Bikini Atoll News

BIKINIANS MEET WITH U.S. SECRETARY OF INTERIOR BABBITT
© By Giff Johnson
The Marshall Islands Journal
Email: journal@ntamar.net
(MIJ May 8, 1998)

Majuro - A high level U.S. government official told Bikini islanders inWashington, D.C. last Wednesday that the American government "won't walk away from you" as the Bikinians prepare to launch a nuclear cleanup at the former nuclear test site.

Although the meetings failed to produce the assurances the Bikinians had sought before starting a cleanup and resettlement at Bikini, island leaders were upbeat following the meeting with U.S. Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt. "While Secretary Babbitt could not give us the assurances that we wanted, he said that the US government is very committed to the people of Bikini and that this relationship will carry through for generations to come," said Bikini trust liaison officer Jack Niedenthal who was part of the 10 member Bikini delegation led by Bikini Mayor Tomaki Juda that traveled 7,500 miles for the meeting. "Most of us viewed this meeting as a first step."

The Bikinians want assurances from the U.S. that the current scientific wisdom saying Bikini can be made safe for rehabitation is accurate. Because "a U.S. President told us we could go back in 1968 (but Bikini turned out to be too radioactive and the people were relocated again), and we are being told again that we can go back, we want the U.S. government to guarantee that Bikini is safe," Bikini Senator Henchi Balos said to Babbitt.

The U.S. Interior Secretary said he didn1t have the legal authority to guarantee Bikini's safety, and wouldn't do so even if he had the power, Bikini officials reported. Babbitt said, however, that the U.S. and the Bikinians should instead work together on the resettlement through the framework of the Compact of Free Association treaty between the Marshalls and the U.S. "with its strong degree of trust," Bikini officials reported. Babbitt added that the decision to return to Bikini "is up to you," the Bikini delegation reported.

While the meeting fell short of producing guarantees of safety from the U.S., Bikini officials were not disappointed. "Because we work a lot with the U.S. Interior Department we felt the Secretary of Interior was the logical starting point for us," Niedenthal said.

"What we ultimately are working towards is something in writing from the US Department of Energy recommending a cleanup method for Bikini Atoll, and later, an endorsement of this plan by the President of the United States. The message we are sending to the US government's executive branch will only get noiser with the passage of time: We will not go away."

U.S. officials agreed to take action on several other Bikini requests. The Department of Interior said it will provide funding to purchase a reverse osmosis water making unit to help alleviate what Bikini leaders described as the "devastating effect" caused by the El Niño drought in the Marshall Islands.

Balos and Bikini leaders pressed Babbitt on the need for continuing a supplemental U.S. food program for the displaced islanders, pointing out that U.S. legislation authorizing the program ended in late 1996. Although the program has been temporarily continued, there is no legislation approving it.

Babbitt assured the Bikinians the the U.S. will continue to provide the food and will work to get the necessary legislation passed to formally extend the program, Niedenthal said.

In response to the Bikinians plea to allow them to make a one time withdrawal of three percent from their U.S.-provided $120 million resettlement trust fund for the benefit of islanders living in exile, Interior officials promised to have their lawyers review the request, islanders said.

When the Bikinians were moved off Bikini a second time in 1978, they were given "temporary" housing on Kili Island that was supposed to last several years. It is now more than 20 years later and "almost all of that housing is collapsing at once, and there is not enough money in the resettlement trust fund to pay for additional housing on Kili because (the U.S.) Congress has limited expenditures to $2.5 million a year," Balos said in his appeal for the extraordinary distribution from the trust fund.

Besides the housing problems, of the 167 people originally moved off Bikini in 1946, only about 90 are still alive, Balos said. Most of these elders will never see Bikini again, and won't live long enough to see the long-term benefits from the resettlement trust fund. He said that a substantial portion of the money would go to these elders to give them a one-time benefit.

BIKINIANS WANT ASSURANCES FROM PRESIDENT CLINTON BEFORE STARTING CLEANUP
© By Giff Johnson
The Marshall Islands Journal
Email: journal@ntamar.net

Majuro - The Bikinians have one final hurdle to leap before they launch major nuclear cleanup work at Bikini Atoll.

Bikini Mayor Tomaki Juda said that "we need to hear from the President of the United States that Bikini will be safe," he said.

The Bikinians are hoping to have talks with high level U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. this year and Juda said they intend to make their request known to President Clinton at that time.

"We want to hear directly from the U.S. President that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report is correct and that people can go back safely," Juda said. "It is important that we hear directly from the President before this kind of cleanup (gets started)."

The Bikinians are adamant about wanting assurances from the U.S. before people go back to Bikini.

Under consideration is an IAEA proposal to scrape nuclear contaminated soil away from the village area on Bikini Island, while using potassium fertilizer on the rest of the island to reduce radiation uptake by the coconut and other fruit crops.

"The Council is being very careful about this," Juda said. "People, especially the elderly people, are anxious to go back. They always ask us, 'when can we move back.' But we don't want to go back and see the same problems that happened in the 1970s."

At that time, following an announcement by President Lyndon Johnson that Bikini was safe, more than 100 Bikinians did move back only to be evacuated again in 1978 when it was decided that Bikini was, in fact, not safe after all.

Asked if this kind of assurance from the U.S. President might be difficult to obtain, Juda said, "maybe, but why? In 1946, the U.S. sent top officials to use Bikini, so why should the U.S. have a hard time to answer us now?

"The U.S. told us that they would return Bikini to us safely and that is a promise that we always remember."

BIKINIAN RETURN A SAD OCCASION FOR ELDERS
© By Giff Johnson
The Marshall Islands Journal
Email: journal@ntamar.net

Bikini Atoll - The exhiliration for Bikini islanders of returning to their home island for the first time in 51 years was tempered by the realization for many of the elders that it may be the last time they set foot on the land that they love.

The return of nearly 100 Bikinians to the former nuclear test site in late February was a bittersweet occasion. Many of the women who were relocated in 1946 by the U.S. Navy when they were young children had not come back to Bikini until this week.

"You know how hard it was for us to get here, traveling all of these miles," said Jamodre Aitap, commenting on the distance between Kili, where the Bikinians have lived in exile since the late 1940s, and Bikini. "But it made us really happy to be here. Maybe we won't be able to come back to live in the place of our forefathers. But we believe that one day our children will come back and that is just as important to us."

Elder Miriam Jamodre felt great sadness when placing flowers on the graves of her grandparents. "It's really sad to see all of us here," she said. "Who's to say who will be alive the next time that we do this. I look around and I see that if we do this again in a few years, many of us will be dead."

It reminded Emso Leviticus that she will likely not return to be buried here when she dies. Although the Bikinians are set to launch a nuclear cleanup of this former atomic test site, it may be years before people can return safely to live at Bikini.

"This is our final trip here," said Leviticus this week on Bikini, who was a young mother with two small children when the U.S. Navy took her and her family from Bikini in 1946 to make way for Operation Crossroads, the first post-World War II nuclear tests. "We were chosen to come here because most of us will go back to Kili Island and we won't come back," she said.

Jamodre and Leviticus were among a large contingent of Bikini Islanders who returned to Bikini this week to mark 51 years in exile and 43 years since the March 1, 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb vaporized three islands in Bikini and rained nuclear fallout on many of the northern Marshall Islands.

Jamodre had not seen Bikini since she was moved in 1946. Stepping onto Bikini this week brought back a flood of memories from her childhood; she was about 20 when the Americans took her away from Bikini.

"It was a pleasant life," she recalled of the years before the arrival of the U.S. Navy forever disrupted their lives. "We made all our decisions together, as a community. We made our food and shared it together. Our life was very harmonious."

The Bikinians were first moved to Rongerik, a nearby atoll that could not sustain a permanent population and within months the islanders were starving. Two years after leaving Bikini, the people were picked up again and taken to the Navy base at Kwajalein. Then they were shuttled to Kili, a tiny single island with no lagoon or protected anchorage as they were used to at Bikini.

"On Bikini, nobody starved," Leviticus said. "It was the Americans who came and changed everything. They sent us to places without any food and our lives started changing."

Until the American media took an interest in the plight of the Bikinians in the late-1960s, they suffered repeated food shortages and privation on Kili Island.

It was a time that made them yearn to return to Bikini. Today, with U.S.-provided compensation trust funds, life has improved on Kili. But it's not Bikini.

If Bikini Island were safe for the people to return permanently, Jamodre would be on the first plane. "No question," she said when asked about returning. "If it is safe to live there, I'd come back. It's my land."

But Leviticus knows more than most what it feels like to be moved from the land of her birth. In the early 1970s, she was among the 100 Bikinians who chose to return in response President Lyndon B. Johnson's announcement that Bikini was safe. By 1978, however, U.S. scientists had changed their minds. Bikini was too radioactive for continued residence.

"We were devastated when we had to evacuate Bikini (in 1978)," Leviticus said. "We were crying; it was a hopeless feeling. They (American officials) said we had to move, so we had to."

Walking around Bikini this week, Levicitus said she feels an incredible amount of sorrow for the years away from Bikini, for the changes wrought by nuclear testing.

Jamodre wants to return to Bikini, if the "poison" as Bikinians call radiation, is removed. "The important thing," she said, "is Bikini is where we grew up, it's the land where we took our life from. We belive that this is also where we should die."

As to the U.S. government's responsibility toward the Bikinians, Leviticus is almost dismissive, as if to say, "do you even need to ask?" Of course, she said, the U.S. government has a responsibility for the Bikinians. "But I don't feel I have to explain this," she continued. "Everyone understands this. I just look to God for my guidance."

That is what the devoutely Christian Bikini Islanders have been doing for more than 50 years as they hope to return home. Their flag bears the words: "Everything is in God's hands."

Bikini Atoll - March 7 marks 51 years that the Bikini Islanders have lived as nuclear exiles, like a poster-child for the downside of the atomic age. But, with a U.S.-funded nuclear cleanup in the offing, they may not have to wait another half-century before returning home to live permanently.

Commemorating the double anniversary of their departure in 1946, and the March 1, 1954 "Bravo" hydrogen bomb test at Bikini, the Bikinians were filled with optimism that, at long last, the former ground zero for 23 American bomb tests will be made safe for them to return home. March 1 is a national holiday throughout the Marshall Islands, a memorial day commemorating all the victims of the 67 American nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands.

The Bikinians broke ground for the cleanup, with four elderly Bikinian women donning hardhats and clutching shovels to signal their desire to set in motion a nuclear rehabilitation program.

Even though the Bikinians are waiting for the U.S. to guarantee their safety for a return, "the groundbreaking was symbolic of our desire to come back home," said Ichiro Mark, the principal of the elementary school on Kili Island, where the exiled islanders live. "We believe that one day we will come back, that this (ground breaking) was just the beginning. If people could have experienced our feelings at the cemetery this week (when the Bikinians placed flowers on the graves of their ancestors), they would know how much we want to come back."

Bikini Mayor Tomaki Juda expressed the islanders' optimism at a ceremony on Bikini Atoll in late February. "We know we still can't live permanently on our homeland," he said. "But just being here for even a few days and seeing the tremendous progress that has been made to improve Bikini and Eneu islands gives us hope that we will return here permanently in our lifetimes."

Juda was accompanied by more than 80 Bikinians, many of whom had not been to Bikini since 1946. "We hope that they (elders), like their ancestors, will be able to live out their lives and be buried where they belong," Juda said.

It is the scientific research of the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that is providing the basis for Juda's hope of an early return. Juda observed that the Bikinians are appreciative of the long-term studies that Livermore scientists have conducted since the 1970s "to devermine when it will be safe for our people to return home and under what conditions. We know it is the people of Bikini who will benefit the most from their scientific research and experiments."

But Juda is adamant that the highest levels of the U.S. government must endorse the planned nuclear cleanup, not just scientists, to avoid a repeat of the aborted resettlement attempt in the 1970s. "We cannot start the cleanup until high U.S. officials give it to us in writing that they will stand behind us if we come back," Juda said. The Bikinians want the U.S. government to accept any liability if the resettlement - which scientists from Livermore Labs, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the National Academy of Sciences all agree will work - goes awry, and Bikinians are exposed to hazardous levels of radiation.

The Bikinians vividly remember the U.S.-sponsored resettlement attempt in the 1970s that ended in 1978 because the 100 Bikinians living on Bikini ingested high levels of cesium 137 and had to be evacuated a second time.

Juda said the Bikinians hope to meet top level American officials in Washington to discuss the proposed nuclear cleanup. The Bikinians have a U.S.-provided trust fund of more than $110 million that will fund the cleanup.

"We're ready to start," Juda said. "But we need something in writing from the United States first."

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