Nuclear arms haunt Pacific ONE CLASH YOURE ASH

Scan page 20

20 SOCIALIST ACTIOI JUNE 1985 istration's bullying policies has even forced close ally New Zealand to take its distance from Washington. Prime Minister David Lange, who only two years ago tried to reverse his Labour Party's antinuclear stand, has won strong backing at home for his decision to ban U.S. nuclear-armed ships from New Zealand ports.

Protests in Australia, too, have forced Prime Minister Robert Hawke to reverse his decision to allow the United States to use Australian bases for upcoming MX missile tests in the Tasman Sea.

But sensitivity to nuclear weapons in this part of the world stems not only from any future threat posed by the ring of nuclear-armed U.S. military bases that circle the Pacific from East Asia to California. Here the legacy of nuclear weapons has left a trail of victims that far exceeds that of any other area in the world.

It is a legacy that began with the most horrific act of war ever committed-the atom-bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki-and which today continues to claim victims from almost 40 years of nuclear testing.

The close of World War II meant an end to combat on many Pacific islands, but for some islanders it marked the beginning of a menace even more ominous. For the people living at Bikini and Enewtak, part of the Marshall Islands acquired by the United States after the war, this was certainly the case.

The American military governor of the Bikini Islands, explaining his government's choice of this isolated Pacific region as the site for further tests of the atom bomb, told the people that they were like the children of Israel whom the Lord had saved from their enemy and led into the promised land.

But the nuclear "promised land" has meant only exile, neglect, and cancer. The inhabitants left their islands while the U.S. military exploded 66 nuclear bombs over these atolls from 1946 to 1958. But their troubles have lingered long after the blasts stopped.

In response to repeated requests, the United States eventually agreed to clean up Bikini so the people, who had been living on islands with far from adequate resources, could return to their home. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) declared Bikini safe in 1969, and in 1972 people began returning to the islands. By 1978, 139 of 600 Bikiniians had returned to Bikini.

But the AEC failed to take sufficient tests and clean up the islands properly. The 139 people who returned to Bikini had ingested the largest dose of plutonium ever monitored in any population.

But on Rongelap, 100 miles west of Bikini, the people were not even Antinuclear protesters in New Zealand warned, let alone evacuated, before the Bravo hydrogen bomb was exploded at Bikini on March 1, 1954. The blast released an explosive force greater than that of all previous wars combined.

A few hours after the blast a snowlike ash covered the island an inch deep. The next day people exhibited signs of acute radiation sickness. They had been exposed to 380 times the legal annual exposure limit. All but one of the 19 children on the island under 10 years old subsequently developed thyroid problems. One died of leukemia.

A 1954 U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency report, not released until 1982, confirms that U.S. officials knew in advance that the winds were blowing toward Rongelap. But the test proceeded as scheduled. Even though Rongelap remained highly contaminated, U.S. officials permitted the islanders to return to the atoll in 1957.

The Brookhaven National Laboratory, under contract to the AEC to perform tests on Rongelap, callously reported: "The habitation of these people on the island will afford most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings."

Were these people deliberately exploited as nuclear guinea pigs? The answer appears obvious.

Military overlords

But these were not the only people in the Marshall Islands to suffer the consequences of U.S. policy. At Kwajalein the military has forcibly relocated more than 8000 Marshallese onto a 78-acre island to provide room for a missile range, which is used to test MX, Trident, and Minuteman missiles.

The Marshallese, many of whom work at the Kwajalein base, are crammed into one of the most densely populated slums in the world. Here they face rampant discrimination from a hostile U.S. military.

In Belau, which is part of U.S.-controlled Micronesia, the people have since 1979 voted in three separate referendums to keep nuclear weapons and military bases out of their country. But with a wave of his hand, the U.S. ambassador simply decreed the referendums and the constitution null and void.

The price of "independence", American-style, it became clear, meant the right to base Trident submarines here (which hold the firepower of 408 Hiroshimas), and to set up a training center for Asian police and military. The United States did "concede, however, that permanent nuclear facilities would be banned, except in any case of "military necessity."

But the United States is not the only nuclear power in the Pacific. France has been exploding nuclear bombs in the Pacific since the early 1960s. Despite the assurance of the French minister for overseas territories, who announced in 1961 that "no nuclear tests will ever be made by France in the Pacific Ocean" the government was in fact already looking for a site in the Pacific. A little mishap a year earlier, when an explosion in the Algerian desert sent a radioactive cloud drifting over the Mediterranean toward Europe, prompted this reversal.

The site chosen was at Moruroa Atoll in the colony of French Polynesia, which includes Tahiti. France, which refused to sign the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, exploded 41 nuclear bombs in the atmosphere here from 1966 to 1974.

The effects of these blasts have been monitored as far away as Mexico, where fish were found to have increased levels of radioactivity, and in Fiji, where the rain was contaminated.

In response to pressure from New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji, the French government discontinued atmospheric tests in 1975. But underground tests continue. The most recent took place just last month, the 69th and largest explosion since underground tests began.

Bombs and colonies

French President Francois Mitterand, who previously opposed nuclear testing in the Pacific, has had a change of heart since taking office. Promoting nuclear bombs, however, means defending French colonialism since French Polynesia is the only place France can explode its bombs. The French rulers, after all, are not inclined to conduct their tests in the south of France.

Many Pacific nations gained formal independence during the 1960s and 1970s after decades of direct rule by foreign powers. But France prefers to keep things as they were-sinking its colonial anchor ever more firmly in the Pacific. This means retaining its colonial posseszens in their own land, confined mostly on reservations while the ruling French control the best land and jobs. New Caledonia possesses 34 percent of the known nickel deposits in the world, which is especially important in the manufacture of armaments.

The French government has been encouraging emigration from France to New Caledonia (and Tahiti) in order to reduce the indigenous peoples to a minority in their own lands, thus perverting the democratic right to vote into a device to perpetuate colonialism. Today the Kanaks comprise only 42 percent of New Caledonia's population.

The last year has witnessed an advancing campaign by the Kanak people to gain independence from France. President Mitterand's response to the growing strength of the Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), which is leading the independence drive, has been to talk compromise but steadily fortify the French military presence there.

The French government rightly fears that a successful Kanak campaign will inspire similar efforts in Tahiti, where the fight against nuclear testing and for independence are one and the same.

"The Kanak struggle is our struggle"' says Charlie Ching, leader of the Free Tahitian Party, who stresses that the success of the FLNKS strategy has encouraged Tahitian challenges to French rule. "Our fight will go on until France leaves our country and takes away its bomb" (Islands Business, March 1985).

The pattern of French and American intervention in the Pacific region has been a case study in big-power arrogance and callous indifference. A case in point: During the early years of French nuclear testing, General de Gaulle, who had come to French Polynesia to observe one of the tests, reportedly ordered a test to proceed even though the wind was blowing toward some inhabitated islands. The impatient de Gaulle, eager to leave, willingly exposed human beings to radioactive fallout. Not surprisingly, the French government has never released any data on this incident.

Small wonder that so many Pacific Islanders would like nothing better than to see these two powers take their weapons and go home.

----- pull-quotes -----

"The nuclear 'promised land' has meant exile, neglect, and cancer."

THEY At FOR YOU ALL!! uS PROPERT SA