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maeamian · 1 year ago

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I think it is worth reading the Complaint regarding the explosion of lethal weapons within our home islands, written to the UN by Marshallese teacher Dwight Heine and described as "one of the outstanding documents of the young nuclear era" [source], reproduced in large part under a cut:

“… [I]n view of the increasing danger from the experiments with deadly explosives thousands of times more powerful than anything previously known to men, the lethal effects of which have already touched the inhabitants of two of the atolls in the Marshalls, namely, Rongelab and Uterik, who are now suffering in various degrees from “lowering of blood count,” burns, nausea and the falling off of hair from the head, and whose complete recovery no one can promise with any certainty, we, the Marshallese people feel that we must follow the dictates of our consciences to bring for this urgent plea to the United Nations, which has pledged itself to safeguard the life, liberty and the general well being of the people of the Trust Territory, of which the Marshallese people are a part.

The Marshallese people are not only fearful of the danger to their persons from these deadly weapons in case of another miscalculation, but they are also very concerned for the increasing number of people who are being removed from their land.

Land means a great deal to the Marshallese. It means more than just a place where you can plant your food crops and build your houses; or aa place where you can bury your dead. It is the very life of the people. Take away their lands and their spirits go also.

The Marshall Islands are all low coral atolls with the land area where food plants can be cultivated quite limited, even for today’s population of about eleven-thousand people. But the population is growing rapidly; the time when this number will be doubled is not far off.

The Japanese had taken away the best portions of the following atolls; Jaluit, Kwajalein, Enewetak, Mille, Maloelap and Wotje to be fortified as part of their preparation for the last war, World War II. So far only Imedj Island on Jaluit Atoll has been returned to its former owners.

For security reasons, Kwajalein Island its being kept for the military use. Bikini and Einwetak were taken away for Atomic bomb tests and their inhabitants were moved to Kili Island and Ujelang Atoll respectively. Because Rongelab and Uterik are now radio-active, their inhabitants are being kept on Kwajalein for an indeterminate length of time. “Where next?” is the big question for which looms large in all our minds.

Therefore, we the members of the Marshallese Congress Hold-Over Committee, writers of this petition, who are empowered by the Marshallese Congress, to act in its name when it is not in session and which is in turn a group of members representing all the municipalities in the Marshalls, due to the increasing threat to our life, liberty, happiness and possession of land, do hereby submit this petition to the United Nations with the hope that it will act on our urgent plea. Thus, we request that:

1. All the experiments with lethal weapons within this area be immediately ceased.

2. If the experiments with said weapons should be judged absolutely necessary for the eventual bwell being of all the people of this world and cannot be stopped or changed to other areas do to the unavailability of other locations, we then submit the following suggestions:

a. All possible precautionary measures be taken before such weapons are exploded. All human beings and their valuable possessions be transported to safe distances first, before such occur.

b. All the people living in this area be instructed in safety measures. The people of Rongelab would have avoided much danger if they had known not to drink the waters on the home island after the radio-active dusts had settled on them.

c. Adequate funds be set aside to pay for the possessions of the people in case they will have to be moved from their homes. This will include lands, houses and whatever possessions they cannot take with them so that the unsatisfactory arrangements for the Bikinians and Eniwetak people shall not be repeated.

d. Coures be taught to the Marshallese Medical Practitioners and Health-Aides which will be useful in the detection of and the circumventing of preventable dangers.

We would be very pleased to submit more information or explain further any points we have raised that may need clarifications.

The Marshallese People who signed this petition are on the following sheets, divided in the following manner: the first group are members of the Marshallese Congress Hold-Over Committee. The second group are some of the many interested Marshallese citizens. The name of each person appears on the left hand side and his or her home atoll and occupation on the right hand side opposite the signature.

If more signatures are needed we will promptly supply them. The only reason we are not supplying more now is because to do so would mean a delay of some three months, the tome necessary to make a complete circuit of our far-flung atolls and islands by ship.”

while everyone's rightfully talking about oppenheimer and its flaws regarding the erasure of japanese and native american voices regarding nuclear testing and detonations, i'd like to bring up the fact that pacific islanders have also been severely impacted by nuclear testing under the pacific proving grounds, a name given by the US to a number of sites in the pacific that were designated for testing nuclear weapons after the second world war, at least 318 of which were dropped on our ancestral homes and people. i would like if more people talked about this.

important sections are bolded for ease of reading. i would appreciate this being reblogged since it's a bit alarming how few people know about this.

in 1946, the indigenous peoples of pikinni (the bikini atoll) were forcibly relocated off of their islands so that nuclear tests could be run on the atoll. at least 23 nuclear bombs were detonated on this inhabited island chain, including 20 hydrogen bombs. many pasifika were irreversibly irradiated, all of them were starved during multiple forced relocations, and the island chain is still unsafe to live on despite multiple cleanup attempts. there are several craters visible from space that were left on the atoll from nuclear testing.

the forced relocation was to several different small and previously uninhabited islands over several decades, none of which were able to sustain traditional lifestyles which directly lead to further starvation and loss of culture and identity. there is a reason that pacific islanders choose specific islands to inhabit including access to fresh water, food, shelter, cloth and fibre, climate, etc. and obviously none of these reasons were taken into account during the displacements.

200 pikinni were eventually moved back to the atoll in the 1970s but dangerous levels of strontium-90 were found in drinking water in 1978 and the inhabitants were found to have abnormally high levels of caesium-137 in their bodies.

i'm going to put the rest of this post under a readmore to improve the chances of this being reblogged by the general public. i would recommend you read the entirety of the post since it really isn't long and goes into detail about, say, entire islands being fully, utterly destroyed. like, wiped off of the map. without exaggeration, entire islands were disintegrated.

as i just mentioned, ānewetak (the eniwetok atoll) was bombed so violently that an entire island, āllokļap, was permanently and completely destroyed. an entire island. it's just GONE. the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested on this island. the crater is visibly larger than any of the islands next to it, more than a mile in diameter and roughly fifteen storeys deep. the hydrogen bomb released roughly 700 times the energy released during the bombing of hiroshima. this would, of course, be later outdone by other hydrogen bombs dropped on the pacific, reaching over 1000 times the energy released.

one attempt to clean up the waste on ānewetak was the construction of a large ~380ft dome, colloquially known as the tomb, on runit island. the island has been essentially turned into a nuclear waste dump where several other islands of ānewetak have moved irradiated soil to and, due to climate change, rising seawater is beginning to seep into the dome, causing nuclear waste to leak out. along with this, if a large typhoon were to hit the dome, there would be a catastrophic failure followed by a leak of nuclear waste into the surrounding land, drinking water, and ocean. the tomb was built haphazardly and quickly to cut costs.

hey, though, there's a plus side! the water in the lagoon and the soil surrounding the tomb is far more radioactive than the currently contained radioactive waste. a typhoon wouldn't cause (much) worse irradiation than the locals and ocean already currently experience, anyway! it's already gone to shit! and who cares, right, the only ""concern"" is that it will just further poison the drinking water of the locals with radioactive materials. this can just be handwaved off as a nonissue, i guess. /s

at least 36 bombs were detonated in the general vicinity of kiritimati (christmas island) and johnson atoll. while johnson atoll has seemingly never been inhabited by polynesians, kiritimati was used intermittently by polynesians (and later on, micronesians) for several hundred years. many islands in the pacific were inhabited seasonally and likewise many pacific islanders should be classified as nomadic but it has always been convenient for the goal of white supremacy and imperalism to claim that semi-inhabited areas are completely uninhabited, claimable pieces of terra nullius.

regardless of the current lack of inhabitants on these islands, the nuclear detonations have caused widespread ecological damage to otherwise delicate island ecosystems and have further spread nuclear fallout across the entirety of the pacific ocean.

while the marshall islands, micronesia, and the surrounding areas of melanesia and polynesia were (and still are) by far the worst affected by these atrocities, the entirety of the pacific has been irradiated to some extent due to ocean/wind currents freely spreading nuclear fallout through the water and air. all in all, at least 318 nuclear bombs were detonated across the pacific. i say "at least" because these are just the events that have been declassified and frankly? i wouldn't be shocked to find out they didn't stop there.

please don't leave the atomic destruction of the pacific out of this conversation. we've been displaced, irradiated, murdered, poisoned, and otherwise mass exterminated by nuclear testing on purpose and we are still suffering because of it. many of us have radiation poisoning, many of us have no safe ancestral home anymore. i cannot fucking state this enough, ISLANDS WERE DISINTEGRATED INTO NONEXISTENCE.

look, this isn't blaming people for not talking about us or knowing the extent of these issues, but it's... insidiously ironic that i haven't seen a single post that even mentions pacific islanders in a conversation about indigenous voices/voices of colour being ignored when it comes to nuclear tests and the devastation they've caused.

#My grandpa was a chemist who worked in radiation and not unrelatedly a strong anti-nuclear activist #So this is coming from stuff he wrote about at the time #In particular he wrote up the Bikini Atoll Castle Bravo Tests for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists #Who are the doomsday clock people if that is familiar #Anyhow I can delete this if you'd like but it felt worth adding

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