A-test islanders sue for $450M

Press, 28 March 1981, Page 15

A-test islanders sue for $450M

By

PETER PRINGLE.

“Observer," London

One of the less well-known human tragedies of the nuclear age has finally reached the United States law courts after 35 years. The 990 members of the tiny Pacific atoll community of Bikini have asked Washington for $450 million compensation for being forced to leave their, island in 1946 and then having large chunks of it blown up by 23 atomic and hydrogen bomb tests. This is the first “class” action from the inhabitants of the Pacific Marshall Islands — which include Bikini — and is expected to generate actions from other islanders affected by the testing between 1946 and 1958. . America governs the Marshall Islands under a United Nations trusteeship and has already spent $lO5 million cleaning radiation debris from the island of Enewetak. It also distributes $8 million a year to land owners of the Kwajalein atoll in exchange for using it as a missile testing site. The Bikinians have had only a $6 million trust fund, set up by Congress. Although the last bomb was exploded on Bikini in 1958, the island is still uninhabitable. Experts say it could remain so for the next 60 years. Most of the Bikinians, have been living on another Marshall island, named Kili, 400 miles to- the south of Bikini. Kill's 230 acres are about onesixth the land area of the Bikini atoll and, unlike Bikini, Kili has neither a lagoon nor sheltered fishing grounds.

From late October to early spring, access to the island byship is extremely’ hazardous, and high surf conditions greatly’ restrict deep-sea fishing. Serious food . shortages have occurred over the years, the worst in 1952, when the United States had to airdrop food on to the island. This was done without parachutes and most of the food was smashed and inedible. In 1968, President Johnson announced that the levels of radiation on Bikini had dropped sufficiently for the islanders to return home.’ The island's top soil had been removed and 50,000 new coconut trees had been planted. Slowly, over the next seven years, about 100 Bikinians returned home, but in 1975 United States officials were shocked to find radiation levels on the island that exceeded federal guidelines. To prevent any adverse reaction, the islanders’ were not shown the radiation report; in fact, it was not released for another two years. They were only warned to restrict their diet: in particular they were told not to eat the island’s local delicacy’, the treeclimbing coconut crab, which had apparently accumulated large quantities of strontium 90. By the beginning of 1978, medical examinations of Bikinians showed them to have internal , radiation levels that were nearly twice the United States maximum safety standard. In May that year, the United States Government was forced to announce that the Bikinians would again be evacuated.

Over the next two years the diet restrictions increased and. finally, they were told they should eat only one of the island’s coconuts a day — although coconuts are the staple diet. Finally, the coconuts were banned, too, and food had to be shipped in. Far from finding the island fit for habitation, the radiation researchers discovered that food grown there contained significant quantities of plutonium, a fall-out product that, since the tests had ended, had been slowly disintegrating through it hal’f-life of 24,000 vears.

Because they were eating plutonium. the Bikinians became a scientific curiosity. In 1976, a United States researcher recorded bizarrely that Bikini "is possibly the best available source of data for evaluating the transfer of plutonium across the gut wall after being incorporated into biological systems." An elected representative of the Bikinians, Henchi Balos, has been in Washington this month to file the complaint in the Court of Claims. "The United States administration over the Marshall Islands, will end in the next

several years and we concluded that the only way we could make the United States recognise the obligations it owes us is to bring a lawsuit for just compensation,” Balos said.

/ He added that the housing on j Kili is still temporary and inade- | quate. and that there is still no | airport, despite United States promises to build one. “Wq were told in 1978, when we were moved

from Bikini a second time, that the United States would undertake a programme for the permanent rehabilitation of Kili. No action has been taken in more than two years to make Kili a permanent home and the United States Interior Department has now told us that it does not have a moral obligation to pay us compensation for what has'happened to us.” — Copyright, London Observer Service.