People on Guam are “disappointed” and “heartbroken” that radiation exposure compensation is not being extended to them, says the president of the Pacific Association for Radiation Survivors (PARS), Robert Celestial.
He said they were disappointed for many reasons.
“Congress seems to not understand that we are no different than any state,” he told RNZ Pacific.
“We are human beings, we are affected in the same way they are. We are suffering the same way, we are greatly disappointed, heartbroken,” Celestial said.
The extension to the United States Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was part of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passed by Congress on Friday (Thursday, Washington time).
Downwind compensation eligibility would extend to the entire states of Utah, Idaho and New Mexico, but Guam – which was included in an earlier version of the bill – was excluded.
All claimants are eligible for US$100,000.
Attempt at amendment Guam Republican congressman James Moylan attempted to make an amendment to include Guam before the bill reached the House floor earlier in the week.
“Guam has become a forgotten casualty of the nuclear era,” Moylan told the House Rules Committee.
“Federal agencies have confirmed that our island received measurable radiation exposure as a result of US nuclear testing in the Pacific and yet, despite this clear evidence, Guam remains excluded from RECA, a program that was designed specifically to address the harm caused by our nation’s own policies.
“Guam is not asking for special treatment we are asking to be treated with dignity equal to the same recognition afforded to other downwind communities across our nation.”
Moylan said his constituents are dying from cancers linked to radiation exposure.
From 1946 to 1962, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands, just under 2000 kilometres from Guam.
New Mexico Democratic congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández supported Moylan, who said it was “sad Guam and other communities were not included”.
Colorado, Montana excluded The RECA extension also excluded Colorado and Montana; Idaho was also for a time but this was amended.
Pacific Association for Radiation Survivors (PARS) members at a gathering . . . “heartbroken” that radiation exposure compensation is not being extended to them. Image: RNZ Pacific/Eleisha Foon
Celestial said he had heard different rumours about why Guam was not included but nothing concrete.
“A lot of excuses were saying that it’s going to cost too much. You know, Guam is going to put a burden on finances.”
But Celestial said the cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office for Guam to be included was US$560 million while Idaho was $1.4 billion.
“[Money] can’t be the reason that Guam got kicked out because we’re the lowest on the totem pole for the amount of money it’s going to cost to get us through in the bill.”
Certain zip codes The bill also extends to communities in certain zip codes in Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alaska, who were exposed to nuclear waste.
Celestial said it’s taken those states 30 years to be recognised and expects Guam to be eventually paid.
He said Moylan would likely now submit a standalone bill with the other states that were not included.
If that fails, he said Guam could be included in nuclear compensation through the National Defense Authorization Act in December, which is for military financial support.
The RECA extension includes uranium workers employed from 1 January 1942 to 31 December 1990.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Immediately after killing Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate.
Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them. How wrong they were.
A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.
Written by David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, who spent 11 weeks on the final voyage of the Warrior, the book is the most remarkable piece of history I have read this year and one of those rare books that has the power to expand your mind and make your blood boil at the same time. I thought I knew a fair bit about the momentous events surrounding the attack — until I read Eyes of Fire.
Heroes of our age The book covers the history of Greenpeace action — from fighting the dumping of nuclear and other toxic waste in European waters, the Arctic and the Pacific, voyages to link besieged communities across the oceans, through to their epic struggles to halt whaling and save endangered marine colonies from predators.
The Rainbow Warrior’s very last voyage before the bombing was to evacuate the entire population of Rongelap atoll (about 320 people) in the Marshall Islands who had been exposed to US nuclear radiation for decades.
This article is the first of two in which I will explore themes that the book triggered for me.
Neither secret nor intelligent – the French secret intelligence service
Jean-Luc Kister was the DGSE (Direction-générale de la Sécurité extérieure) agent who placed the two bombs that ripped a massive hole in the hull of the Warrior on 10 July 1985. The ship quickly sank, trapping Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira inside.
Former colonel Kister was a member of a large team of elite agents sent to New Zealand. One had also infiltrated Greenpeace months before, some travelled through the country prior to the attack, drinking, rooting New Zealand women and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that led all the way to the Palais de l’Élysée where François Mitterrand, Socialist President of France, had personally given the order to bomb the famous peace vessel.
Robie aptly calls the French mission “Blundergate”. The stupidity, howling incompetence and moronic lack of a sound strategic rationale behind the attack were only matched by the mendacity, the imperial hauteur and the racist contempt that lies at the heart of French policy in the Pacific to this very day.
Thinking the Kiwi police would be no match for their élan, their savoir-faire and their panache, some of the killers hit the ski slopes to celebrate “Mission Accompli”. Others fled to Norfolk Island aboard a yacht, the Ouvéa.
Tracked there by the New Zealand police it was only with the assistance of our friends and allies, the Australians, that the agents were able to escape. Within days they sank their yacht at sea during a rendezvous with a French nuclear submarine and were evenually able to return to France for medals and promotions.
Two of the agents, however, were not so lucky. As everyone my age will recall, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were nabbed after a lightning fast operation by New Zealand police.
With friends and allies like these, who needs enemies? We should recall that the French were our allies at the time. They decided, however, to stop the Rainbow Warrior from leading a flotilla of ships up to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia where yet another round of nuclear tests were scheduled. In other words: they bombed a peace ship to keep testing bombs.
By 1995, France had detonated 193 nuclear bombs in the South Pacific.
David Robie sees the bombing as “a desperate attempt by one of the last colonial powers in the Pacific to hang on to the vestiges of empire by blowing up a peace ship so it could continue despoiling Pacific islands for the sake of an independent nuclear force”.
The US, UK and Australia cold-shouldered New Zealand through this period and uttered not a word of condemnation against the French. Within two years we were frog-marched out of the ANZUS alliance with Australia and the US because of our ground-breaking nuclear-free legislation.
It was a blessing and the dawn of a period in which New Zealanders had an intense sense of national pride — a far cry from today when New Zealand politicians are being referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes associated with the Gaza genocide.
The French State invented the term ‘terrorism’ I studied French History at university in France and did a paper called “La France à la veille de révolution” (France on the eve of revolution). One of the chilling cultural memories is of the period from September 1793 to July 1794, which was known as La Terreur.
At the time the French state literally coined the term “terrorisme” — with the blade of the guillotine dropping on neck after neck as the state tried to consolidate power through terror. But, as Robie points out, quoting law professor Roger S. Clark, we tend to use the term today to refer almost exclusively to non-state actors.
With the US and Israel gunning down starving civilians in Gaza every day, with wave after wave of terror attacks being committed inside Iran and across the Middle East by Mossad, the CIA and MI6, we should amend this erroneous habit.
The DGSE team who attached limpet mines to the Rainbow Warrior did so as psychopathic servants of the French State. Eyes of Fire: “At the time, Prime Minister David Lange described the Rainbow Warrior attack as ‘nothing more than a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism’.”
Don’t get me wrong. I am not “anti-French”. I lived for years in France, had a French girlfriend, studied French history, language and literature. I even had friends in Wellington who worked at the French Embassy.
Curiously when I lived next to Premier House, the official residence of the prime minister, my other next door neighbour was a French agent who specialised in surveillance. Our houses backed onto Premier House. Quelle coïncidence. To his mild consternation I’d greet him with “Salut, mon espion favori.” (Hello, my favourite spy).
What I despise is French colonialism, French racism, and what the French call magouillage. I don’t know a good English word for it . . . it is a mix of shenanigans, duplicity, artful deception to achieve unscrupulous outcomes that can’t be publicly avowed. In brief: what the French attempted in Auckland in 1985.
Robie recounts in detail the lying, smokescreens and roadblocks that everyone from President Mitterrand through to junior officials put in the way of the New Zealand investigators. Mitterrand gave Prime Minister David Lange assurances that the culprits would be brought to justice. The French Embassy in Wellington claimed at the time: “In no way is France involved. The French government doesn’t deal with its opponents in such ways.”
It took years for the bombshell to explode that none other than Mitterrand himself had ordered the terrorist attack on New Zealand and Greenpeace!
We the people of the Pacific We, the people of the Pacific, owe a debt to Greenpeace and all those who were part of the Rainbow Warrior, including author David Robie. We must remember the crime and call it by its name: state terrorism.
The French attempted to escape justice, deny involvement and then welched on the terms of the agreement negotiated with the help of the United Nations secretary-general.
A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.
I’ll give the last word to former Prime Minister Helen Clark:
“This is the time for New Zealand to link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace and which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence. If our independent foreign policy is to mean anything in the mid-2020s, it must be based on concerted diplomacy for peace and sustainable development.”
You cannot sink a rainbow.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
Immediately after killing Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate.
Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them. How wrong they were.
A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.
Written by David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, who spent 11 weeks on the final voyage of the Warrior, the book is the most remarkable piece of history I have read this year and one of those rare books that has the power to expand your mind and make your blood boil at the same time. I thought I knew a fair bit about the momentous events surrounding the attack — until I read Eyes of Fire.
Heroes of our age The book covers the history of Greenpeace action — from fighting the dumping of nuclear and other toxic waste in European waters, the Arctic and the Pacific, voyages to link besieged communities across the oceans, through to their epic struggles to halt whaling and save endangered marine colonies from predators.
The Rainbow Warrior’s very last voyage before the bombing was to evacuate the entire population of Rongelap atoll (about 320 people) in the Marshall Islands who had been exposed to US nuclear radiation for decades.
This article is the first of two in which I will explore themes that the book triggered for me.
Neither secret nor intelligent – the French secret intelligence service
Jean-Luc Kister was the DGSE (Direction-générale de la Sécurité extérieure) agent who placed the two bombs that ripped a massive hole in the hull of the Warrior on 10 July 1985. The ship quickly sank, trapping Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira inside.
Former colonel Kister was a member of a large team of elite agents sent to New Zealand. One had also infiltrated Greenpeace months before, some travelled through the country prior to the attack, drinking, rooting New Zealand women and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that led all the way to the Palais de l’Élysée where François Mitterrand, Socialist President of France, had personally given the order to bomb the famous peace vessel.
Robie aptly calls the French mission “Blundergate”. The stupidity, howling incompetence and moronic lack of a sound strategic rationale behind the attack were only matched by the mendacity, the imperial hauteur and the racist contempt that lies at the heart of French policy in the Pacific to this very day.
Thinking the Kiwi police would be no match for their élan, their savoir-faire and their panache, some of the killers hit the ski slopes to celebrate “Mission Accompli”. Others fled to Norfolk Island aboard a yacht, the Ouvéa.
Tracked there by the New Zealand police it was only with the assistance of our friends and allies, the Australians, that the agents were able to escape. Within days they sank their yacht at sea during a rendezvous with a French nuclear submarine and were evenually able to return to France for medals and promotions.
Two of the agents, however, were not so lucky. As everyone my age will recall, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were nabbed after a lightning fast operation by New Zealand police.
With friends and allies like these, who needs enemies? We should recall that the French were our allies at the time. They decided, however, to stop the Rainbow Warrior from leading a flotilla of ships up to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia where yet another round of nuclear tests were scheduled. In other words: they bombed a peace ship to keep testing bombs.
By 1995, France had detonated 193 nuclear bombs in the South Pacific.
David Robie sees the bombing as “a desperate attempt by one of the last colonial powers in the Pacific to hang on to the vestiges of empire by blowing up a peace ship so it could continue despoiling Pacific islands for the sake of an independent nuclear force”.
The US, UK and Australia cold-shouldered New Zealand through this period and uttered not a word of condemnation against the French. Within two years we were frog-marched out of the ANZUS alliance with Australia and the US because of our ground-breaking nuclear-free legislation.
It was a blessing and the dawn of a period in which New Zealanders had an intense sense of national pride — a far cry from today when New Zealand politicians are being referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes associated with the Gaza genocide.
The French State invented the term ‘terrorism’ I studied French History at university in France and did a paper called “La France à la veille de révolution” (France on the eve of revolution). One of the chilling cultural memories is of the period from September 1793 to July 1794, which was known as La Terreur.
At the time the French state literally coined the term “terrorisme” — with the blade of the guillotine dropping on neck after neck as the state tried to consolidate power through terror. But, as Robie points out, quoting law professor Roger S. Clark, we tend to use the term today to refer almost exclusively to non-state actors.
With the US and Israel gunning down starving civilians in Gaza every day, with wave after wave of terror attacks being committed inside Iran and across the Middle East by Mossad, the CIA and MI6, we should amend this erroneous habit.
The DGSE team who attached limpet mines to the Rainbow Warrior did so as psychopathic servants of the French State. Eyes of Fire: “At the time, Prime Minister David Lange described the Rainbow Warrior attack as ‘nothing more than a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism’.”
Don’t get me wrong. I am not “anti-French”. I lived for years in France, had a French girlfriend, studied French history, language and literature. I even had friends in Wellington who worked at the French Embassy.
Curiously when I lived next to Premier House, the official residence of the prime minister, my other next door neighbour was a French agent who specialised in surveillance. Our houses backed onto Premier House. Quelle coïncidence. To his mild consternation I’d greet him with “Salut, mon espion favori.” (Hello, my favourite spy).
What I despise is French colonialism, French racism, and what the French call magouillage. I don’t know a good English word for it . . . it is a mix of shenanigans, duplicity, artful deception to achieve unscrupulous outcomes that can’t be publicly avowed. In brief: what the French attempted in Auckland in 1985.
Robie recounts in detail the lying, smokescreens and roadblocks that everyone from President Mitterrand through to junior officials put in the way of the New Zealand investigators. Mitterrand gave Prime Minister David Lange assurances that the culprits would be brought to justice. The French Embassy in Wellington claimed at the time: “In no way is France involved. The French government doesn’t deal with its opponents in such ways.”
It took years for the bombshell to explode that none other than Mitterrand himself had ordered the terrorist attack on New Zealand and Greenpeace!
We the people of the Pacific We, the people of the Pacific, owe a debt to Greenpeace and all those who were part of the Rainbow Warrior, including author David Robie. We must remember the crime and call it by its name: state terrorism.
The French attempted to escape justice, deny involvement and then welched on the terms of the agreement negotiated with the help of the United Nations secretary-general.
A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.
I’ll give the last word to former Prime Minister Helen Clark:
“This is the time for New Zealand to link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace and which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence. If our independent foreign policy is to mean anything in the mid-2020s, it must be based on concerted diplomacy for peace and sustainable development.”
You cannot sink a rainbow.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz
A new report on the United States nuclear weapons testing legacy in the Marshall Islands highlights the lack of studies into important health concerns voiced by Marshallese for decades that make it impossible to have a clear understanding of the impacts of the 67 nuclear weapons tests.
The report was funded by Greenpeace Germany and is an outgrowth of the organisation’s flagship vessel, Rainbow Warrior III, visiting the Marshall Islands from March to April to recognise the 40th anniversary of the resettlement of the nuclear test-affected population of Rongelap Atoll.
Dr Mahkijani said that among the “many troubling aspects” of the legacy is that the United States had concluded, in 1948, after three tests, that the Marshall Islands was not “a suitable site for atomic experiments” because it did not meet the required meteorological criteria.
Dr Makhijani highlights the point that, despite early documentation in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test and numerous anecdotal reports from Marshallese women about miscarriages and still births, US government medical officials in charge of managing the nuclear test-related medical programme in the Marshall Islands never systematically studied birth anomalies.
Committed billions of dollars The US Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden-Harris administration, Kurt Cambell, said that Washington, over decades, had committed billions of dollars to the damages and the rebuilding of the Marshall Islands.
“I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden, and we are doing what we can to support the people in the [Compact of Free Association] states, including the Marshall Islands,” he told reporters at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Nuku’alofa last year.
“This is not a legacy that we seek to avoid. We have attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment.”
Among points outlined in the new report:
Gamma radiation levels at Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, officially considered a “very low exposure” atoll, were tens of times, and up to 300 times, more than background in the immediate aftermaths of the thermonuclear tests in the Castle series at Bikini Atoll in 1954.
Thyroid doses in the so-called “low exposure atolls” averaged 270 milligray (mGy), 60 percent more than the 50,000 people of Pripyat near Chernobyl who were evacuated (170 mGy) after the 1986 accident there, and roughly double the average thyroid exposures in the most exposed counties in the United States due to testing at the Nevada Test Site.
Women from the nuclear test-affected Rongelap Atoll greeted the Rainbow Warrior and its crew with songs and dances as part of celebrating the 40th anniversary of the evacuation of Rongelap Atoll in 1985 by the Rainbow Warrior. Image: RNZ Pacific/Giff Johnson
Despite this, “only a small fraction of the population has been officially recognised as exposed enough for screening and medical attention; even that came with its own downsides, including people being treated as experimental subjects,” the report said.
Women reported adverse outcomes “In interviews and one 1980s country-wide survey, women have reported many adverse pregnancy outcomes,” said the report.
“They include stillbirths, a baby with part of the skull missing and ‘the brain and the spinal cord fully exposed,’ and a two-headed baby. Many of the babies with major birth defects died shortly after birth.
“Some who lived suffered very difficult lives, as did their families. Despite extensive personal testimony, no systematic country-wide scientific study of a possible relationship of adverse pregnancy outcomes to nuclear testing has been done.
“It is to be noted that awareness among US scientists of the potential for major birth defects due to radioactive fallout goes back to the 1950s. Hiroshima-Nagasaki survivor data has also provided evidence for this problem.
“The occurrence of stillbirths and major birth defects due to nuclear testing fallout in the Marshall Islands is scientifically plausible but no definitive statement is possible at the present time,” the report concluded.
“The nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands created a vast amount of fission products, including radioactive isotopes that cross the placenta, such as iodine-131 and tritium.
“Radiation exposure in the first trimester can cause early failed pregnancies, severe neurological damage, and other major birth defects.
No definitive statement possible “This makes it plausible that radiation exposure may have caused the kinds of adverse pregnancy outcomes that were experienced and reported.
“However, no definitive statement is possible in the absence of a detailed scientific assessment.”
Scientists who traveled with the Rainbow Warrior III on its two-month visit to the Marshall Islands earlier this year collected samples from Enewetak, Bikini, Rongelap and other atolls for scientific study and evaluation.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.