OMNI
NUCLEAR VICTIMS AND
SURVIVORS REMEMBRANCE DAY (formerly NUCLEAR FREE AND INDEPENDENT PACIFIC DAY
AND MARSHALL ISLANDS NUCLEAR VICTIMS DAY), MARCH 1, 2015.
NEWSLETTER #4.
Compiled by Dick
Bennett for a Culture of Peace.
(#1 March 1, 2012; #2 March 1, 2013).
OMNI
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL DAYS PROJECT.
Here
is the link to all OMNI newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
ecology movement, enabling an informed citizenry to connect all the dots as the
foundation for change.
Index:
Also
see: UN Nuclear Abolition Day June 2, UN International Day against Nuclear
Tests (29 August), Nuclear Free Future Month August, and US Imperialism
Westward Movement Pacific/E. Asia Newsletter, Marshall Islands Nuclear Zero Suits
Against Nuclear Nations, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (supporting the suits).
Actively
advocate a world free of
nuclear weapons. Is anything you are
doing now more urgent? Yes, there is one
thing: actively preparing adaptations to global warming. But only this one thing.
Nos. 1, 2, 3 at end.
Contents: Nuclear Victims and Survivors
Remembrance DAY Newsletter #4, March 1, 2015
Nuclear Victims and Survivors
Remembrance DAY, Google Search, March 2, 2015,
pages 1 and 2
pages 1 and 2
Hibakusha Google Search, March 2, 2015
Dick, Marshall Islands Nuclear Zero
Lawsuits
Nuclear Victims and Survivors Remembrance DAY,
Google Search March 2, 2015, pages 1-2
Remembrance Day
by Ron Tanner
March 1 in the Republic of the Marshall Islands is a national holiday. It used to be called Nuclear Victims’ Day, then Nuclear Survivors’ Day, and now Remembrance Day. The change reflects the nation’s determination to do more than voice lament and complaint for all they have suffered as the result of the U.S. government’s nuclear testing. But no one who knows the full story of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands could blame the Marshallese for complaint or lament. Most Americans of a certain age have heard of the Bikini nuclear bomb test. But few Americans know, much less understand, the extent of nuclear testing that took place in this island nation between 1946 and 1958. During that time the U.S. Joint Task Force exploded a total of 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands. All of these were above-ground, under water, or ground-level tests. They created a stunning amount of fallout.
When the U.S. Navy introduced the
Marshallese to the U.S. government’s intention to use the Marshall Islands as a
nuclear testing grounds, the U.S. commander (filmed for PR purposes) asserted
that the Marshallese were making sacrifices “for the benefit of mankind.” What
did the Marshallese know of nuclear bombs? What did most people in the world
know of this weapon? The Marshallese wanted to be good citizens. The Americans
seemed to know what they were doing. Certainly they put on a good show--they
had big boats; their leaders who wore impressive white uniforms with gleaming
gold buttons; and apparently they had wealth beyond measure.
The
first evacuees (from Bikini) were assured that they would soon return home. It
seemed the tests would be only a temporary inconvenience. Even so, asking the
Marshallese to move was asking a lot. To Americans, land is mostly a commodity
to buy and sell. We are famous for moving our homes more frequently than any
other people in the world. The Marshallese, by contrast, have been bound to
their fragile atolls for three millennia, each clan, each family, associated
with particular islands and particular parcels on those islands. The land is so
sacred thatto plant and to bury are the same
word:kallib. The graves of Marshallese ancestors nourish the crops of
their descendants.
What happened once the tests began, in
1946, is a long and sordid story. The U.S. government moved the Marshallese
around willy nilly, without asking permission of the landowners whose islands
they used. The refugees were encamped here, then there, sometimes on islands or
atolls that were not large enough to feed them. The psychological effects of
these upheavals have yet to be gauged fully, for there are four populations of
four atolls -- Enewetok, Rongelap, Utrik, and Bikini -- who have never been
able to return to home.
The physical effects of testing are
still playing out. Some charge that the U.S. government used the Marshallese as
guinea pigs because it made no effort to warn, much less evacuate, people who
were in the path of the fallout. The most notorious incident occurred in 1954.
Despite weather reports that warned of a shift in the wind, which would
jeopardize several populated atolls, the U.S. Joint Task Force went ahead with
its March 1 hydrogen bomb test -- a blast whose yield was 1,000 times greater
than Hiroshima’s. In fact, this would be the U.S.’s most powerful test ever.
Unlike Hiroshima’s blast, which was well
above the city, the Bravo blast was in-ground. It created a 20-mile-high
upheaval of coral, water, animal, and plantlife, which then drifted in a huge
cloud of raining fallout. It may have been anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 times
the fallout of Hiroshima.
The fallout drifted east over hundreds
of square miles of populated islands. Inhabitants of the nearest islands, in
the Rongelap atoll, experienced a snow of ash that, at first, was a wondrous
sight. They’d heard of snow. But it quickly turned nightmarish, for the ash
caused radiation burns. They would call this “the day of two suns.” No one had
told them this was coming. They had no idea that everything they were drinking
and eating was now contaminated. One inhabitant of nearby Likiep, who was eight
at the time, recalls how a couple of days after the blast, he awoke to find the
floor of his hut strewn with dead geckos that had fallen from the thatch roof
where they had been exposed to the fallout. Canaries in a coal mine.
Two
days after the blast, the Navy decided it should evacuate those who got caught
down-wind because American servicemen at a weather station at nearby Rongerik
sent a panicked report of fallout. The Navy moved some islanders, but not all.
Apparently the commander in charge felt besieged by the growing number of
refugees. He didn’t finish the job, leaving nearly 400 Marshallese on Aliuk.
There was some attempt at follow-up. The U.S. sent doctors out to treat the
victims. They assured the Marshallese that the worst was over. People would
heal. The land would recover. Everything would return to normal. But then, a
couple years later, it became frighteningly clear that things would not return
to normal. Children exposed at an early age to the fallout were not growing.
But the doctors were stymied. In 1963 they discovered, finally, that the
victims’ thyroids were malfunctioning, depressing the pituitary gland, which
regulates growth.
This
was the beginning of decades of radiation-related ailments. And still the
nuclear bombing persisted through 1958, despite the Marshallese pleas that it
stop. Not until the 1970s did the Marshallese begin to seek compensation in the
courts. Significantly, this was the decade the nation sued for independence,
which came finally in 1986. As part of the Compact that guaranteed the nation’s
sovereignty, the U.S. agreed to award the Marshallese $150 million in
compensation for damages associated with nuclear testing. Interest from this
fund was earmarked for disbursement to the victims and their families, but the
funds were quickly eroded by the 1987 stock market crash and other factors.
What is more, studies showed that the damage was far greater than the initial
estimates, enumerated both in physical damage and in damages generated by the
1) loss of land use, 2) the cost of rehabilitating contaminated land, and 3)
consequential damages resulting from such loss, repatriation, and
rehabilitation.
The Bikinians would accept a settlement
of $360 million to reclaim Bikini atoll. But estimates for total reclamation
reach as high as a billion. That’s a lot of money. But the Bikinians didn’t do
the damage. And billion-plus is about what the U.S. government is spending
every week in Iraq. Reportedly, 40% of the original Marshallese population that
suffered the effects of radiation have died without receiving any compensation.
They continue to sue through an organization called the Nuclear Claims
Tribunal.
As many have observed, the U.S. testing
of nuclear bombs was the product of profound arrogance, ignorance, and wishful
thinking. The U.S. government hardly treated its own servicemen and women any
better than the Marshallese. Untold numbers of servicemen and -women subjected
themselves to exposure as their commanders told them there was nothing to fear.
Just 10 hours after the first Bikini tests, Navy men were boarding the
irradiated target ships in the Bikini lagoon and swimming in water that, only
hours before, had been a seething cauldron of radiation. Years later these men
would die of leukemia, thyroid cancer, and odd diseases that no doctor could
fathom.
No
single population on earth has had more exposure to and experience with the
tragic effects of nuclear bombs than the Marshallese, a fact hinted at in the
preamble to their constitution: “This society has survived, and has withstood
the test of time, the impact of other cultures, the devastation of war, and the
high price paid for the purposes of international peace and security.”
(Emphasis added.) As a result, the Japanese have a great affinity for this
nation. The Marshallese themselves have become international advocates of
peace. Which brings us to Rembrance Day. On this day, they remember those who
have suffered and those who continue to suffer, but they assert, too, that this
is a proud nation that has much to celebrate and much to contribute to the world.
One of those contributions is the story of this country’s remarkable survival.
At a recent Remembrance Day memorial
service, the U.S. Ambassador expressed “regret” and “concern” for all that has
transpired as a result of the U.S. nuclear testing. He asserted that the
friendship between the U.S. and the RMI remains unwavering and that the U.S. is
giving a lot of money to help the Marshallese. A flier distributed by the quiet
protestors outside the meeting hall disagreed with this assessment: “Justice for
Survivors, equal to the Cost of the One (1) Week Iraq War,” the flier
announced. In Marshallese: “Kajimwe na Suvivor ro, jona wot eo im Amedka ej
jolok Nan Iraq ilo juon week.”
A number of other officials spoke at the
ceremony, most of them in Marshallese. One Marshallese senator, who spoke in
English, did not soft-peddle his views. At the time of the testing, he said,
the Marshall Islands was “an occupied nation.” The move of testing from Nevada
to the Marshall Islands made clear that “our land, our people, our nation were
not seen as important as the people and property of the U.S. mainland.”
Trusteeship in 1947, he observed, “was simply a legal mechanism to continue the
testing that had already begun the year earlier.” As “trustees,” the
Marshallese had no legal rights in the U.S. courts. Despite the eventual
independence of the Marshall Islands, he concluded, “we are still seeking
recognition of our rights in U.S. courts fifty-four years later.”
The
assembled, elderly survivors stood and sang a song of their own composition. It
was so sad, so haunting, it could be easily understood even by those who don't
know Marshallese. If you do some research online, you may come across a
collection of paintings housed by U.S. Naval Historical Center at the Navy Yard
in Washington, D.C. The Navy collected paintings and illustrations from its
servicemen who witnessed the first tests in 1946. It’s a bizarre assemblage of
images, some striking, some lovely--all of them unsettling—and it underscores
how naïve participants were at the beginning of an era that seemed so promising
but went so thoroughly wrong.
1.
Remembrance Day:
Nuclear Testing in the Marshalls
[This is the preceding entry.]
mistories.org/remembrance.php
March 1 in the Republic of
the Marshall Islands is a national holiday. It used to be called Nuclear Victims' Day, then Nuclear Survivors' Day,
and now ...
https://anydayguide.com/calendar/1804
March 1 is Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day in the Marshall Islands,
which is a national holiday there. This day commemorates the victims and survivors of ...
www.yokwe.net/index.php?module=News&func=display&sid...
Mar 1, 2012 - ... of
the Bravo Shot and the 2012 Nuclear Survivors
Remembrance Day, ... to
commemorate and honor the victims
and survivors of the nuclear ...
www.wagingpeace.org/nuclear-victims-remembrance-day/
Mar 1, 2014 - Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day. by Yasuyoshi Komizo ... Even for survivors, lives were permanently
altered. Under harsh, painful ...
www.pacificecologist.org/archive/13/survivors-nuclear-warning.pdf
It was three days before the ... a nuclear survivor who had seven
miscarriages related to radiation. ... nuclear victims and survivors from these atolls. The word.
www.meius.org/?page_id=2878
Nuclear Remembrance Day is commemorated around the
world to reflect and honorvictims and
survivors. Nuclear Remembrance Day 2015 will be ...
omnicenter.org/storage/newsletters/2014/2014-03-01.pdf
Mar 1, 2014
- (now NUCLEAR VICTIMS AND
SURVIVORS REMEMBRANCE ... Marshall Islands Nuclear Victims Day, Castle Bravo, March 1, Google
Search ...
life.time.com/history/hiroshima-portraits-of-survivors/
Life Magazine
On August 6, two years to
the day and the minute
after the first atomic bomb
..... At least 3000 of these victims were
prisoners of war, including Korean, Chinese, ...
quod.lib.umich.edu/.../--voice-to-sing-ro...
University of Michigan Library
by JA Schwartz - 2012 - Cited
by 3 - Related
articles
Five years later, on March
1, 2009, Nuclear Victims' and
Survivors' RemembranceDay,
fifteen Rongelapese—all women—stood in front of memorial wreaths ...
Searches related to Nuclear
Victims and Survivors day
Page 2, March 2, 2015 Google search
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1598743465
Barbara Rose Johnston, Holly
M Barker - 2008 - History
5528 Marshallese march
on Nuclear Victims/Survivors Day,
March 1, 2004, Marshall Islands. Nuclear Remembrance Day is commemorated around
the world ...
abcnews.go.com
› International
ABC
News
Aug 6, 2010 - Survivors of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic Bomb
Attacks Call for ... VIDEO: Hiroshima victims share stories of survival 65 years after the bombing.
... During that day in
the Japanese city of Hiroshima, survival rested solely on ...
tenthousandthingsfromkyoto.blogspot.com/.../march-1-60th-anniversary...
Mar 1, 2014 - Nuclear Remembrance Day (Marshall Islands), formally
known asNuclear Victims' Day and Nuclear Survivors' Day is a national holiday in
the ...
atomicbombmuseum.org/3_health.shtml
Some victims were
vaporized instantly, many survivors were
horribly disfigured, and death from radiation was uncertain—it might not claim
its victims for days, ...
www.reachingcriticalwill.org
› News
It's a day to
remember the victims and survivors of nuclear testing, as well as of
the legacy impacts of the production of nuclear weapons, including nuclear waste ...
www.voanews.com/content/a-13...08.../285768.html
Voice
of America
Oct 30, 2009 - Sixty years ago, on August 5, 1945, in
Washington and August 6, in Japan, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was
the ...
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1111833842
Holly
Barker - 2012 - Social Science
Essay from Marshall Islands Middle School in recognition of Nuclear Victim's Remembrance Day. Lifton, Robert Jay. 1991. Death
in Life: Survivors of
Hiroshima.
www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/hiroshima.htm
Nothing in the day's dawning
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be any different from its ... But this day would be different, very different. .... Bombing victim: her skin is
bojacobs.net/Bo_Jacobs/Global_Hibakusha.html
–nuclear weapon
testing SITES ... –nuclear weapon
production siteS ... IS NOW KNOWN AS “NUCLEAR
VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS REMEMBRANCE DAY” IN ...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyIHlKKDrfc
Aug 1, 2011 - Uploaded by British Pathé
The first half of the video shows details of victims of the Horishima bomb,
such as a ... this is going to happen ...
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HIBAKUSHA: ATOMIC BOMB SURVIVORS, Google Search, March 2, 2015.
Dictionary Thesaurus
Translate More...
hibakusha
[hee-buh-koo-shuh; Japanese hee-bah-koo-shah]
Spell Syllables
Examples Word Origin
noun, plural hibakushas, hibakusha.
a survivor of either of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.
Origin Expand
< Japanese, equivalent to hibaku bombed ( hi- suffer + baku-
burst open, explode < Middle Chinese, equivalent to Chinese bèi bào) + -sha
person < Middle Chinese, equivalent to Chinese chě
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2015.
Examples from the web for hibakusha Expand
Some of the artists whose work will appear in the exhibition are
hibakusha, or survivors of the nuclear blasts.
British Dictionary definitions for hibakusha Expand
hibakusha
/hɪˈbɑːkʊʃə/
noun (pl) -sha, -shas
1.
a survivor of either of the atomic-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945
Word Origin
C20: from Japanese, from hibaku exposed + -sha -person
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012
Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Cite This Source
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibakusha
Wikipedia
The surviving victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki are called hibakusha (被爆者), a Japanese word that literally translates as ...
www.hibakushastories.org/1Atomic Bomb
survivors are referred to in Japanese as hibakusha, which translates literally as “bomb-affected-people”.
We highlight the gifts we can learn and ...
www.un.org/disarmament/content/slideshow/hibakusha/
United Nations
HIBAKUSHA - ATOMIC BOMB SURVIVORS ... education by
serving as a resource point for hibakusha related
materials. ... Links to Testimonies of Hibakusha.
www.inicom.com/hibakusha/
Voice of Hibakusha -
Testimony of the Survivors of the
Hiroshima Bombing.
www.atomicarchive.com
› ... › Effects of Nuclear War
These "Voice of Hibakusha"
eyewitness accounts of the bombing
of Hiroshima are from the program HIROSHIMA WITNESS produced by the Hiroshima
Peace ...
www.hibakusha-ourlifetolive.org/
a documentary film
about hibakusha, the
survivors of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
www.aasc.ucla.edu/.../2007120900...
University
of California, Los Angeles
Oct 10, 2007 - In 1979, thirty-four years after the atomic
blast at Hiroshima, Akihiro Takahashi
became director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and ...
dictionary.reference.com/browse/hibakusha
Dictionary.com
Hibakusha definition, a survivor of either of the
atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. See more.
www.asahi.com/hibakusha/english/
Asahi
Shimbun
"Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--Messages from Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors)"
is a website that makes available to
the public first-hand accounts ...
Searches related to hibakusha
Marshall
Islands Nuclear Zero Lawsuits
On April 24th, 2014 the Marshall Islands filed
landmark cases—called the Nuclear Zero Lawsuits--in the International Court of
Justice and U.S. Federal District Court. The Marshall Islands made
the case that the nine nuclear-armed nations have failed to comply with their
obligations, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty and customary
international law, to pursue negotiations for the worldwide elimination of
nuclear weapons. For the seven billion
of us who live on this planet, they act to end the nuclear weapons threat
hanging over all humanity.
Unfortunately,
a Federal District Court granted the U.S. government's Motion to Dismiss. But the Marshall Islands plan to appeal. Foreign Minister Tony de Brum stated: “Nuclear weapons are not our friend, nor the friend of the U.S. or
any other country. Rather, these weapons are the enemy of all humankind. That
is why we will stand up for what we believe in, and we will be appealing the
Court’s dismissal of the lawsuit to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the
next step in the American judicial process.”
To support the Suits,
contact Rick Wayman (rwayman@napf.org
), Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
(wagingpeace.org), which has organized a supporting Coalition. The OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and
Ecology is a member of the Coalition: contact Lauren Hawkins (ldhdesign@hotmail.com),
Dick Bennett (j.dick.bennett@gmail.com),
or Gladys Tiffany (gladystiffany@yahoo.com
). Also the government of the Marshall
Islands has a Consul in Springdale, the Honorable Carmen Chong Gum. –Dick Bennett
Contents #1
Google Search, Nuclear
Free and Independent Pacific Day
Contents #2 March 1, 2013
History
Remembrance Day
Ambassador
Campbell, Nuclear Victims’ Remembrance Day 2012
60 YEARS
AGO
Contents of Nuclear Free
Pacific and Marshall Islands Nuclear Victims Day Newsletter, March 1, 2014
Nuclear Free Independent Pacific Day ('Bikini' Day) (Google search), which
marks the anniversary of the US 'Bravo' nuclear bomb detonation at Bikini
Atoll, March 1, 1954
Foregrounded: National Security Archive Report
Illumination Day Google
Search
Foregrounded: New Book, Nine
Degrees North
END
NUCLEAR
VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS REMEMBRANCE DAY NEWSLETTER #4 2015
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