Bikini nuclear warmongering survivors now threatened by climate change

Posted on March 24, 2015 by petrel41

This video from the USA says about itself:

“Paradise Lost” with Lijon Eknilang – Marshall Islands

29 September 2012

This 15-minute segment was produced by ABC TV’s investigative program “Prime Time,” and aired in December 1990. The piece features Lijon Eknilang, a Marshallese woman who was 8-years old at the time of the U.S.’ largest and dirtiest H-bomb at Bikini in March 1954, a fission-fusion-fission bomb 1,000 times the Hiroshima A-bomb.

Caught in the high-level radioactive fallout downwind from Bikini and the H-bomb [Bravo], Lijon subsequently contracted many radiation-induced disorders along with seven miscarriages leading to her eventual sterility.

Lijon Eknilang died last month after leading a life dedicated to both educating the global community about the inherent dangers of nuclear weapons, and also of working tirelessly for the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.

Lijon Eknilang will be dearly missed.

– Glenn Alcalay

P.S. A more recent interview of Lijon Eknilang can be found in Adam Horowitz‘s excellent new documentary “Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1.“.

And go here for Lijon’s “Nuclear Survivor Stories” video and photo archive.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Bikini community demands US relocation amid flooding

Tuesday 24th March 2015

A TINY Pacific community forced to evacuate their homes because of US nuclear testing is demanding refuge in the United States.

“We want to relocate to the US”, said Bikini atoll mayor Nishma Jamore at the weekend, as Pacific waters continued to eat away at the small Kili and Ejit islands in the Marshall Islands archipelago.

This 13 September 2013 video is called Climate change impact on the Marshall Islands: One island has all ready gone as sea levels rise.

Mr Jamore heads a community of about 1,000 islanders who have lived in exile on the islands for decades because their original Bikini home remains too radioactive for resettlement.

There were 24 nuclear tests conducted on the atoll in the 1950s, including the largest hydrogen bomb detonation ever conducted by the US.

Unable to return to Bikini, the islanders are now faced with increasing flooding from high tides and storms hitting their tiny island refuges, with waves washing over the islands and wiping out food crops.

“Kili has been repeatedly flooded since 2012 and we’ve asked the Marshall Islands government for help with no response,” said Mr Jamore.

There is also serious concern over a recent attempt by the Marshalls’ parliament, known as the Nitijela, to take authority for Ejit island away from the Bikinians.

This is the second time that the islanders have asked to be resettled in the US because of their plight.

In the 1980s, following an aborted resettlement on Bikini that ended with the islanders exposed to high levels of radiation, they attempted in vain to buy a tract of land on Maui in Hawaii.

Marshall Islands sues nuclear weapons countries

Posted on April 25, 2014 by petrel41

This video says about itself:

Collateral Damage: Atomic Testing in the Marshall Islands

Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear devices in and around the Marshall Islands. The impact of these tests on the Marshallese people was profound – in terms of both actual radioactive exposure and the displacement of people from their home islands due to contamination and to accommodate the U.S. military.

This clip is excerpted from Episode 6 of “UNNATURAL CAUSES: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?“, a ground-breaking documentary series that looks at how the social, economic and physical environments in which we are born, live, and work profoundly affect our longevity and health.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Marshall Islands sues nine nuclear powers over disarmament failure

Thursday 24th April 2014

Pacific group takes case to the Hague over global failure to pursue disarmament

The tiny Pacific nation of the Marshall Islands began a legal battle today to demand the world’s nine nuclear-armed powers meet their disarmament obligations.

It accused them of “flagrant violations” of international law.

The island group, which was used for 67 US nuclear tests, filed a case with the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

It claims the nine countries are modernising their nuclear arsenals instead of negotiating disarmament.

The countries targeted include the US, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

The last four are not party to the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but the lawsuit argues they are bound by its provisions under “customary international law.”

“Our people have suffered the catastrophic and irreparable damage of these weapons and we vow to fight so that no one else on earth will ever again experience these atrocities,” Foreign Minister Tony de Brum said.

THE SLOW DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MARSHALL ISLANDS “Most of the 1,000 or so Marshall Islands, spread out over 29 narrow coral atolls in the South Pacific, are less than six feet above sea level — and few are more than a mile wide. For the Marshallese, the destructive power of the rising seas is already an inescapable part of daily life.” [NYT]

SO IT TURNS OUT SETTING OFF NUKES UNDERWATER DOESN’T GO SO WELL “The Navy had believed [in 1946] that many of the target ships would survive the blast, be decontaminated, and sail out of the lagoon. But, within two weeks, Navy leaders had to admit that the ships were so soaked in radiation, they couldn’t be saved, and the Marshall Islands became graveyards for irradiated vessels.” [Atlas Obscura]

Godzilla first made his debut in 1954. At inception, he was a 50-meter tall metaphor for indiscriminate destruction, particularly U.S. hydrogen-bomb testing in the Marshall Islands, which, in the film, destroyed Godzilla’s deep-sea ecosystem. Sixty-five years and 35 films later, Godzilla is back and bigger than ever in Godzilla: King of the Monsters: here.

Radiation levels in parts of the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, where the United States conducted nearly 70 nuclear tests during the Cold War, are still alarmingly high. Researchers tested soil samples on four uninhabited isles and discovered that they contained concentrations of nuclear isotopes that are significantly higher than those found near Chernobyl and Fukushima: here.