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.

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.

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.

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.

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.