CHAMORUS/NON-CHAMORUS OF GUAM AND THE NORTHERN MARIANAS EXPOSED TO RADIATION FALLOUT - STRONTIUM 90 RESULTING FROM THE NUCLEAR BOMBS TESTS DURING 1946 THRU 1958

“Human Radiation Experiments”

by Robert “Namauleg” Celestial (an Atomic Veteran)

[COPY OF PRESS CONFERENCE STATEMENT CONDUCTED ON 18 JUN 2001 BY ROBERT “NAMAULEG” CELESTIAL DURING AN LIVE AIRING ON KUAM RADIO, ISLA 610, HOSTED BY DEBRA QUINATA.]

By the Grace of God, this press conference is made possible today, June 18, 2001. As a patriotic American and a soldier in the United States Army, I responded to the call of duty and was sent to Eniwetak in 1977. Because of my undying loyalty to America, I did not question...at the time...my role in the clean-up of the nuclear radioactive mess that was left behind with the atomic testings that were done by the U.S. government...in our back yard - Micronesia.

It was during my medical check-up in San Diego in 1992, when I began to realize that I was used by the United States government as a “guinea pig” as part of their “Human Radiation Experiments.” I felt angry and betrayed when first told that I only had about four years to live because of my exposure to radiation. My “date of expiration” would have been 1996 which has since passed, and I thank God that I’m still alive to share this story.

Knowing that I only had very little time on this Earth, I’ve learned to turn my anger and hatred towards the U.S. government into passion and love for our people. I hope that after today, the people of this island will come to know the truth about how Guam was affected by the nuclear testing in the 1940s and 1950s.

From 30 June 146 to 18 August 1958, the Marshall Islands was the site of 67 nuclear weapons test conducted by the United States. The total yield of those weapons was equivalent to more than 7,000 bombs the size of that which destroyed Hiroshima. The single, thermonuclear “Bravo” shot, carried out at Bikini Atoll on 1 March 1954, had a yield 1,000 times that of the Hiroshima weapon. The radioactive cloud from the Bravo explosion rose 100,000 feet into the atmosphere.

But the explosive power - the blast and heat and radiation - are just the immediate release of nuclear weapons. There is also the mushroom cloud of radioactive fallout that enters the atmosphere and stratosphere and eventually covers the entire globe. This goes on showering the Earth with potentially lethal ionizing radiation, and every rain and snowfall brings down radioactive elements to be inhaled, and by entering the food chain, ingested.

A few hours later after the hydrogen bomb, code-named Bravo, was dropped in our back yard, thick flakes of radioactive fallout began falling on the island of Rongelap. By the time a U.S. destroyer arrived the next day to evacuate the atoll, people were vomiting blood and losing their hair. The test on neighboring Bikini Atoll had gone awry, and the islanders were immediately evacuated. The 15-megaton blast vaporized the test island, eradicated parts of two adjacent islets, and punched a mile-wide crater in the reef. The fireball could be seen for hundreds of miles.

For decades, the Atomic Energy Commission maintained that the contamination of Rongelap was due to a last-minute change in wind direction. But when the relevant documents were finally declassified, they showed that the commission knew the winds had shifted 72 hours before the test. In the 1960s, Washington told the people of Bikini and Rongelap that it was safe for them to return home. But while background radiation had dropped to normal levels, radioactive elements were concentrated in the soil, in plants, fish and fruit, and, ultimately, in the flesh and bones of the people themselves.

Doctors ordered a second evacuation of Bikini in 1978, and Greenpeace evacuated the Rongelapese a few years later; however, there were about 500 military servicemen, including myself who stayed back as part of the cleanup of nuclear wastes in the soil. For several years, the affected island communities have been considering their resettlement options. Experts demonstrated how radiation levels could be lowered to scientifically acceptable level - an annual exposure of 100 millirems per person - as long as people avoided eating large amounts of local food.

In 1997, however, it was discovered that the EPA had quietly adopted a 15 millirem standard for the resettlement of radiologically contaminated sites in the United States.

As eloquently state by the Honorable Theodore Kronmiller, Legal Counsel for the Government of the Marshall Islands, during his passionate speech before the World Court on November 14, 1995, “As noted in the Final Experiment, a panel comprised of distinguished medical ethicists and practitioners, long-range radioactive fallout was carried on the winds to the inhabited atolls of Rongelap, Ailinginae, Rongerik, Utirik, Ailuk and Likiep, and not away from them as we are told had been anticipated by those who planned and conducted the test...”

“I must emphasize that those were not the only atolls contaminated by radioactive fallout. Indeed, we may reasonably conclude based on the evidence of widespread fallout that few, if any, of the 1,225 islands in the Marshall Islands’ 850,000 square miles of ocean space escaped radioactive contamination. Only Bikini and Enewetak were the sites of the nuclear detonations, but the effects were experienced on atolls throughout the Marshall Islands, and in fact on distant continents.”

The Honorable Kronmiller further stated, “The experience of the Marshallese people confirms that unnecessary suffering is an unavoidable consequence of the detonation of nuclear weapons, even at great distances from human populations. That is to say, it may reasonably by concluded from the experience of the Marshall Islands that damage cannot be expected to be limited to the immediate vicinity of ground zero of a nuclear detonation which may be aimed at a military target. Drawing upon that experience, it is seen that human populations which are hundreds, or even thousands, of miles from a nuclear blast may be caused to suffer serious injury, death after prolonged illness and severe birth defects.”

Based on the writings of Merril Eisenbud on the subject of “Monitoring Distant Fallout: The Role of the Atomic Energy Commission Health and Safety Laboratory during Pacific Tests, with Special Attention to the Events following Bravo,” the following is offered as an abstract from the journal Health Physics:

“The fallout from test BRAVO in March 1954 has had scientific, political, and social implications that have continued for more than 40 years...Prior to BRAVO there was insufficient appreciation of the dangers of fallout to people living downwind from the surface near-surface explosions of megaton weapons. In the absence of sufficient preplanning for fallout monitoring beyond the test-sites of earlier smaller yield tests, and as a result of the concern of the photographic film manufacturers, the Atomic Energy Commission Health and Safety Laboratory, was requested to develop a program of fallout surveillance.”

Based on a ‘CONFIDENTIAL REPORT” reflecting fallout surveillance that were conducted relative to “Operation REDWING” and “Operation TROLL” - Mar/Apr 1955, Marine Radiological Surveys show that, “The activity is being carried westward by the North Equatorial current. Although some radioactive water had reached Guam by September, the greatest amount was found 500 miles east of Guam.”

Based on a journal that was published by “Health Physics” dated July 1997, Volume 73, Number 1, shocking information was revealed that show the following, “In terms of gross beta activity of the plankton samples, the Guam samples were very much greater than the Palau and the Gulf of Siam... There was a major peak at Guam in January 1959 and a minor peak at Palau in August 1958. Conclusion: the feasibility of using biota for this indirect measure of identifying the presence of fallout radionuclides transported by water is demonstrated...”