Micronesia
The necklace of Pacific islands called Micronesia, administered by the United States, is the testing ground for the West's nuclear bombs and weapons as well as a dump for nuclear waste. The people, scattered and demoralised, have suffered long enough. Women of the area are mounting a campaign to save their islands from this deadly technology.
March 1st, 1954, will always be remembered by the Rongelap people of Micronesia as the day of the double sun rise. One sun rose from the east as usual, and the other from the west. The second sun was the fireball from the first nuclear bomb exploded on Bikini Atoll, called 'Bravo'.
This was a fateful day for the people of Micronesia. Like the inhabitants of Bikini Atoll, others were to find themselves summarily evacuated from their lands; expected to settle somewhere else; contaminated by the effects of radiation and shattered by the physical and emotional fallout from living in the world's biggest shooting gallery.
Most of the 93 islands of Kwajelein Atoll have been taken over by the US military for us as a missile range for MX, Minuteman and Star Wars weaponry launched in California.
'It was in the early 1960s that we began to experience the illnesses we are having now,' says Lijon Eknilang, one of the Pacific women who recently visited the West to publicise their actions. 'Many people suffer from thyroid tumours and other cancers, eye problems and still-births. But the most horrifying thing is the babies that are mutated, that look like blobs of jelly. We carry them for nine months and then there are no legs, no arms, no head, no nothing.' The women are convinced that the sickness is caused by radiation from the nuclear tests.
'Ever since we returned to Rongelap in 1957,' continues Lijon Eknilang, 'we have been worried about living on our contaminated island. Then in 1978 US doctors did a study and told us not to eat the fish, coconuts and other food in the north. So we planned to leave. We signed a petition asking the US government to help us. They refused, saying the island was safe. Our own government of the Marshall Islands wouldn't help either. It is closely tied to the US. So the people on Rongelap evacuated themselves with the help of the Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior.'
The chain of islands called Belau, which has a nuclear-free constitution has so far managed to block a new US treaty, the 'Compact of Free Association', which gives the US military the right to use Belau as a nuclear Trident submarine base.
Working together in this way has empowered the Pacific women, who are now taking their message further afield to the West. 'We are making ourselves heard,' says Chailang Palacios. 'Our spirit is beginning to grow up and become very young.' They have had enough of being the testing ground for technology which can only destroy.
Adapted from materials produced by Women Working for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific, based in Belau, New Zealand, UK and Australia.