the Lucky Dragon died. The incident raised interest and concern both in Japan and around the world. Following extended negotiations, the US made a payment of $2 million to the Japanese government in January 1955, without legal liability, to compensate for all injuries and damages caused as a result of the five nuclear tests it had conducted in the Marshall Islands . Marshall Islanders on Rongelap and Utirik atolls (about 100 miles east of Bikini ) were also exposed to the fallout. An Islander on Rongelap recalls, "[There was] a loud explosion and within minutes the ground began to shake. A few hours later, the radioactive fallout began to drop on the people, into the drinking water, and on the food. The children played in the colorful ash-like powder. They did not know what it was." While 28 US Service Personnel located on Rongerik (about 135 east of Bikini ) were evacuated within 34 hours of the test, Rongelap and Utirik islanders exposed to the fallout were not evacuated for another day. By this time, many of the Rongelap islanders had severe burns, lesions and were beginning to lose their hair. The Marshall Islands became a United Nations Trust Territory of the US after World War II. While "Bravo" is a well-known test, the US conducted a total of 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands alone from 1946 to 1958. The total yield of the 67 tests was 108 megatons, equivalent to the destructive force of more than 7,000 Hiroshima bombs. In 1988, the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal was established to grant compensation to Marshall Islanders for personal injury deemed to have been caused by nuclear testing.

Although some $270 million was provided to victims between 1986 and 2001, half a century later, islanders are still waiting on a stalled bid for compensation. During a visit to the Marshall Islands in January 2004, Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA), who chairs the House Resources Committee which oversees funding to the Marshall Islands , admitted that Washington 's obligations have not ended. Pombo stated, "Obviously, the United States has an ongoing liability (for the nuclear test legacy). This issue is 50 years old. At some point we need to find closure."

Historical Lesson Lost?

Despite fallibility in the history of US nuclear testing, Congress authorized the US Department of Energy (DoE) $34 million in its Fiscal Year 2004 budget to improve the Nevada Test Site. In addition, the FY 2004 budget authorized $25 million for enhanced test site readiness, which decreased the preparation time to resume nuclear testing from 24-36 months to 24 months.

The DoE's FY 2005 budget recommendation submitted to Congress includes a funding request to ensure that the Nevada Test Site could execute an underground nuclear weapons test within 18 months of receiving orders by the President. According to the DoE's budget documents, the Nevada Test Site would receive a 14% increase in its "science campaign," with some of the money improving test readiness by "maintaining critical personnel, equipment and infrastructure."

While the present US administration insists that it will not end the worldwide test moratorium that has been in place since 1992, increased funding for enhanced readiness of the Nevada Test Site appears to be part of a well-coordinated effort to resume production of nuclear weapons, including new and untested weapons. Resumption of US full-scale underground nuclear testing would undoubtedly lead other countries to resume testing, essentially defeating any chance for near or long-term US ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Neither the US nor the rest of the world can afford the nuclear arms race that would be caused by resuming nuclear testing.

Take Action

1. Voice your concerns to your elected officials. Call, email, fax or write the President and your Congressional representatives, asking them to maintain the current moratorium on nuclear testing and reject any funding for nuclear weapons testing or enhanced readiness of the Nevada Test Site.

Here is a sample letter that you can modify and email or print and fax to the President.
To find contact information for your Congressional Representatives, visit http://www.congress.org and simply enter your zip code. Click here to download a sample letter that you can modify and send.
2. Find out more about "Bravo." For more information on those affected by US nuclear testing and to take further action, please visit: http://www.bikiniatoll.com/home.html

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MARSHALLS TEST VICTIMS SAY U.S. TURNING ITS BACK

By Giff Johnson

MAJURO, Marshall Islands (Marianas Variety, Feb. 27) - Fifty years after America tested its most powerful hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, many Marshall Islanders watch in anger as the worldâ€™s most powerful nation lavishes billions of dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan but has halted funding for a medical program for nuclear test victims and is dragging its feet on a request for $2 billion in compensation.

"Why should we have to beg the United States to get funding for our medical problems that are directly related to their nuclear bombs they tested on us?" asks Rongelap Islander Lijon Eknilang, who was eight years old when radioactive fallout rained down on her unsuspecting island village in 1954.

Eknilang, like many of the 86 Rongelap Islanders exposed to massive levels of radiation from the March 1, 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test, has had surgery for thyroid cancer and breast cancer, and says she is also suffering from liver problems.

In their haste to show the Russians that America had a deliverable H-bomb, United States officials ignored warnings that winds were blowing toward inhabited islands and detonated Bravo, irrevocably affecting thousands of Marshall Islanders with a radioactive legacy that 50 years on has not been put to rest.

March 1 is now marked as a national holiday in the Marshall Islands, and known globally as "Bikini Day." The day of the fallout is a bittersweet memory for nuclear test victims now that they have received some nuclear test compensation but who largely believe that America is now turning its back on people whose health and land it damaged with a total of 67 nuclear weapons tests.

"The United States promised us that as soon as it was finished at Bikini, it would return us safely to our home islands," said Bikini Sen. Tomaki Juda, who was four years old when the U.S. Navy evacuated Bikini Islanders in 1946 for the first post-World War II nuclear weapons tests.

"Weâ€™re still waiting for that promise."

The four atolls acknowledged by the U.S. government as "exposed" â€” Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and Utrik â€” have received a portion of the $270 million compensation package in the first Compact, and in the case of Bikini and Rongelap, additional nuclear clean up funding. But according to a ruling by the U.S.-funded Nuclear Claims Tribunal, this is but a fraction of the hardship, loss of use and nuclear cleanup compensation these islands deserve.

The Tribunal has already awarded Bikini and Enewetak an additional $1 billion; claims for Rongelap and Utrik are pending and are expected to add close to another billion dollars to the compensation price tag. Meanwhile, the U.S. gave the Tribunal only $45 million, to satisfy both personal injury claims â€” already in excess of $70 million â€” and the land damage claims.

Since Sept. 2000, the Marshall Islands has had a petition before the U.S. Congress asking for $2 billion more in compensation. The Congress asked the Bush administration in March 2002 to review the nuclear test compensation petition, but two years later, there is still no response from the administration.

Despite the contamination of the test sites and downwind islands, islanders are determined to go home â€” if itâ€™s safe.

In a country with only 72 square miles of land on 1,200 scattered islands, land is precious. "If you donâ€™t have land, you are nothing," says Juda. The Bikinians still live in exile nearly 60 years since moving, Enewetak Islanders can only live on the southern half of their atoll because the northern islands are still too "hot," and Rongelap Islanders have lived in exile since 1985, when, fearful of continuing radiation exposure, they organized a self-evacuation with the aid of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior.

Utrik Islanders, the farthest from the Bravo test fallout and who in the Cold War days of the 1950s were said to have received a "low-level" exposure, are now demanding a cleanup fund for their islands. They had the misfortune to have been returned home within three months of the Bravo test and, say independent scientists hired recently by Utrik Islanders to assess the safety of these islands, the people who had not been there during the Bravo test but who moved back later actually received a higher radiation dose from continuously living in and eating food from a still radioactive environment.

Rongelap Islanders were just 100 miles from Bikini and within a few hours of the Bravo test were standing ankle deep in fallout ash. "The whole island was covered with the powder, all the leaves on the trees, our water catchments," recalls Rokko Langinbelik, a Rongelap councilwoman who was 12 years old in 1954.

"The ash that fell on us really itched and burned our skin. My skin was blistered and later half my hair fell out."

Rongelap and Utrik islanders were finally evacuated two-to-three days after Bravo, beginning an ordeal that has seen both populations experience astronomically high rates of thyroid tumors and cancers, and many other health problems.

Today, Rongelap Islanders may be the closest to going home as a U.S.-funded resettlement program is expected to begin building houses on Rongelap later this year, following preliminary construction work over the past several years to establish basic infrastructure on the abandoned island, including an airfield, dock and a power plant.

But test victims say the American obligation to these islands cannot just suddenly end. "I would love to return to my home island," says Eknilang. "If they said it is safe, I will go home. But they (the U.S.) need to take care of my sickness until I die."

Juda and other islanders see an irony in the U.S. governmentâ€™s promise of tens of billions of dollars for Iraq and Afghanistan, but the apparent unwillingness of the U.S. government to resolve the problem that its nuclear tests caused. U.S. officials, when asked about Marshall Islandersâ€™ demands for more compensation, say emphatically that the $270 million in the first Compact was a "full and final" settlement.

"President Bush has told the entire world that the damage in Iraq and Afghanistan is a U.S. responsibility," says Juda. "Whatâ€™s difference between Bikini and Iraq?"

"Iâ€™m just hoping that those who caused this realize the hardship that they caused us," says Eknilang. "They hurt us, and now they donâ€™t want to take care of us."

The recent cut off of $2 million in annual U.S. funding for a comprehensive health care program for the people from the four nuclear test-affected atolls has incensed islanders.

"March 1 is a sad day not only for Bikinians but for all Marshallese affected (by the bomb)," says Juda. "We didnâ€™t understand that these H-bombs would bring a big sorrow to us. When older people think about what these bombs did to our islands it brings tears to their eyes.

"We spent years waiting to return home. Then, in the early 1970s the Americans told us it was safe, so some of us returned. But they had to be evacuated a short time later (because of high radiation levels). It broke our heart."

This, Juda says, is why the Bikinians will not return home until they receive a "guarantee" from the U.S. that Bikini is safe.

"America is number one in education, in rich people and" â€” Juda pauses for emphasis â€” "in lies.

"It is trying to run away from its promise to us. Thatâ€™s why many people are angry with the United States." Fifty years after America tested its most powerful hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, many Marshall Islanders watch in anger as the worldâ€™s most powerful nation lavishes billions of dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan but has halted funding for a medical program for nuclear test victims and is dragging its feet on a request for $2 billion in compensation.

"Why should we have to beg the United States to get funding for our medical problems that are directly related to their nuclear bombs they tested on us?" asks Rongelap Islander Lijon Eknilang, who was eight years old when radioactive fallout rained down on her unsuspecting island village in 1954.

Eknilang, like many of the 86 Rongelap Islanders exposed to massive levels of radiation from the March 1, 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test, has had surgery for thyroid cancer and breast cancer, and says she is also suffering from liver problems.

In their haste to show the Russians that America had a deliverable H-bomb, United States officials ignored warnings that winds were blowing toward inhabited islands and detonated Bravo, irrevocably affecting thousands of Marshall Islanders with a radioactive legacy that 50 years on has not been put to rest.

March 1 is now marked as a national holiday in the Marshall Islands, and known globally as "Bikini Day." The day of the fallout is a bittersweet memory for nuclear test victims now that they have received some nuclear test compensation but who largely believe that America is now turning its back on people whose health and land it damaged with a total of 67 nuclear weapons tests.

"The United States promised us that as soon as it was finished at Bikini, it would return us safely to our home islands," said Bikini Sen. Tomaki Juda, who was four years old when the U.S. Navy evacuated Bikini Islanders in 1946 for the first post-World War II nuclear weapons tests.

"Weâ€™re still waiting for that promise."

The four atolls acknowledged by the U.S. government as "exposed" â€” Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap and Utrik â€” have received a portion of the $270 million compensation package in the first Compact, and in the case of Bikini and Rongelap, additional nuclear clean up funding. But according to a ruling by the U.S.-funded Nuclear Claims Tribunal, this is but a fraction of the hardship, loss of use and nuclear cleanup compensation these islands deserve.

The Tribunal has already awarded Bikini and Enewetak an additional $1 billion; claims for Rongelap and Utrik are pending and are expected to add close to another billion dollars to the compensation price tag. Meanwhile, the U.S. gave the Tribunal only $45 million, to satisfy both personal injury claims â€” already in excess of $70 million â€” and the land damage claims.

Since Sept. 2000, the Marshall Islands has had a petition before the U.S. Congress asking for $2 billion more in compensation. The Congress asked the Bush administration in March 2002 to review the nuclear test compensation petition, but two years later, there is still no response from the administration.

Despite the contamination of the test sites and downwind islands, islanders are determined to go home â€” if itâ€™s safe.

In a country with only 72 square miles of land on 1,200 scattered islands, land is precious. "If you donâ€™t have land, you are nothing," says Juda. The Bikinians still live in exile nearly 60 years since moving, Enewetak Islanders can only live on the southern half of their atoll because the northern islands are still too "hot," and Rongelap Islanders have lived in exile since 1985, when, fearful of continuing radiation exposure, they organized a self-evacuation with the aid of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior.

Utrik Islanders, the farthest from the Bravo test fallout and who in the Cold War days of the 1950s were said to have received a "low-level" exposure, are now demanding a cleanup fund for their islands. They had the misfortune to have been returned home within three months of the Bravo test and, say independent scientists hired recently by Utrik Islanders to assess the safety of these islands, the people who had not been there during the Bravo test but who moved back later actually received a higher radiation dose from continuously living in and eating food from a still radioactive environment.

Rongelap Islanders were just 100 miles from Bikini and within a few hours of the Bravo test were standing ankle deep in fallout ash. "The whole island was covered with the powder, all the leaves on the trees, our water catchments," recalls Rokko Langinbelik, a Rongelap councilwoman who was 12 years old in 1954.

"The ash that fell on us really itched and burned our skin. My skin was blistered and later half my hair fell out."

Rongelap and Utrik islanders were finally evacuated two-to-three days after Bravo, beginning an ordeal that has seen both populations experience astronomically high rates of thyroid tumors and cancers, and many other health problems.

Today, Rongelap Islanders may be the closest to going home as a U.S.-funded resettlement program is expected to begin building houses on Rongelap later this year, following preliminary construction work over the past several years to establish basic infrastructure on the abandoned island, including an airfield, dock and a power plant.

But test victims say the American obligation to these islands cannot just suddenly end. "I would love to return to my home island," says Eknilang. "If they said it is safe, I will go home. But they (the U.S.) need to take care of my sickness until I die."

Juda and other islanders see an irony in the U.S. governmentâ€™s promise of tens of billions of dollars for Iraq and Afghanistan, but the apparent unwillingness of the U.S. government to resolve the problem that its nuclear tests caused. U.S. officials, when asked about Marshall Islandersâ€™ demands for more compensation, say emphatically that the $270 million in the first Compact was a "full and final" settlement.

"President Bush has told the entire world that the damage in Iraq and Afghanistan is a U.S. responsibility," says Juda. "Whatâ€™s difference between Bikini and Iraq?"

"Iâ€™m just hoping that those who caused this realize the hardship that they caused us," says Eknilang. "They hurt us, and now they donâ€™t want to take care of us."

The recent cut off of $2 million in annual U.S. funding for a comprehensive health care program for the people from the four nuclear test-affected atolls has incensed islanders.

"March 1 is a sad day not only for Bikinians but for all Marshallese affected (by the bomb)," says Juda. "We didnâ€™t understand that these H-bombs would bring a big sorrow to us. When older people think about what these bombs did to our islands it brings tears to their eyes.

"We spent years waiting to return home. Then, in the early 1970s the Americans told us it was safe, so some of us returned. But they had to be evacuated a short time later (because of high radiation levels). It broke our heart."

This, Juda says, is why the Bikinians will not return home until they receive a "guarantee" from the U.S. that Bikini is safe.

"America is number one in education, in rich people and" â€” Juda pauses for emphasis â€” "in lies.

"It is trying to run away from its promise to us. Thatâ€™s why many people are angry with the United States."

50 Años de Fallas en las Pruebas Nucleares
¿Bravo?
Traducción de Rubén Arvizu

Marzo del 2004 marca el 50 aniversario de la prueba en 1954 de la bomba de hidrógeno "Bravo" de E.E.U.U. en el atolón Bikini en las islas Marshall que resultó ser la prueba nuclear más grande de los E.E.U.U. "Bravo" formó un cráter de alrededor de una milla de ancho en el filo del atolón . Después de solo unos segundos de la explosión, la bola de fuego tenía casi tres millas de diámetro. En Rongerik, una isla a 135 millas al este de la prueba, la brillantez de "Bravo" fue visible durante casi un minuto. El físico Marshall Rosenbluth, que se encontraba en una nave a más de 30 millas , indicó que la bola de fuego "asciende y asciende, y ahora se expande. Para mí es como podría ser el cerebro enfermo, o un cerebro de un hombre maniatico, el aire ha comenzado a llenarse de esta materia gris, que conjeturo es coral radiactivo."

Falibilidad humana

"Bravo" trajo a la luz las consecuencias de la falibilidad humana en lo que respecta a las armas nucleares. En la preparación para la prueba, los científicos de Los Alamos calcularon mal una reacción importante de la fusión y subestimaron el tamaño de la explosión. Los científicos contaban conque la prueba sería el equivalente a cinco millones de toneladas de TNT, pero por el contrario "Bravo" produjo 15 megatones - haciendo la fuerza destructiva tres veces más de lo esperado y más de 1.000 veces mayor que la bomba arrojada en Hiroshima que causó mas de 135.000 muertes.

Consecuencias humanas

A unas 80 millas al este de Bikiní, una sustancia como nieve comenzó a llover sobre 23 pescadores abordo de un buque atunero japonés llamado "el Dragón Afortunado". Los pescadores no tenían ninguna idea que la ceniza era polvillo radiactivo de la prueba de la bomba de hidrógeno. Cuando volvieron a su puerto de Yaizu en la prefectura de Shizuoka el 14 de marzo, todos los pescadores sufrían de una severa radiación. En septiembre de 1954, murió el operador de radio del "Dragón Afortunado". El incidente causó un gran interés en Japón y alrededor del mundo. Después de muchas negociaciones, E.E.U.U. hizo un pago de 2 millones de dólares al gobierno japonés en enero de 1955, sin aceptar ninguna responsabilidad legal, para compensar todas las lesiones y daños causados como resultado de las cinco pruebas nucleares que había conducido en las islas Marshall. Los isleños en Rongelap y los atolones de Utirik (cerca de 100 millas al este de Bikini) también fueron expuestos al polvillo radiactivo. Un isleño de Rongelap declaró, "[ hubo ] una explosión ensordecedora y en unos minutos la tierra comenzó a sacudirse. Algunas horas más tarde, el polvillo radiactivo comenzó a caer sobre la gente, en el agua potable, y en los alimentos. Los niños jugaron con la colorida ceniza. No sabían lo que era." Mientras que 28 integrantes del personal norteamericano situado en Rongerik (a más de 135 millas al este de Bikini) fueron evacuados34 horas antes de la prueba, los isleños de Rongelap y de Utirik expuestos al polvillo radiactivo sólo fueron evacuados un día después. Para ese tiempo, muchos de los isleños de Rongelap tenían quemaduras y lesiones severas, y comenzaban a perder su pelo. Las islas Marshall se convirtieron en un territorio administrado por las Naciones Unidas después de la II Guerra Mundial. Mientras que "Bravo" es una prueba bien conocida, E.E.U.U. condujo un total de 67 pruebas nucleares en las islas Marshall desde 1946 hasta 1958. La fuerza total de las 67 pruebas fue de108 megatones, equivalentes a la fuerza destructiva de más de 7.000 bombas como la de Hiroshima. En 1988, se formó el Tribunal Nuclear para la Reparación de Daños a los isleños de las Marshall para conceder una remuneración a isleños por los daños causados por las pruebas nucleares.

Aunque alrededor de 270 millones de dólares fueron proporcionados a las víctimas entre 1986 y 2001, a medio siglo de distancia, los isleños todavía está esperando el reparto total de la remuneración. Durante una visita a las islas Marshall en enero de 2004, el congresista Richard Pombo (R.CA), que preside el Comité de Recursos que supervisa el financiamiento a las islas Marshall, admitió que las obligaciones de Washington '"no han terminado". Pombo indicó, "obviamente, Estados Unidos tiene una responsabilidad (por la herencia de la prueba nuclear). Este asunto lleva arrastrándose por 50 años. En cierto punto necesitamos cerrar este capítulo."

¿Una Lección Histórica Perdida?

A pesar de los graves errores en la serie de pruebas nucleares nortemericanas, el congreso autorizó al Ministerio de Energía de EE.UU., 34 millones de dólares en su presupuesto de 2004 para mejorar su sitio de pruebas en Nevada. Además, el presupuesto de 2004 autorizó 25 millones de dólares para acelerar los sitios de prueba, disminuyendo la preparación para reasumir las pruebas nucleares de 24-36 meses a 24 meses.

Mientras que la actual administración de E.E.U.U. insiste que no terminará el moratorio mundial de pruebas nucleares que fue establecido desde 1992, el creciente financiamiento para la preparación y mejoramiento de los sitios de prueba de Nevada parece ser parte de un esfuerzo bien coordinado para reasumir la producción de tan terrible arsenal, incluyendo armas nuevas aún no probadas. Reasumir las pruebas nucleares subterráneas por E.E.U.U. conduciría indudablemente a que otros países también lo hagan,. Ni E.E.U.U. ni el resto del mundo podrán absorber las consecuencias que serían causadas si se reactivan las pruebas nucleares.