Marshall Islands: How the Rongelap evacuation changed the course of history

SPECIAL REPORT: By Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal and RNZ Pacific correspondent in Majuro

The late Member of Parliament Jeton Anjain and the people of the nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll changed the course of the history of the Marshall Islands by using Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior ship to evacuate their radioactive home islands 40 years ago.

They did this by taking control of their own destiny after decades of being at the mercy of the United States nuclear testing programme and its aftermath.

In 1954, the US tested the Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll, spewing high-level radioactive fallout on unsuspecting Rongelap Islanders nearby.

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For years after the Bravo test, decisions by US government doctors and scientists caused Rongelap Islanders to be continuously exposed to additional radiation.

The 40th anniversary of the dramatic evacuation of Rongelap Atoll in 1985 by the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior — a few weeks before French secret agents bombed the ship in Auckland harbour — was spotlighted this week in Majuro with the arrival of Greenpeace’s flagship Rainbow Warrior III to a warm welcome combining top national government leaders, the Rongelap Atoll Local Government and the Rongelap community.

“We were displaced, our lives were disrupted, and our voices ignored,” said MP Hilton Kendall, who represents Rongelap in the Marshall Islands Parliament, at the welcome ceremony in Majuro earlier in the week.

“In our darkest time, Greenpeace stood with us.”

‘Evacuated people to safety’
He said the Rainbow Warrior “evacuated the people to safety” in 1985.

Greenpeace would “forever be remembered by the people of Rongelap,” he added.

In 1984, Jeton Anjain — like most Rongelap people who were living on the nuclear test-affected atoll — knew that Rongelap was unsafe for continued habitation.

There was not a single scientist or medical doctor among their community although Jeton was a trained dentist, and they mainly depended on US Department of Energy-provided doctors and scientists for health care and environmental advice.

They were always told not to worry and that everything was fine.

But it wasn’t, as the countless thyroid tumors, cancers, miscarriages and surgeries confirmed.

As the desire of Rongelap people to evacuate their homeland intensified in 1984, unbeknown to them Greenpeace was hatching a plan to dispatch the Rainbow Warrior on a Pacific voyage the following year to turn a spotlight on the nuclear test legacy in the Marshall Islands and the ongoing French nuclear testing at Moruroa in French Polynesia.

A Rainbow Warrior question
As I had friends in the Greenpeace organisation, I was contacted early on in its planning process with the question: How could a visit by the Rainbow Warrior be of use to the Marshall Islands?

Jeton and I were good friends by 1984, and had worked together on advocacy for Rongelap since the late 1970s. I informed him that Greenpeace was planning a visit and without hesitation he asked me if the ship could facilitate the evacuation of Rongelap.

At this time, Jeton had already initiated discussions with Kwajalein traditional leaders to locate an island that they could settle in that atoll.

I conveyed Jeton’s interest in the visit to Greenpeace, and a Greenpeace International board member, the late Steve Sawyer, who coordinated the Pacific voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, arranged a meeting for the three of us in Seattle to discuss ideas.

Jeton and I flew to Seattle and met Steve. After the usual preliminaries, Jeton asked Steve if the Rainbow Warrior could assist Rongelap to evacuate their community to Mejatto Island in Kwajalein Atoll, a distance of about 250 km.

Steve responded in classic Greenpeace campaign thinking, which is what Greenpeace has proved effective in doing over many decades. He said words to the effect that the Rainbow Warrior could aid a “symbolic evacuation” by taking a small group of islanders from Rongelap to Majuro or Ebeye and holding a media conference publicising their plight with ongoing radiation exposure.

“No,” said Jeton firmly. He wasn’t talking about a “symbolic” evacuation. He told Steve: “We want to evacuate Rongelap, the entire community and the housing, too.”

Steve Sawyer taken aback
Steve was taken aback by what Jeton wanted. Steve simply hadn’t considered the idea of evacuating the entire community.

But we could see him mulling over this new idea and within minutes, as his mind clicked through the significant logistics hurdles for evacuation of the community — including that it would take three-to-four trips by the Rainbow Warrior between Rongelap and Mejatto to accomplish it — Steve said it was possible.

And from that meeting, planning for the 1985 Marshall Islands visit began in earnest.

I offer this background because when the evacuation began in early May 1985, various officials from the United States government sharply criticised Rongelap people for evacuating their atoll, saying there was no radiological hazard to justify the move and that they were being manipulated by Greenpeace for its own anti-nuclear agenda.

This condescending American government response suggested Rongelap people did not have the brain power to make important decisions for themselves.

But it also showed the US government’s lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation in which Rongelap Islanders lived day in and day out in a highly radioactive environment.

The Bravo hydrogen bomb test blasted Rongelap and nearby islands with snow-like radioactive fallout on 1 March 1954. The 82 Rongelap people were first evacuated to the US Navy base at Kwajalein for emergency medical treatment and the start of long-term studies by US government doctors.

No radiological cleanup
A few months later, they were resettled on Ejit Island in Majuro, the capital atoll, until 1957 when, with no radiological cleanup conducted, the US government said it was safe to return to Rongelap and moved the people back.

“Even though the radioactive contamination of Rongelap Island is considered perfectly safe for human habitation, the levels of activity are higher than those found in other inhabited locations in the world,” said a Brookhaven National Laboratory report commenting on the return of Rongelap Islanders to their contaminated islands in 1957.

It then stated plainly why the people were moved back: “The habitation of these people on the island will afford most valuable ecological radiation data on human beings.”

And for 28 years, Rongelap people lived in one of the world’s most radioactive environments, consuming radioactivity through the food chain and by living an island life.

Proving the US narrative of safety to be false, the 1985 evacuation forced the US Congress to respond by funding new radiological studies of Rongelap.

Thanks to the determination of the soft-spoken but persistent leadership of Jeton, he ensured that a scientist chosen by Rongelap would be included in the study. And the new study did indeed identify health hazards, particularly for children, of living on Rongelap.

The US Congress responded by appropriating US$45 million to a Rongelap Resettlement Trust Fund.

Subsistence atoll life
All of this was important — it both showed that islanders with a PhD in subsistence atoll life understood more about their situation than the US government’s university educated PhDs and medical doctors who showed up from time-to-time to study them, provide medical treatment, and tell them everything was fine on their atoll, and it produced a $45 million fund from the US government.

However, this is only a fraction of the story about why the Rongelap evacuation in 1985 forever changed the US narrative and control of its nuclear test legacy in this country.

Rongelap is the most affected population from the US hydrogen bomb testing programme in the 1950s.

By living on Rongelap, the community confirmed the US government’s narrative that all was good and the nuclear test legacy was largely a relic of the past.

The 1985 evacuation was a demonstration of the Rongelap community exerting control over their life after 31 years of dictates by US government doctors, scientists and officials.

It was difficult building a new community on Mejatto Island, which was uninhabited and barren in 1985. Make no mistake, Rongelap people living on Mejatto suffered hardship and privation, especially in the first years after the 1985 resettlement.

Nuclear legacy history
Their perseverance, however, defined the larger ramification of the move to Mejatto: It changed the course of nuclear legacy history by people taking control of their future that forced a response from the US government to the benefit of the Rongelap community.

Forty years later, the displacement of Rongelap Islanders on Mejatto and in other locations, unable to return to nuclear test contaminated Rongelap Atoll demonstrates clearly that the US nuclear testing legacy remains unresolved — unfinished business that is in need of a long-term, fair and just response from the US government.

The Rainbow Warrior will be in Majuro until next week when it will depart for Mejatto Island to mark the 40th anniversary of the resettlement, and then voyage to other nuclear test-affected atolls around the Marshall Islands.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.