To Mr. Pablo Picasso, and to all the artists and men of culture in the world.
Very dear sir and my very admired teacher and friend.
I turn to you to ask that your voice – authorized by its just reputation – reinforces the clamor to demand, in the name of everything that in the world means culture, well-being, beauty, joy and peace, the immediate suspension of testing Atomic thermonuclear bombs, since the continuation of them can only lead to a certain end: the general atomic war with the consequent human mass destruction.
Only the superior knowledge has given the human being the possibility to learn the nuclear structure of matter and the power to manipulate and manage the immense energy that accumulates, and that discovery has been applied to prepare instruments destined for mass destruction.
The threat continues, followed by a worse one, and has produced in the whole world a tremendous anguish and a frightful collective hysteria, which are leading to an imbalance of all order that depletes everything and leads society to a very rapid degeneration, visible and with complete evidence.
All that means art, culture and superior life is already in imminent danger and we are obliged to defend it immediately.
It seems that intelligence is not enough for man to make him understand that he is preparing his own destruction in every way. Raising, therefore, the voice of sensitivity and love to awaken that intelligence of its lethargy, 2000 American scientists have pronounced for the suspension of the tests to reach the possibility of banning atomic weapons. Sadly, some scientists of my neighboring country of the United States, have publicly said that mankind has nothing to fear from these bomb tests, “only the final use of these in the war would be terrible.”
But, are the test bombs made of different material than the bombs that will definitely be used in a war? The entire world can ask the Japanese seamen and fishermen, victims of atomic rain from a US bomb test in the Pacific, and the ones poisoned by eating contaminated fish as a result of the blast.
Perhaps scientists who do not look at atomic bomb tests as a threat to humanity, consider that the Japanese people are not part of that humanity. Against some opinions, experience shows that in the nuclear arms race of the great powers, the citizens of small nations, who have as much right to live as the great powers, will be infinitely more, in the case of atomic war, the helpless victims of the clash of the power of the great nations.
If the men of science, by the thousands, have raised their voice against this enormous atrocity, this voice so far does not seem to have been heard by all, since there are even scientists able to help to mute the alarm bells of their colleagues, favoring with that the producers of bombs.
Why has not that voice been heard more clearly by the millions of mothers whose children are threatened with death, preventing them from joining, organizing themselves around the world to stop the hand that makes the tools of destruction that will murder the children they gave life to?
Why has not that voice been actively supported by the millions of humans eager to live by building within peace and joy and not preparing the general annihilation within anguish and despair?
Why do not the women and men of the whole world already form an immense peace organization to forever stop the wickedness of war? What is the reason for this unexplained deafness in the face of the dreaded danger?
That is why I raise as high as I can my insignificant voice, to call all those who live by love and human sensitivity, building beauty that is the indispensable food of the higher life, to cry, to demand the immediate suspension of atomic bomb tests for at least the three years that have been proposed. We will thus give men time to recover their lost reasoning and reach a total ban, by agreement of the whole world, to stop the manufacture and use of thermonuclear utensils of mass destruction of mankind.
In the name of human solidarity, your attentive servant.
Her Excellency Hilda C. Heine, Ed.D., President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, delivered this speech on March 1, 2017 at the Marshall Islands’ Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day event.
Earlier today, North Korea conducted its fifth and most successful nuclear test, with an estimated yield close to that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. This dangerous and deplorable situation was predictable—and probably preventable—as noted on page 197 of my wife’s and my book, A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love at Home & Peace on the Planet:
If we continue to engage in regime change around the world and encourage it in North Korea via crippling sanctions, that nation’s leaders will maintain or increase their nuclear arsenal in order to deter such efforts. It’s a matter of self-preservation for them. Regime change probably would result in their being killed.
I have included a longer book excerpt immediately following my signature line. If you agree it’s time we got smart about ending nuclear proliferation, order a copy of the book—it’s now available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other booksellers—and then follow the suggestions in the section “A Call to Action,” which starts on page 271. Actions you can take right now include signing up for updates and alerts, and encouraging friends to read A New Map through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media. One more thing: We need more reviews posted on Amazon. Thanks very much for any help you can provide.
By the end of this section, you’ll have seen how our failing to take in the bigger picture—failing to think holistically—played a role in North Korea building its nuclear weapons and is unintentionally encouraging that nation to expand its arsenal. …
As always, I’ll focus on places where our nation has power to improve what appears to be an impossible relationship—in other words, I’ll focus on mistakes our nation has made and therefore can correct. But my focus on our mistakes is not to excuse the many despicable acts committed by the rulers of North Korea. Rather, that focus recognizes that we do not have direct control over their actions, and scolding them tends to make them dig in their heels. I see it as a hopeful sign that we have options for improving relations even with a regime as abhorrent as North Korea’s. The sad part is that, thus far, we have squandered those options by allowing repugnance to override our national interests. …
My Stanford colleague and former Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Dr. Siegfried Hecker, has visited North Korea seven times on unofficial missions sanctioned by our government. In a 2010 paper, he gave his perspective on how the deal fell apart (emphasis added):
The Agreed Framework was opposed immediately by many in Congress who believed that it rewarded bad behavior. Congress failed to appropriate funds for key provisions of the pact, causing the United States to fall behind in its commitments almost from the beginning. … [In 2002,] the Bush administration killed the Agreed Framework for domestic political reasons and because it suspected Pyongyang of cheating by covertly pursuing uranium enrichment. Doing so traded a potential threat that would have taken years to turn into bombs for one that took months, dramatically changing the diplomatic landscape in Pyongyang’s favor. … We found that Pyongyang was willing to slow its drive for nuclear weapons only when it believed the fundamental relationship with the United States was improving, but not when the regime was threatened.
Hecker’s last sentence provides the key to defusing the Korean crisis. If we continue to engage in regime change around the world and encourage it in North Korea via crippling sanctions, that nation’s leaders will maintain or increase their nuclear arsenal in order to deter such efforts. It’s a matter of self-preservation for them. Regime change probably would result in their being killed.
Holistic thinking would require us to take in the perspective of North Korea’s leaders. We don’t have to like them, but we do have to understand them. If we were to consider their perspective, we would recognize that, as distasteful as the North Korean government is, encouraging regime change is not in our best interests, because it will lead to the North maintaining, and probably increasing, its nuclear arsenal. If we were to think things through more rationally, new possibilities would open up.
… in January 2015, North Korea offered to suspend nuclear testing in return for cancellation of the joint US-South Korean military exercises. Those war games started a month later, and North Korea conducted a nuclear test in January 2016. We don’t know if suspending our war games would have prevented that test. Only if we had taken North Korea up on its offer would we have useful information on whether or not the country’s leaders had been serious.
These comments were delivered by Tony de Brum at a ceremony in Japan on March 1, 2016.
I am honored to be here with you on this very special occasion.
I wish to first offer my apologies for not keeping my promise to be with you in previous years for reasons which were not within my control.
I bring you greetings from the people of the Marshall Islands who, like you, share the knowledge of the horrors of nuclear weapons and their ever increasing threat to human life, to our children, and to our mother earth.
While our experience with nuclear arms cannot even come close to matching that of our Japanese brothers and sisters, it has taught us lessons of everlasting value not just for ourselves but all of mankind. From the deliberate exposure of human beings to radiation to systematic cover up of critical health impacts, from human experimentation to premature resettlement of exposed populations, from denial of claims to withholding of information critical to basic understanding of the extent of damage, the nuclear history of the Marshall Islands has been nothing short of a testament to human beings being abused, mistreated and marginalized by more powerful, more ambitious neighbors.
The most important of these lessons can only be that nuclear weapons of any kind are immoral and illegal and cannot be allowed to exist amongst civilized human beings. Nuclear weapons cannot be justified for any reason whatsoever, including those we continue to hear from countries claiming that these arms are required to preserve peace and security for the world.
Nuclear weapons have no conscience, no sense of discrimination, and cannot differentiate between good and evil. Like all weapons of mass destruction, nuclear arms have no mercy for babies and children, they are not selective as to flowers and trees and food and soil. They destroy all life and render a devastation that is final, complete, and irreversible. That itself should be reason enough to ban them from the face of the earth.
Between 1946 and 1958 the United States conducted atomic and thermonuclear tests and experiments in the Marshall Islands. The cumulative output of these tests has been described by Mr. Jon Weisgall, an attorney for the people of Bikini Atoll, as having a yield equivalent to “detonating 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day, for twelve years”. One of those events, the BRAVO shot of March 1, 1954 had the combined force of 1000 Hiroshima bombs. That the experimentation of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands wreaked havoc on the island community is an insensitive and cynical understatement, forever insulting and hurtful to our people. America’s nuclear program in the Marshall Islands inflicted pain and suffering to those who lived to see the tests themselves, those who survive today as Marshallese wounded in body and spirit, and those of future generations who will continue to bear the scars of this terrible chapter in our country’s history.
To this day, the United States continues to classify information pertinent to tests even though we have repeatedly requested their release. To this day, knowledge critical to our understanding the true extent of nuclear damage done to our people and our homeland is kept secret by America. According to their government, this information is withheld from public scrutiny because it is in the national interest of the United States that nuclear secrets be kept secret. Even after review by a United Nations Rapporteur and very specific recommendations made in his report, the United States still remains intransigent in its position to keep secret their nuclear activities in the Marshall Islands.
Unless and until the United States government releases all the information held in secrecy but necessary for the full understanding of its nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, no government, no leader worth his salt, no legislature, commission or scientific panel can claim fair and just resolution to the nuclear disagreement. There can be no closure without full disclosure.
As we speak, even more discoveries are being made in the Marshall Islands where environmental degradation and pollution directly attributable to nuclear weapons testing continue to threaten the health and livelihood of our people and pose immeasurable dangers to the health and well being of our children and their future generations. In Kwajalein Atoll, where missiles to deliver nuclear weapons are tested, severe heavy metal and other contamination of land and water has been so severe, the consumption of fish and other seafood has been found to be dangerous to human life and health. We cannot observe this injustice in silence and fear. We cannot allow our future generations to be permanently wounded on account of our timid refusal to confront and seek justice under the law. We cannot justify our existence as leaders and caretakers of our lands and heritage if we do not do all in our power to ensure that the truth of nuclear madness is exposed and the end of nuclear insanity is part of our global agenda. Only then will true peace be achieved and only then will the sacrifice of our forebears receive the respect and honor deserved.
In recent times, the Marshall Islands have filed in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) a lawsuit against the nuclear powers of the world seeking their compliance with Article VI of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. That action seeks to compel those countries with nuclear weapons to commence immediate negotiations to disarm and to negotiate in good faith an agreement for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the earth. Oral arguments are being heard in the Hague on the 7th of March of this year. We are confident that justice will prevail and that our nuclear powers will see their way clear to comply with the undertaking they made in signing the NPT to rid the world of nuclear weapons. I must make it absolutely clear that these ICJ lawsuits do not seek compensation, nor do they seek to point fingers or level liabilities against any of the nuclear powers. Our lawsuits only seek to engage the nuclear powers in negotiations for disarmament as they agreed to in the NPT.
To our brothers and sisters in Japan, the people of the Marshall Islands stand with you in your efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and to ban all development of these terrible arms which threaten us, whether in the military context or in its civilian for power generation. As long as these weapons are around and are capable of deployment at a second’s notice, we are in danger.
Nuclear weapons can be used by design or by accident, by military planning or by the act of insane characters; for as long as they exist, they are making human race a target in the nuclear killing field. That must end, it must stop, and we must be part of the movement to restore true peace and harmony in a world without nuclear weapons. It is something that we owe to those who have passed on before us as well as those of our future generations. It is the least we can do for our children and children’s children. Until that happens we must unite in our mission to eliminate nuclear weapons and serve that purpose until every breath in our bodies is gone.
To all our friends who have gathered with us today we bring you love from your Marshallese neighbors. May peace be with you and all our brothers and sisters in Japan, in Polynesia, and in every corner of our world.
Regarding the second ICBM test from Vandenberg within a week, it has become tedious to read time after time that the tests “are a visible reminder to both our adversaries and our allies of the readiness and capabilities of the Minuteman III weapon system.”
We certainly know by now that these missiles, when armed with nuclear weapons, can destroy cities and, in a nuclear war, contribute to human extinction. We also know that nuclear deterrence is only a hypothesis about human behavior that has not and cannot be proven to be effective. In the 70 years of the Nuclear Age there have been many close calls when nuclear deterrence came close to failing.
General Lee Butler, a former commander-in-chief of the US Strategic Command, who was once in charge of all US strategic nuclear weapons, has said, “Nuclear deterrence was and remains a slippery intellectual construct that translates very poorly into the real world of spontaneous crises, inexplicable motivations, incomplete intelligence and fragile human relationships.”
General Butler’s wisdom makes the colonels from Vandenberg who are quoted sound like naïve school children. Of course, these officers are only doing their job and repeating a simplistic message about the value of nuclear deterrence. Unfortunately, their perspective endangers the lives of all school children, and the rest of us, now and in the future.
There are more reasons to oppose ICBM tests from Vandenberg than that they are too expensive and violate treaty agreements, although these are certainly valid. The tests are a waste of resources and they violate US obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to negotiate in good faith for an end to the nuclear arms race at an early date.
Other reasons include: attempting to justify the “use them or lose them” nature of the Minuteman III missile force; the incentives for proliferation that US missile testing provide; the dangers to Santa Barbara County due to the proximity of Vandenberg; and the immorality of threatening to use nuclear-armed missiles that together could result in billions of deaths of humans and other forms of life.
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has a new booklet entitled, “15 Moral Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons,” available on its website.
David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).
Ursula Gelis, Executive director of the ‘Global Women’s Association against Nuclear Testing’ works for the rights and needs of victims of nuclear weapons explosions and nuclear testing. Her partners are in Kazakhstan and other states, affected by the long-term effects of nuclear weapons testing. At the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in December 2014[1], she interviewed an anti-nuclear activist and nuclear test victim from Australia.
Sue Haseldine in front of the Black Death column in Vienna in December 2014. Photo: Ursula Gelis
The Plague column in Vienna convincingly depicts human suffering; in this case – the tragedy of the Black Death epidemic from 1679 in Austria which killed about 30 000 to 75 000 souls. A Black Death does not distinguish between a noble and a beggar, and a nuclear weapon explosion does not either.
In today’s Australia, Aboriginal communities are still suffering from European racism that came in the aftermath of Captain Cook (1770) who looked at the Aborigines as lucky people, even if they did not own many material goods!
The first inhabitants of Australia, the people who were there ab origine, from the beginning, were food-gathering and hunting people. They arrived about 50,000 years ago.[2]
From region to region, Aboriginal tribes have clear cultural distinctions and their ability to co-exist with nature in a sustainable way could serve as a paradigm for human survival.
Western cultures, still proud of their technological achievements, and apparently committed to poison and to destroy the whole Earth, should listen to indigenous civilizations in order to prevent human extinction.
Aborigines survived best by avoiding contact with ‘White people’. The invaders brought diseases indigenous people had no immunity to resist. Children were taken away by missionaries, claiming that the parents were infidels.[3] Interestingly enough, the church and social Darwinism partnered in suppressing Aborigines. Evolution theory served to justify any brutality: massacres, plundering of goods, rape, etc. The ‘savage’ had to be domesticated and was defined as a race doomed to be extinct.[4]
In 1947 the British government decided to develop their own nuclear weapons program. “In August 1954, the Australian Cabinet agreed to the establishment of a permanent testing ground at a site that became named Maralinga, […] in southwestern South Australia.”[5]
The United Kingdom conducted 12 atmospheric tests between 1952 and 1957 on Australian territories at Maralinga, Emu Fields and Monte Bello Islands. […] During the testing period, roughly 16,000 Australian civilians and servicemen involved in the tests and 22,000 British servicemen were exposed to nuclear fallout.[6]
“Aboriginal people living downwind of the tests and other Australians more distant […] came into contact with airborne radioactivity.”[7]
“Plutonium and uranium fallout […] contaminated Aboriginal lands. Although the British government declared the Maralinga site safe following a 1967 cleanup, surveys in the 1980s proved otherwise, prompting a new cleanup project. Conflicts of interest, cost-cutting measures, shallow burials of radioactive waste, and other management “compromises” have left hundreds of square kilometers of Aboriginal lands contaminated and unfit for rehabilitation.”[8]
Civil disobedience
Sue Coleman-Haseldine (64) from the Kokatha-Mula nation is a survivor of British nuclear weapon testing and spoke at the Vienna conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons in December 2014[9].
Sue was born in Ceduna, a city about 1000 kilometers straight west from Adelaide, South Australia. Her community, including the local farmers, consists of approximately 4000 people. She grew up nearby, lived in the region all her life and can trace back the family’s history up to her great grand-mother.
“Our knowledge about colonialism started with Captain Cook. My grand grand-father was an Irish man who eventually went back to the white people. Our old people told us not to hate him. They were singing Irish songs to us around the camp fire. My first language was Kokatha, which is also my tribe’s name. Later at school, we had to learn English.”
Sue’s mother’s generation had to follow the colonizer’s order of only speaking English, so Sue was educated to speak her native tongue by her grand-parents as the cultural tradition-keeper. She went to an English school and grew up at a German mission.[10]
Sue always tried to combine traditional life-style with the governmental request of following the ‘British way’. She went out in the bush, kept Aboriginal traditions and educated herself and others. “This was maybe already an act of resistance, I guess”, she said smiling. Sue won the South Australian premier’s award for excellence in indigenous leadership in 2007 for her work as an activist, cultural teacher and environmental defender.[11]
“The elderly people had talked about the Nullarbor[12] dust storm, not knowing that they had seen the fall-out from Maralinga. I knew about Maralinga and started questioning the amount of cancer deaths. This was at the time when I started my own family.
More and more people were dying of leukemia and thyroid cancer. I had doctors remove my thyroids. My grand-daughter got it as well. The official city doctors offered us a radioactive drink to kill the cancer cells but we refused. My husband has heart problems and his family members died from leukemia too. Sometimes people die from ‘unknown causes’.
We learned that the effects of radiation can pass from one generation to the other and can also ‘jump further’ to the third one. When I taught about bush food I felt terribly guilty because I knew about the contamination of the soil. When I spoke to our doctor he simply said that I should carry on teaching about traditional food because we could not do anything about the contamination.”
Entertaining workers of the nuclear program
British servicemen could feel at home among friendly people from the Kokatha-Mula nation. Soldiers were accompanied to the beach during their holidays and Sue vividly remembers those encounters. “They were just ordinary soldiers, away from home and lonely. We became simply friendly with them. Also they had been misused as guinea-pigs. We had no clue that dying might have been already begun.
We were just innocent. We were not allowed to go to Maralinga. I know that the area was poisoned yet we did not know a lot. The old people could feel it, I guess.” –
Recently, “a […] case-control study examined miscarriage in wives and congenital conditions in offspring of the 2007 membership of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, a group of ex-servicemen who were stationed at atmospheric nuclear weapon test sites between 1952-67 [was conducted]…”[13]
Sue talks about the ‘Seven Sisters’, the Pleiades star constellation which plays also a role in Aboriginal traditions. The stars are girls who were travelling through Australia being chased by a man. One was caught and killed. Eventually she went up to the skies, followed by her free sisters.
“When we see them from September to March in the Australian skies, we think of them as strong. We are saying that what the sisters bury, man should never dig up because everything buried was poisoned.
My people are still living on contaminated land, because clean-up operations were not sufficient. Before testing, we had to leave our territories. Officials told us that our displacement is for governmental purposes. We had no idea what really was going on in terms of nuclear explosions.
After testing people were sent back, for instance to a place called ‘Old Valley’ on Maralinga lands but Maralinga village was closed off. The government is now thinking to open it as a tourist site.
In terms of measuring radioactivity we are totally cut off from acquiring information because it is illegal to have a Geiger counter! We are particular concerned of the uranium mining industry, exploiting sands found near the former testing site. Plutonium testing took place at the Woomera rocket range site. The place is military territory and we do not know what actually is going on there.”
Overturning the doctrine of terra nullius (land belonging to no-one)
“There was a fellow called Eddie Koiki Mabo fighting for that the native Australians had a prior title to land” ‘taken by the Crown since Cook’s declaration of possession in 1770’.[14]
“Normally rules are not very nice for Aboriginal people. Property rights are splitting communities and devastate families. The government wanted us to prove that we had lived on our land for the last two hundred years. I said no, because this land was given to me by birth and not by the British government. So finally we could seek recognition but the minerals belong to the Crown.”
“Our alliance is well connected and once a month the community leaders link up by phone and we talk about what to do next. During meetings, governmental people are absent. We have international visitors from France, Japan and so on. People from all over the world should know that we do exist, that we are humans (laughter).
We want to stop uranium mining, let us start with banning it for a year first. Then we could probably breathe better…and of course, I do not want any nuclear weapon testing. Nuclear weapons should not exist.
In order to understand our complex societies, it is best to be with us for a while. Our strong connection to the land might be valuable for you to experience. We do not own the land, the land owns us. Come over, a week is plenty of time to convert you into one of us.”
[6] From 1957 to 1958, nine atmospheric tests followed over Christmas Island (Kiritimati) and Malden Island in the central Pacific Ocean, some of which were considerably more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The remaining 24 UK nuclear tests were conducted jointly with the United States at the Nevada Test Site.
[10]Occasional Paper 3: The struggle for souls and science, constructing the fifth continent: German missionaries and scientists in Australia. The 16 papers in this volume, edited by Professor Walter Veit, explore the contribution of late nineteenth and early twentieth century German scientists and missionaries in the emerging fields of Australian ethnography and linguistics.
Themes within the papers include the study of Aboriginal religion, language, and art, and the conflict between missionaries and the emerging discipline of academic anthropology in Australia and Britain.
Occasional Papers Number 3 also addresses the academic influences, research agendas and methodologies of the German scholars who worked in Australia, as well as the extent to which those scholars dominated the creation of an image of Australia in Europe in both theory and practice. http://artsandmuseums.nt.gov.au/museums/strehlow/manuscripts/publications.
[14] The Mabo decision altered the foundation of land law in Australia by overturning the doctrine of terra nullius (land belonging to no-one) on which British claims to possession of Australia were based. This recognition inserted the legal doctrine of native title into Australian law. The judgments of the High Court in the Mabo case recognized the traditional rights of the Meriam people to their islands in the eastern Torres Strait. The Court also held that native title existed for all Indigenous people in Australia prior to the establishment of the British Colony of New South Wales in 1788. In recognizing that Indigenous people in Australia had a prior title to land taken by the Crown since Cook’s declaration of possession in 1770, the Court held that this title exists today in any portion of land where it has not legally been extinguished. The decision of the High Court was swiftly followed by the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) which attempted to codify the implications of the decision and set out a legislative regime under which Australia’s Indigenous people could seek recognition of their native title rights.
Is there an emotional connection between the oceans and the pursuit of peace? For whatever reason, peace ships have been increasing in number over the past century.
Probably the first of these maritime vessels was the notorious Ford Peace Ship of 1915, which stirred up more ridicule than peace during World War I.
Almost forty years later, another peace ship appeared― the Lucky Dragon, a Japanese fishing boat showered with radioactive fallout from an enormous U.S. H-bomb explosion on March 1, 1954, in the Marshall Islands. By the time the stricken vessel reached its home port in Japan, the 23 crew members were in advanced stages of radiation poisoning. One of them died. This “Lucky Dragon incident” set off a vast wave of popular revulsion at nuclear weapons testing, and mass nuclear disarmament organizations were established in Japan and, later, around the world. Thus, the Lucky Dragon became a peace ship, and today is exhibited as such in Tokyo in a Lucky Dragon Museum, built and maintained by Japanese peace activists.
Later voyages forged an even closer link between ocean-going vessels and peace. In 1971, Canadian activists, departing from Vancouver, sailed a rusting fishing trawler, the Phyllis Cormack, toward the Aleutians in an effort to disrupt plans for a U.S. nuclear weapons explosion on Amchitka Island. Although arrested by the U.S. coast guard before they could reach the test site, the crew members not only mobilized thousands of supporters, but laid the basis for a new organization, Greenpeace. Authorized by Greenpeace, another Canadian, David McTaggart, sailed his yacht, the Vega, into the French nuclear testing zone in the Pacific, where the French navy deliberately rammed and crippled this peace ship. In 1973, when McTaggart and the Vega returned with a new crew, French sailors, dispatched by their government, stormed aboard and beat them savagely with truncheons.
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, peace ships multiplied. At major ports in New Zealand and Australia, peace squadrons of sailboats and other small craft blocked the entry of U.S. nuclear warships into the harbors. Also, Greenpeace used the Rainbow Warrior to spark resistance to nuclear testing throughout the Pacific. Even after 1985, when French secret service agents attached underwater mines to this Greenpeace flagship as it lay in the harbor of Auckland, New Zealand, blowing it up and murdering a Greenpeace photographer in the process, the peace ships kept coming.
Much of this this maritime assault upon nuclear testing and nuclear war was inspired by an American peace ship, the Golden Rule.
The remarkable story of the Golden Rule began with Albert Bigelow, a retired World War II U.S. naval commander. Appalled by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he became a Quaker and, in 1955, working with the American Friends Service Committee, sought to deliver a petition against nuclear testing to the White House. Rebuffed by government officials, Bigelow and other pacifists organized a small group, Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons, to employ nonviolent resistance in the struggle against the Bomb. After the U.S. government announced plans to set off nuclear bomb blasts near Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands―an island chain governed by the United States as a “trust territory” for the native people―Bigelow and other pacifists decided to sail a 30-foot vessel of protest, the Golden Rule, into the nuclear testing zone. Explaining their decision, Bigelow declared: “All nuclear explosions are monstrous, evil, unworthy of human beings.”
In January 1958, Bigelow and three other crew members wrote to President Dwight Eisenhower, announcing their plans. As might be expected, the U.S. government was quite displeased, and top officials from the State Department, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the U.S. Navy conferred anxiously on how to cope with the pacifist menace. Eventually, the administration decided to ban entry into the test zone.
Thus, after Bigelow and his crew sailed the Golden Rule from the West Coast to Honolulu, a U.S. federal court issued an injunction barring the continuation of its journey to Eniwetok. Despite the legal ramifications, the pacifists set sail. Arrested on the high seas, they were brought back to Honolulu, tried, convicted, and placed on probation. Then, intrepid as ever, they set out once more for the bomb test zone, were arrested, were tried, and—this time―sentenced to prison terms.
Meanwhile, their dramatic voyage inspired an outpouring of popular protest. Antinuclear demonstrations broke out across the United States. The newly-formed National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy went on the offensive. Moreover, an American anthropologist, Earle Reynolds, along with his wife Barbara and their two children, continued the mission of the Golden Rule on board their sailboat, the Phoenix. In July 1958, they entered the nuclear testing zone. That August, facing a storm of hostile public opinion, President Eisenhower announced that the United States was halting its nuclear tests while preparing to negotiate a test ban with the Soviet Union.
Even as test ban negotiations proceeded fitfully, leading to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and, ultimately, to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996, the Golden Rule dropped out of sight. Then, in early 2010, the vessel was discovered, wrecked and sunk in northern California’s Humboldt Bay. Contacted by historians about preserving the Golden Rule for posterity, officials at the Smithsonian Museum proved uninterested. But peace activists recognized the vessel’s significance. Within a short time, local chapters of Veterans for Peace established the Golden Rule Project to restore the battered ketch.
Thanks to volunteer labor and financial contributions from these U.S. veterans and other supporters, the ship has been largely rebuilt, and funds are currently being raised for the final stage of the project. Veterans for Peace hope to take the ship back to sea in 2014 on its new mission: “educating future generations on the importance of the ocean environment, the risks of nuclear technology, and the need for world peace.”
As a result, the Golden Rule will sail again, restored to its role as America’s most important peace ship.
” . . . protect the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources; protect the health of the inhabitants . . .” (1)
According to Marshallese folklore a half-bad and half-good god named Etao was associated with slyness and trickery. When bad things happened people knew that Etao was behind it. “He’s dangerous, that Etao,” some people said. “He does bad things to people and then laughs at them.”(2) Many in the Marshall Islands now view their United States patron as a latter day Etao.
Castle-Bravo
Sixty years ago this month the American Etao unleashed its unprecedented fury at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It was nine years after the searing and indelible images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the world first learned about the dangers of radioactive fallout from hydrogen bombs that use atomic Hiroshima-sized bombs as triggers.
Castle-Bravo, the first in a series of megaton-range hydrogen bomb tests at Bikini Atoll on March first of 1954, was nicknamed “the shrimp” by its designer – Edward Teller – because it was the first deliverable thermonuclear weapon in the megaton range in the U.S. nuclear holster. We had beaten the Soviets in this key area of nuclear weapons miniaturization when the Cold War was hot and the United States did not need to seek approval from anybody, especially the Marshallese entrusted to them through the U.N.
At fifteen megatons – 1,000 times the Hiroshima A-bomb – the Bravo behemoth was a fission-fusion-fission [3-F] thermonuclear bomb that spread deadly radioactive fallout over an enormous swath of the central Pacific Ocean, including the inhabited atolls of Rongelap, Rongerik and Utrik in the Marshalls archipelago. The downwind people of Rongelap [120 miles downwind of Bikini] and Utrik [300 miles east of Bikini] were evacuated as they suffered from the acute effects of radiation exposure.
As an international fallout controversy reached a crescendo, a hastily called press conference was held in Washington in mid-March 1954 with Eisenhower and AEC chair Admiral Lewis [“nuclear energy too cheap to meter”] Strauss, his Administration’s top lieutenant in nuclear matters.
Adm. Lewis Strauss: “I’ve just returned from the Pacific Proving Grounds of the AEC where I witnessed the second part of a test series of thermonuclear weapons . . . For shot one [Bravo] the wind failed to follow the predictions, but shifted south of that line and the little islands of Rongelap, Rongerik and Utrik were in the edge of the path of the fallout . . . The 236 Marshallese natives appeared to me to be well and happy . . .The results, which the scientists at Los Alamos and Livermore had hoped to obtain from these two tests [Bravo and Union] were fully realized. An enormous potential has been added to our military posture.” Strauss added the caveat that “the medical staff on Kwajalein have advised us that they anticipate no illness, barring of course, diseases which may be hereafter contracted.” (3)
Even former Sec. of State Henry Kissinger took note of the significance of Bravo and the new perils associated with widespread radioactive fallout contamination from megaton sized H-bombs, as might happen if the Soviets dropped The Big One on our nation’s capital and the fallout headed up the Eastern Seaboard. Writing about nuclear weapons and foreign policy in 1957, Kissinger wrote: “The damage caused by radiation is twofold: direct damage leading to illness, death or reduced life expectancy, and genetic effects.”(4)
Almira Matayoshi was one of the Rongelap “natives” referred to by Adm. Strauss. When I interviewed her in 1981 in Majuro she recounted her experience with Bravo:
The flash of light was very strong, then came the big sound of the explosion; it was quite a while before the fallout came. The powder was yellowish and when you walked it was all over your body. Then people began to get very weak and bean to vomit. Most of us were weak and my son was out of breath.
I have pains and much fear of the bomb. At that time I wanted to die, and we were really suffering; our bodies ached and our feet were covered with burns and our hair fell out. Now I see babies growing up abnormally and some are mentally disturbed, but none of these things happened before the bomb. It is sad to see the babies now.(5)
A persistent puzzle surrounds the question of intentionality. In a 1982 New York Times interview, Gene Curbow (the former weather technician during Bravo) confessed that the winds did not “shift” according to the official U.S. explanation for the massive contamination during Bravo. “The wind had been blowing straight at us for days before the test,” said Curbow. “It was blowing straight at us during the test, and straight at us after the test. The wind never shifted.” When asked why it had taken so long to come forth with this important information, Curbow replied “It was a mixture of patriotism and ignorance, I guess.”(6)
The late Dr. Robert Conard, head of the Brookhaven/AEC medical surveillance team for the islanders, wrote in his 1958 annual report on the exposed Marshallese: “The habitation of these people on Rongelap Island affords the opportunity for a most valuable ecological radiation study on human beings . . . The various radionuclides present on the island can be traced from the soil through the food chain and into the human being.”(7)
In reference to the exposed Marshallese after Bravo, AEC official Merrill Eisenbud bluntly stated during a NYC AEC meeting in 1956, “Now, data of this type has never been available. While it is true that these people do not live the way westerners do, civilized people, it is nonetheless also true that they are more like us than the mice.”(8)
At present, the atoll communities of Bikini, Enewetak, and Rongelap remain sociologically disrupted and uncertain about their future as their contaminated islands and lagoons have yet to be fully repatriated and restored for permanent human habitation.
Kwajalein
Following 67 A- and H-bombs at Bikini and Enewetak between 1946-58, the U.S. was not about to let go of its island capture, terminate the AEC-Brookhaven long-term human radiation studies at Rongelap and Utirk, nor forfeit the valuable “catcher’s mitt” at Kwajalein for monthly incoming ICBMs from Vandenberg air base in California and Kauai. In 1961 – following a polio outbreak on Ebeye, Kwajalein – Pres. Kennedy ordered a comprehensive review of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands by his Harvard economist friend Anthony M. Solomon, head of the New York Reserve Bank.
Correspondingly, JFK’s National Security Action Memorandum 145 of April 18, 1962 called for the movement of Micronesia into a permanent relationship with the U.S.(9)
Through legerdemain and the inherent asymmetry of the relationship, the U.S. took every conceivable advantage of its island wards, thus setting the stage for the ongoing human and ecological radiation studies and other Pentagon activities in perpetuity.
To this end the Solomon Report recommended a massive spending program just prior to a future status plebiscite being planned for Micronesia. “It is the Solomon Mission’s conclusion that those programs and the spending involved will not set off a self-sustaining development process of any significance in the area. It is important, therefore, that advantage be taken of the psychological impact of the capital investment program before some measure of disappointment is felt.”(10)
As the Pentagon and AEC used the isolated isles of the Marshalls to perfect its Cold War nuclear deterrent – replete with human subjects for longitudinal radiation studies – let us not forget the Pentagon’s ongoing project of missile defense, aka “Star Wars” at Kwajalein Atoll encompassing the world’s largest lagoon bull’s eye.
Characterized as “hitting a bullet with a bullet,” ballistic missile defense has always had a reputation for fantasy and wish fulfillment, sold to Pres. Reagan with an exciting and glitzy video designed to parallel the then-sensation called “Star Wars.” Kwajalein and the fiction of Ballistic Missile Defense has tragically dumped good money after bad, notwithstanding the huge profits by Boeing, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, MIT’s Lincoln Lab, Aerojet, Booz Allen et al. Between 1962 and 1996 the U.S. spent $100 billion. And between 1996 and 2012 the total comes to $274 billion and still counting.(11)
And what do we have to show for our nearly $300 billion missile defense boondoggle? Last July 4th was also the planned launch date for a test of the BMD program. The Ground Based Missile Defense system at Kwajalein Atoll failed again, despite the fact that the test was manipulated: “The intercept team knew ahead of time when to expect the incoming missile and all its relevant flight parameters. Such luxury is obviously not available in real-life combat. But even if the $214 million ‘test’ had worked it would not prove much.”(12)
The collateral damage known as Ebeye Island at Kwajalein is infamously tagged throughout the region as the “slum of the Pacific.” The appalling conditions on Ebeye for its 15,000 cramped residents and pool of cheap labor for the adjacent missile base are in stark contrast to the southern California-like setting on ten times as large Kwajalein Island for the 3,000 Americans manning the missile base.
Likening it to South African apartheid, I recall my first encounter with Kwajalein and Ebeye as a young Peace Corps volunteer in 1976:
Having spent the afternoon on Kwajalein yesterday left me feeling ashamed to be an American citizen. The overt segregation of the American civilian and military employees on Kwajalein Island, and the cheap labor pool of Marshallese living on nearby Ebeye Island, makes me realize that racism is not confined to the American south.(13)
And just to insure the longevity of the asymmetry, the American Etao embedded a little-noticed caveat into the 1963 Limited [Atmospheric] Test Ban Treaty that allows the U.S. to unilaterally resume nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, despite assurances to the contrary during the 1986 Compact status negotiations. Safeguard “C,” as the provision is known, also calls for the readiness of Johnston Atoll and Kauai in the Hawaiian archipelago, and Enewetak Atoll in the Marshalls under the auspices of the DOE’s Pacific Area Support Office in Honolulu.(14)
Several formerly inhabited atolls remain off limits due to lingering radioactivity decades after the last H-bomb shattered the peace on Bikini and Enewetak. Imagine if the U.S. finally saw fit to do the right thing and pay their past-due $2 billion nuclear legacy bill, a small morsel of the annual Star Wars budget.(15)
The recently discovered Mexican refugee fisherman on Ebon Atoll in the Marshall Islands drew world attention to these obscure coral formations atop extinct and submerged volcanoes where a continuous culture has survived and nearly thrived for the past two thousand years. And even though Jose Salvador Alvarenga said he had no idea where he was, Uncle Sam has always known where these tiny islands are, strategically located stepping stones in the bowels of the northwestern Pacific leading to Asia’s doorstep, now in the era of the pending Trans Pacific Partnership.
Undoubtedly the legendary Etao is somewhere lurking in these once-pacific isles savoring the work of its American protégé . . .
[Addendum: PBS is sitting on an important 90-minute film about the radiation experiments in the Marshall Islands titled “Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1” by Adam Horowitz. Please contact PBS and urge them to air “Nuclear Savage,” a documentary film they funded and are keeping from the public’s view. Also, please see these additional articles about the Marshall Islands: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/01/nuclear-savages and PBS’ attempt to suppress this film.
Grey, Eve. Legends of Micronesia. Book Two. The sly Etao and the sea demon. 1951. Honolulu: Office of the High Commissioner. TTPI, Dept. of Educations. Micronesian Reader Series. Pages 35-36.
Adm. Lewis Strauss, chair-AEC. Press conference about Bravo with Pres. Eisenhower, March 12, 1954, Washington, D.C. The archival footage may be viewed in this clip @ 1:00-4:30 in Part 3 of O’Rourke’s Half Life.
Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. Council on Foreign Relations. Harper Bros.: New York. 1957. Page 75.
Interview with Almira Matayoshi conducted by Glenn Alcalay in Feburary 1981 in Majuro, Marshall Islands. This interview is online: http://archive.is/M5aH
Judith Miller. “Four veterans suing U.S. over exposure in ’54 atom test.” New York Times. Sept. 20, 1982.
Robert Conard, M.D., et al. March 1957 medical survey of Rongelap and Utrik people three years after exposure to radioactive fallout. Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, N.Y. June 1958. Page. 22.
Merrill Eisenbud. Minutes of A.E.C. meeting. U.S.A.E.C. Health and Safety Laboratory. Advisory Committee on Biology & Medicine. January 13-14, 1956. Page 232.
March 1, 1954 – In the Pacific Ocean’s Marshall Islands, the U.S. military conducted the BRAVO nuclear weapons test, one of thousands conducted by Nuclear Club Members, in the atmosphere, on the ground, and underground, during the Cold War and Post-Cold War period. The yield, of approximately 15 megatons from the solid fuel lithium deuteride fusion warhead, was 2-3 times what was expected and unusual prevailing winds carried the radioactive fallout to unexpected places including a Japanese fishing trawler, Lucky Dragon sailing outside the exclusion zone. All 23 Japanese crewmen were later hospitalized and one of the unfortunate men died as a result of radioactive exposure from an immense blast that produced a fireball four miles wide and a mushroom cloud 60 miles wide. (Source: Chuck Hansen. “The Swords of Armageddon.” Chuklea Publications: Sunnyvale, CA, 2007.)
March 4, 1969 – MIT and 30 other universities called for a national research stoppage to alert the public to how the “misuse of science and technology knowledge presents a major threat to the existence of mankind.” Concerns not only about nuclear weapons, radioactive and chemical toxic leaks from U.S. military and civilian nuclear production and bombmaking sites but also about Agent Orange, and biological/chemical WMDs led scientists and academics to sign on to this pledge. (Source: Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. “The Untold History of the United States.” New York: Gallery Books, 2012.)
March 11, 2011 – After a historically large earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan, three of the six nuclear reactors at Tokyo Electrical Power Company’s Fukushima Dai-chi facility suffered partial meltdowns resulting in the evacuation of tens of thousands of nearby residents. The accident was the worst nuclear meltdown since the April 1986 Chernobyl Incident. Nearly three years later, large volumes of radioactive-contaminated water continue to spill into the Pacific Ocean from the plant site as a long-term solution to the crisis has yet to be reached. (Source: Various news media reports including Democracy Now, 2011-2014).
March 22, 1963 – At a broadcast press conference, President John F. Kennedy speaks about the possibility that by the 1970s “…of the U.S. having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these [nuclear] weapons…I regard that as the greatest possible danger and hazard.” While those fears were not quite realized, it is nevertheless true that nuclear proliferation in Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere remains a deadly serious problem in the 21st century. Some experts believe that only by phasing out nuclear power in the next few decades, can the world head off the actualization of our 35th President’s worst fears.
(Source: Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick. “The Untold History of the United States.” New York: Gallery Books, 2012.)
March 23, 1983 – In a nationally televised speech, President Ronald Reagan expressed the desire to “make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete” by committing the U.S. to develop a national missile defense system based on the ground and in outer space. Media critics derisively referred to the plan as “Star Wars” and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on attempts to deploy modest theater and national missile defenses in the coming decades. In 2001, President George W. Bush withdrew from the 1972 ABM Treaty with Moscow signaling a new destabilizing, uncertain strategic defensive arms race that continues today. (Source: Bradley Graham. “Hit to Kill: The New Battle Over Shielding America From Missile Attack.” New York: Public Affairs, 2001.)
Mr. President, distinguished guests and ladies and gentlemen,
I am very happy to be here with the Marshallese victims in the 60th anniversary of the Bravo shot. I thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to speak before you.
My name is Matashichi Oishi, former crewmember of the Japanese fishing boat, Fifth Lucky Dragon. Sixty years ago, we were catching tuna at about 160 kilometers to the east of Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands.
On the morning of March 1, 1954, the U.S. military conducted a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll. The destructive power of the bomb was enormous. It is said to be 1,000 times greater than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Not only our boat but about 1,000 Japanese fishing boats were exposed to the deadly fallout from the bomb. After the explosion with brilliant flash, frightening sound and a red fire ball going up to the sky, massive white powder fell on us. Our heads and bodies were covered with it. The white powder was not hot. Nor it had any smell or taste, so we did not feel any danger at that time. But around the evening of that day, all crewmembers fell sick, having headache, dizziness, nausea or diarrhea. Some of them were ill in bed.
It was only after some time that we learned the white powder contained strong radiation. We had no knowledge about radiation at that time. The white powder stuck on our heads or got into our underwear. As it accumulated on the boat, footsteps were marked on the deck after we walked on it. After a couple of days, blisters developed on our skin. It was actually the burns caused by radiation. After a period of one week to 10 days, our hair began to come off. Such strange symptoms appeared one after another on our bodies. We talked each other on the boat, “Let us not talk about this even after going home. If it is known to the United States, something terrible will happen. We may be used as guinea pigs for scientific tests.”
Due to the exposure to the fallout, 16 out of 23 crewmembers have died in the prime of life in their 40s or 50s. My first child was deformed and stillborn. I have suffered from liver cancer and had an operation. At present, I am suffering from bronchitis, irregular heartbeat, diabetes, high blood pressure, atrial fibrillation and lung tumor. Two years ago, I had brain hemorrhage, which left paralysis on the right side of my body. Now I have lost the sense of smell and am barely surviving, taking more than 20 kinds of medicine. Many fishermen who encountered the H-bomb test have died without knowing that they were internally irradiated.
The government of Japan, rather than claiming compensation for the enormous damage suffered by the fishing communities or fishermen, received only a meager amount of consolation payment from the US. In return, behind the scenes, Japan made deals with the U.S. government to receive the provision of its nuclear technology and nuclear reactors. That was the start of nuclear power generation in Japan.
Since around 1985, I have spoken before junior and senior high school students more than 700 times to make them known about the danger of radiation and internal exposure.
Internal exposure, though invisible, is life-threatening and dangerous. This danger still persists in Rongelap and the Marshall Islands. A report of the US National Cancer Institute has estimated that more and more Marshallese people will develop cancers. In addition to fallout from nuclear testing which covered the earth, nuclear plant accidents took place in Three Mile Islands, Chernobyl and Fukushima, inflicting severe damage and contamination on local people and the world over. When I see an increase of cancer patients, I suspect that radiation effects may be one of the causes of this situation.
It was reported that the total amount of radiation released into the ocean since the accident of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant amounts to 27,000 trillion Bq as of September last year. I hear that even now, 400 tons of contaminated groundwater is flowing into the ocean. The Bikini test contaminated the ocean, and the same thing is happening now. As a former fisherman, I am concerned about radiation effects on the marine life near Japan and in the Pacific. Both the Marshall Islands and Japan are ocean nations. We must keep our ocean clean and safe.
Ten years ago, together with John Anjain, late Rongelap mayor, I visited his home island Rongelap. John told me a lot about the old days on the island. I especially remember the story about his son, Lekoj. I felt his deep sorrow as a father to lose a 19-year-old son, who used to be as strong and happy as anyone else. Sadly, his death was followed by many more deaths and sufferings. The United States should reveal all the facts on the damage and effects of nuclear testing and take responsibility for them. I will continue to call on the US to fulfill its responsibility to the end. Just one month and a half since that time, I was informed of his death. He died of cancer. My heart broke at the news.
Many of the people in the Marshall Islands greatly suffered from nuclear arms race, which was carried on for producing powerful weapons to fight. I call on the leaders of nuclear weapon states to reflect on their folly. Give justice to the victims. Those responsible for nuclear damage must make compensation to them. I firmly oppose both nuclear weapons and nuclear power.
I am honored to be here with you on this very special occasion.
The remarkable 
Sixty years ago this month the American Etao unleashed its unprecedented fury at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It was nine years after the searing and indelible images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the world first learned about the dangers of radioactive fallout from hydrogen bombs that use atomic Hiroshima-sized bombs as triggers.