Bravo Test, March 1st , 1954

So, the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima is today (the bombing of Nagasaki happened two day later), and every year at this time I am reminded of the day less just under nine days later when the US conducted their Bravo shot on March 1st, 1954 over Bikini Atoll. Bravo was the largest U.S. nuclear test in history with an explosive force equal to nearly 1,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. The radiation drifted the "wrong way" and irradiated the inhabitants of Rongelap and Utrok Atolls in addition to a Japanese fishing vessel. This was only one of many tests the US government conducted during the 40s and 50s.

In fact, in the 12-year period from 1946-1958, after moving the peoples of Bikini and Enewetak off their atolls, the United States conducted 67 atomic and hydrogen atmospheric bomb tests there, with a total yield of 108 megatons. This is 98 times greater than the total yield of all the U.S. tests in Nevada. Put another way, the total yield of the tests in the Marshall Islands was equivalent to 7,200 Hiroshima bombs. That works out to an average of more than 1.6 Hiroshima bombs per day for the 12-year nuclear testing program in the Marshalls. During these years, the Marshall Islands was a United Nations Trust Territory administered by the United States, which had pledged to the United Nations to “protect the inhabitants against the loss of their land and resources.”

President Eisenhower told a press conference that U.S. scientists were “surprised and astonished” at the test (the Bravo test), and a year later the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) admitted that about 7,000 square miles downwind of the shot “was so contaminated that survival might have depended upon prompt evacuation of the area. . . .” Put another way, if Bravo had been detonated in Washington, DC, and the fallout pattern had headed in a northeast direction, it would have killed everyone from Washington to New York, while near-lethal levels of fallout would stretch from New England to the Canadian border.

Here are some facts relating to US nuclear experimentation in the Marshall Islands:

• The Bikinians have been exiled from their homeland since 1946, except for a brief period after President Johnson announced in 1968 that Bikini was safe. Many of the islanders returned and lived there until 1978, when medical tests by U.S. doctors revealed that the people had ingested what may have been the largest amounts of radioactive material of any known population, and the people were moved off immediately. It turned out that an AEC scientist made a careless mathematical error, throwing off by a factor of 100 the radioactive dose the returning Bikinians would receive. “We just plain goofed,” the scientist told the press.
• Approximately half the Enewetak population cannot return to their home islands in the northern part of the atoll, where radiation still renders the islands too radioactive. The Runit Dome, containing over 110,000 cubic yards of radioactive contaminants, remains on Enewetak Atoll.
• At least four islands at Bikini and five at Enewetak were completely or partially vaporized during the testing program.
• Although they were over 100 miles from Bikini, the people of Rongelap received a radiation dose from Bravo equal to that received by Japanese people less than two miles from ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They suffered from radiation poisoning, all but two of the nineteen children who were under ten at the time of Bravo developed abnormal thyroid nodules, and there has been one leukemia death. The people were moved off the islands for three years after the Bravo shot, and they moved off again in 1985 amid concerns about radiation dangers.
• The people of Utrok were returned to their home atoll a mere three months after Bravo and were exposed to high levels of residual fallout in the ensuing years. This unnecessary exposure led to thyroid problems and other cancers.
• The inhabitants of Rongelap and Utrok were the subjects of a medical research program designed to understand the effects of ionizing radiation, and they continue to suffer from radiation-related diseases. Indeed, recent Department of Energy whole body counting data has shown that the people living on Utrok are still exposed to radioactive cesium-137.

So, during the 80s, peoples of the four atolls filed lawsuits against the United States in the 1980s for the property damage inflicted on our atolls and, in some cases, for personal injuries as well. Those claims were dismissed by U.S. courts as part of the overall Compact Section 177 Agreement, pursuant to which the United States and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) governments established the Nuclear Claims Tribunal to hear these claims. The Tribunal has made awards to the peoples of Bikini and Enewetak, and will issue ones soon to Rongelap and Utrok, but it lacks the funds to pay any of these awards.

Those lawsuits are property rights protected by the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which has been found to apply to the Marshall Islands. Under well established Supreme Court decisions going back to 1890, Congress has every right to close the doors of U.S. courts to lawsuits and take away those property rights as long as it provided for an alternative method of compensation and provided that at the time of the taking there is “reasonable, certain and adequate provision for obtaining compensation.”

The Tribunal has paid out less than one-half of one percent of these judgments because it lacks the necessary funds. For the United States to throw these lawsuits out of U.S. courts, to establish such a Tribunal to resolve these claims, and then to fail to fund the Tribunal adequately constitutes a taking under the Fifth Amendment of the nuclear victims’ property, makes the establishment of the Tribunal a hoax, makes a mockery of the Compact, and arguably renders the Compact null and void.

The executive branch of the U.S. Government refused to negotiate with the RMI on this issue in the recent Compact talks. There is a clear and simple solution to the problem if Congress is willing to implement it. If not, the four atolls will have no choice but to return to court to continue what in some cases has been more than a 30-year history of suing the United States to force it to own up to the damage it caused to the citizens of the Marshall Islands in the course of spending trillions of dollars to win the Cold War.