It Could Happen Here Weekly 99

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
About twenty years ago, maybe thirty, a circus fitted to Majorro,
the largest island on the Madro Atoll, in the capital
city of the Marshall Islands. They came to Major as
almost everything that isn't breadfruit, pandanas or fish does on
a boat. After performing, they couldn't find a boat to
take them to their next destination, and so the resident

(01:00):
tiny island, which at times is no wider than the
single road which travels its whole length, decided that they'd
have to share the food that they themselves had imported
a great cost, and they set about gathering apples, bananas,
and anything else that they thought an elephant might like
to eat while it waited for a way off an
island that barely has enough room for its own people,
let alone the largest land animal on earth. The people

(01:23):
of the Marshall Islands, for whom hospitality is as natural
as the times of the sea, greet each other the
same way they do strangers by saying yo quai. The
word has several meanings, but I'll let David Kabua explain them.
He's the President of the Republic of the Marshal Islands,
so he seems like he'd be a good source.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
I would say the word yupik yupe is treating word
yabuey has a lot of several meanings, and you can't
say when you meet someone first time, you say yaguey
when you greet someone, and when you also say goodbye,
instead of say good bye, you also yuh pay, So

(02:03):
it's you can't use that. Also, like during the weekend
there was a tournament, fishing tournament, and if you were
fishing and you got it. You have a big fish
on the land and you really m you're about to
land the fish.

Speaker 4 (02:23):
But the land's not.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
So what do you say, said, oh, yeah, way, hello
to the fish, But you just say yeah because you
lost the pig catch. So it can't be used that way.
Like when you lose someone or someone passed away. You've
missed that. Yeh way, so and so he was here
but no one could hear. So we can say yeh pay.

(02:45):
So it has several meanings, but the deeper meaning of
yapay is you are beautiful like the rainbow. Yeah means
rainbow and ways.

Speaker 5 (02:56):
So we combine the two words.

Speaker 6 (02:58):
You are a rainbow.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
You goombool as are.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
On the map. The Marshall Islands look like the little
dots that appear in my photos of the beach at Marjiro.
But unlike those little specks of dust that manage to
sneak their way onto my camera center, Marshall Islands belong here.
Here is a pretty vague turn. The twenty nine coral
atolls and five islands that allow fifty four thousand Marshal

(03:22):
Eies to live on one hundred and eighty two square
kilometers of land span an oceanic territory of two hundred
thousand kilometers. It's like you took a small American town
and scattered it across an area more than a half
times the size of Alaska. Even though the RMI is
ninety eight percent water, every inch of land is precious
to the marshal Eies, whose matrilineal society ensures that land

(03:45):
passes from mother to daughter and ties families to the
remote islands that make up the low lying atolls of
the Republic. It was on one of the bigger chunks
of land that I recorded the music you heard a
minute ago. Marjoro is an atoll that's a coral ring
that encircles the lagoon and its biggest islands. About thirty
miles long but often less than one hundred yards wide.

(04:08):
There's one road that runs the length of it and
sometimes also spans the width of it. It's also home
to about half the Urmis population. The highest point on
the atoll lies just three meters above sea level. If
you want to get higher than that, then your only
options are houses or palm trees. From the top of
the fifth floor of the NAPA Auto Parts Store, which

(04:29):
also houses the UNDP and the marshal Owns Olympic Committee,
you can see the whole island. For Marshallese people, these
tiny pieces of paradise that barely poke their heads out
from the top of the ocean are everything. Their land
and their ties to it define them. Without their place,
they can't be themselves. Even though many thousands of Marshales

(04:52):
live in the diasper of the United States, they still
important handicrafts made from little shells and the outer islands
and coconut husks. Many of them come back to the
islands to retire, but slowly the ocean is taking those
islands back. Rising sea levels and more extreme tidal surges
have placed this tiny Pacific nation on the front lines

(05:14):
of climate change. There isn't an exact estimate as to
how long the Marshall Islands have or what they can
do to halt the creeping advance of the ocean. They've
always existed on just a few square kilometers of land
among millions of square kilometers of ocean, and they depend
on that ocean for everything. But now it's threatening to
take everything away from them one day. They fear their

(05:36):
islands will become uninhabitable. A salt water invads of water
table and their trees die, while storms bring more and
more frequent floods that sweep away their homes and their possessions.
They don't want to leave, but they can't stand alone
against climate change either. But the marshally Is are resilient people.
They've weathered many storms to get to where they are now.

(05:58):
The tiny museum in Maduro artifacts of several crises that
would seem apocalyptic, a nuclear bomb, the Second World War,
But in the end these did little de cruss the
incredible kindness of the tenacity of the Marshals. The islands
that make up the Aramai have been inhabited by indigenous
people for thousands of years, and they've been variously ruled

(06:21):
by the Spanish, German, Japanese, and United States governments before
becoming an independent republic. Before they were named by a
British sailor, the islands had their own name. I'll let
Jeff a Marshal's renaissance man who was at once a driver,
the head of the World Health Organization's EMT program on
the islands, a registered nurse, and the custodians an incredible

(06:45):
collection of Marshalise music explained what they were called before that, or.

Speaker 7 (06:49):
Before I used to call La la la la larali like.

Speaker 6 (06:55):
El or el.

Speaker 7 (06:59):
Nahli l o lp lap laps.

Speaker 8 (07:05):
Before it turn out turns into Marshall. Because this work
Marshall games from this guy oh abound these islands.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
Captain Marshall undeniably, the Marshall Islands are not a bad
place to find yourself on a summer afternoon, and in
the time I spent there, I took several trips to
the smaller islands around madro Atoll. They look like the
Platonic idea of a tropical island, complete with coconut palms,
vibrant coral reefs, white sand, and turquoise water. I love

(07:39):
free diving and dropping down onto a wrecked aircraft and
dozens of brightly colored species of fish in almost infinite
visibility without even needing to put on a wet sue
or a weight belt. Might be the closest I'll ever
get to flying. But I wasn't just here for a
dip in the ocean. I'm actually here to tell you
a story of incredible resilience. Much of a America, both

(08:00):
on the left and on the right, spends much of
its time and money preparing for its own imagined version
of the crisis. For some, that's the unimaginable destruction of
nuclear war. For others, it's the encroaching of the ocean
on it's the land and a resulting loss of places
to live and grow food and for others. It's a
collapse of basic services like power and clean water that
we take for granted. These are all storms. So the

(08:23):
tiny island nation who hath already weathered, and it hasn't
done so in the atomized and individualistic way that so
many American preppers fantasize about online. It's done so as
an incredibly strong, optimistic, and welcoming community. There's a lot
we can learn from the people of the Marshal Islands
and their story, and so this week I'll be doing
my best to share the stories that they shared with me.

(08:49):
If you're familiar with the islands, it's likely because of
the history of one of the other atolls in the group,
Bikini Atoll. The name is the German bastardization of a
Marshal Lese word pikini pick meaning plain surface, and knee
meaning coconut tree. It's a flat base where coconuts grew,
but you likely don't know the island for its coconuts,

(09:12):
and those aren't safe to eat anymore anyway. If you've
heard of Bikinia Toll, it's because of what the United
States did there after the Second World War On the
eighteenth of July and nineteen forty seven, the Marshall Islands
were placed in a Strategic Trust Territory by the United Nations.
This territory was administered by the United States, which are
supposed to administer the islands in the best interest of

(09:32):
their inhabitants out of international peace and security. But a
year before the trust territory was created, the US began
nuclear testing in the lagoon at Bikinia Toll, a site
that would, over the next fifteen years, become the most
heavily bombed place on Earth, with some islands entirely removed
from the map and much of their population left dead sick,

(09:54):
without the land that defines them and their ability to
thrive on these ti iny islands amidst the endless ocean.
As far as possible, I want to let the marshal
Ease survivors of the nuclear tests and their families tell
their own stories. They call what happened on Bikini and
Awatakatoll the nuclear legacy of their country. Talking about the
nuclear legacy is a difficult topic for the marshal Eise,

(10:17):
especially the time when none of them have been paid
the compensation they were allotted, and the US was negotiating
a new agreement with the Marshalise government. It was very
far from settled and the numbers of the US were
offering were very far from sufficient. I was very fortunate
to join a few other journalists on the tiny island
of boken Bowton, a short boat ride away from Mitro

(10:38):
and home to perhaps most beautiful coral reef I've ever seen.
We had lunch, walked around the island and then had
a talk on the nuclear legacy from descendants of some
of the survivors. I'll let them introduce themselves.

Speaker 9 (10:51):
My name is Zachabkivion.

Speaker 10 (10:53):
I'm from the Marshall Island.

Speaker 11 (10:57):
I am a student at CMI car Chacta Marshall Allen,
and I am currently the president for the CMI Nuclear Club,
which we mostly work under National Nuclear Commission with with
our director Mary Suck and our Commissioner Arianna.

Speaker 12 (11:17):
All Reat.

Speaker 13 (11:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 14 (11:18):
Well, once again, my name is Ariana teven Kilima. I
work as a Commissioner and Nuclear Justice Envoy for the
RMI National Nuclear Commission.

Speaker 13 (11:29):
Him.

Speaker 14 (11:29):
Once again, thank you very much for having us this afternoon.

Speaker 15 (11:34):
Yooel, welcome to the Marshall Allen. My name is Evelyn Ralpho.
I'm the Director for Education and Public Awareness. Once again, welcome,
enjoy the rese of your days here.

Speaker 9 (11:46):
Well that my name is Sincretin Pernett.

Speaker 16 (11:49):
I work with the National Nuclear Commission as an admin
and physical officer.

Speaker 9 (11:54):
I'm not sure if it's necessary for me to come.

Speaker 16 (11:57):
But since the past that we all go, so that's
important support the plastic work on the same boat in
the Martiall Islands.

Speaker 15 (12:05):
She's from Mayata, She's from Yeah.

Speaker 14 (12:10):
The three of us are all descendants of nuclear survivors.
They were exposed to fall out. Her mother was exposed
to fall out. Her mother, Grace's mother was also exposed
to the radioactive fallout, as well as my great grandfather.
I think that's what really drives us to share.

Speaker 9 (12:30):
This with you.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Almost everyone in the RMI has a family member directly
impacted by the testing and the decade of mistreatment that
came after it. Although we know the name Bikinia Toll,
the entire republic was impacted by nuclear fallout, including Mardro itself,
thanks to the elevised decision to drop bombs on a
day when the populated atolls were downwind of the test site,

(12:53):
in fact, right next to our hotel. Showing the same
parking lot. There's the US Department of Energy office. What
that was doing there?

Speaker 7 (13:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 17 (13:01):
I saw there's a diary office like health office in
the street here, the one in.

Speaker 7 (13:07):
The next to the auto, that's the office where they
do the radiation testing. And there's the one near the
Ami Marshall that's the clinic for those survivors. Now, the survivors,
there's few of them life like, maybe less than fifty.

Speaker 5 (13:26):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
The RMI is still fighting in the Second World War.
It's memorialized in murals across Marjorro. In nineteen forty three
and early nineteen forty four, the USA bombed and then
fought the Imperial Japanese military who have been occupying the
island since nineteen fourteen. US soldiers and marines, along with

(13:47):
marsh Ley's scouts, landed on Marjorro Quadulan in anywhere thout
on Higgins boat that were virtually identical to the boat
we took across the lagoon to Bocan Boton. The fighting
was fierce and the scale of the destruction metz. Overall,
the Americans lost six hundred and eleven men and suffered
two thousand, three hundred and forty one wounded, two hundred

(14:08):
and sixty one were missing. Meanwhile, the Japanese lost over
eleven thousand men and had three hundred and fifty eight captured. Today,
the Bikinia Toll Lagoon still holds the ghostly remains of
the ships and plains that fought that battle, alongside the Nagato,
the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the ship

(14:30):
from whose bridge Admiral Yamamoto launched the attack on Pearl Harbour.
It was a shadow of this war that was evoked
in nineteen forty six when one hundred and sixty seven
a Bikini A Tolls inhabitants were forcibly relocated by the
United States. They initially accepted this settlement quote for the
good of mankind and to end all wars, in the

(14:51):
words of the US commandant at the time. Assisted by U. S.
Navy seabees, they disassembled their church and moved to different atolls.
Nine of the eleven family heads from Bikini elected to
be transported one hundred and twenty five miles to rong
gric Atoll, an island with about one quarter of the
land mass of Bikini Atoll. Many believed the island to

(15:13):
be haunted. By the time the navy left them with
a few weeks of water and food, they had every
reason to be afraid. I let Ariana explain what that
removal process was like.

Speaker 14 (15:24):
They had asked the people if they were willing to
give up their homelands for the good of mankind and
to end all wars. And because our people are people
of faith in Christianity, they and they were very afraid.

Speaker 13 (15:38):
They did not want to leave.

Speaker 14 (15:40):
But because of the amount of power that the military
showed up with with their big ships compared to our
small canoes, and the amount of troops that were on
that island on that morning, it was very hard for
them to fight against what was being.

Speaker 13 (16:01):
Asked of them.

Speaker 14 (16:03):
And if you have time to look through documentaries of
the nuclear legacy, you will see a certain part where
the commander, a commodore, his name was Ben Wyatt. He
was sitting down and asking the chief at that time,
can we use this island for the good of mankind?
And in response, the people all respond in unison elmn,

(16:26):
which means okay. And from their testimonies, they had to
take that shot over forty times to make sure that
you know they all said MMn at the same time,
to get the best shot they could for you know,
maybe for reports to the UN. But it was a
very frustrating time for them.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Following their removal, the testing began. The idea was to
test nuclear bombs on ships. To the US bought ninety
five ships fully loaded with weapons and fuel. At this time,
this would have ranked the a Bikinia told just outside
the top five biggest fleets in the world, but those
boats didn't stay afloat for long. Now you might think that,

(17:10):
given the testing was on ships, the atoll's navy would
be some kind of mid century Mary Celeste, but you'd
be wrong. Three hundred and fifty experimental rats, goats, and
pigs died in the service as its strange nuclear experiment,
some of them after being subjected to the great indignity
of being covered in sunscreen, which bizarrely scientists thought might

(17:33):
be useful in alleviating the impact of radiation. It's rather
staggering that this research was being done three years after
the United States dropped nuclear bombs on whole cities full
of human beings. But as you've maybe already picked up
in this story, the possibility of unintended but entirely predictable
human suffering does not seem to have been top of
the priority list. The first test of the island somehow misfired.

(17:58):
The gathered press would disappointed, and many of them went home,
But the second, codenamed Baker didn't. Chemist Glen t Seborg,
the longest serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, called
the Baker test the world's first nuclear disaster. It drove
a two thousand foot wide pillar of water into the air.
It sunk the USS Arkansas, and released massive amounts of

(18:22):
radiation across the islands of the atoll, which at the
time the residents had been expecting to return to. Just
five days after the first bomb went off, Louis Road,
a French mechanical engineer who was working as manager of
his mother's lingerie shop in Paris, introduced a new swimsuit
designed named the Bikini after the atoll. It was one

(18:45):
wright equipped the atom bomb of fashion. The people of
the atoll, however, gained little from the outfit or the testing.
January of nineteen forty eight, just two years after their removal,
doctor Leonard Mason visited the Bikinians on Rongerik and was
appalled to find the people there had almost starved to death.

(19:07):
We were dying, but they didn't listen to us, one
of them said to him. Mason, an anthropologist at the
University of WAYI asked that food and water be bought immediately.
The US built houses for Bikiniatol residents on Ujilangatol, but
it decided to use these for the residents of Aniwata Katol,

(19:27):
where it was also about to begin conducting nuclear experiments. Instead.
The Bikini Islanders were placed in tents alongside a runway
before they eventually chose Kille Island, a line of less
than one square kilometer, as their next home. Also evacuated
where Aniwata, Krangalap and Warthaw islanders. They too, thought this

(19:50):
was a temporary arrangement and that they could go home
in a short period of time. They too, found out
later that this was not the case. Over the course
of their exile, they've been moved several more times, staffed
half to death, cheated of their compensation, and stripped to
their ancestral homeland. For the next twelve years, the United
States would drop increasingly large bombs, culminating in nineteen fifty

(20:14):
four with the Bravo Shot of Operation Castle, also known
as Castle Bravo, the biggest nuclear device that we know
of the US ever deploying.

Speaker 14 (20:23):
Within those twelve years, there were sixty seven known devices
that were tested here. There could have been more, but
all we know of is sixty seven. One of them
was the Castle Bravo shat that yielded fifteen megatons, which,
when sciences calculated the equivalent of the Bravo shat, would

(20:44):
have required testing the Hiroshima bomb one and a half
times every single day for twelve years.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
That fifteen megaton Bravo shot yielded more than two point
five times the estimated six megaton explosion. When it was
detonated on an artificial island in the Bikinia Toll, the
device's mushroom cloud reached a height of forty seven thousand feet,
which is fourteen hundred meters, and a diameter of seven
miles or eleven kilometers in about one minute. Eventually it

(21:14):
reached a height of forty kilometers and a diameter of
one hundred kilometers. This took less than ten minutes, traveled
more than one hundred meters per second, and covered seven
thousand kilometers of the Pacific Ocean and everything in it
with nuclear fallout. On the eve of the Bravo shot,
weather reports indicated that the quote conditions were getting less favorable,

(21:37):
but nonetheless a decision to go ahead with the first
test was taken by Alvin Sea Graves jointed task for
seven ships located thirty miles east of Bikini, and what
was thought to be an upwin position began detecting high
levels of radiation just two hours after the test. Very
soon after, they began traveling south at full speed to

(21:59):
avoid the fall out, but directly down wind to the
blast and unable to travel were wrong. A lap and
A Lingeni Atolls Arianna explained the impact to fall out there,
which residents were not warned about. American services people there
want to stay inside, not eat or drink anything, but
no such warning was given to the local residents.

Speaker 14 (22:20):
Some said it looked like the sky was changing colors
from red to yellow to orange. It was just a
very very bright morning, and then they started hearing like
thunderous roars a couple of minutes later, and it was
just like roars after wars, and it was a very
frightening time. Because this was just not something you know,

(22:41):
does not happen every day. And then around ten am,
the fallout.

Speaker 13 (22:46):
Had started to arrive.

Speaker 14 (22:48):
And these are counts from rongolap at All, which is
the closest to Bikini. The fallout had started to arrive
and they were not sure what was going on.

Speaker 13 (22:57):
There was men out fishing.

Speaker 14 (22:59):
There was also stories from these witnesses that prior to
this test, the military had gone to and they had
movie nights and they would show the community of movies
where it's snowing.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Tomorrow we'll hear more about the consequences of the Bravo
shop for the people who, despite never having any quarrel
with the USA, with the recipient of the largest nuclear
bomb it's ever decimated. The music you just heard was

(24:22):
the anthem of Bikinia Toll, sung at their church on
Kille Island in nineteen ninety seven. The words translators follows,
no longer can I stay It's true? No longer can
I live in peace and harmony? No longer can I
rest on my sleeping matt pillow Because of my island
and the life I once knew there. The thought is overwhelming,

(24:44):
rendering me helpless and in great despair, my spirit leaves
drifting around and far away, where it becomes caught in
a current of immense power, and only then do I
find tranquility. B has a flag as well. It looks
a lot like the US flag, but in the top

(25:04):
left blue rectangle you'll only find twenty three white stars.
They represent the islands of Bikinia Toll. The three black
stars and the upper right of the flag represent the
three islands that were vaporized by the March first, nineteen
fifty four fifteen megatine hydrogen bomb blast codenamed Bravo. The
two black stars in the lower right hand corner represent

(25:25):
where the Bikinians live now, Killy Island, four hundred and
twenty five miles to the south of Bikinia Toll, an
egypt island on the Majuro Atoll. These two stars are
symbolically far away from Bikini stars on the flag, as
the islands are far away in real life, both in
distance and in terms of quality of life. The Marshallese

(25:46):
words running across the bottom of the flag men o
temzj regi elo benonije translate to everything is in the
hands of God. These represent the words spoken in nineteen
forty six by the Bikinian Lee Judah to the US
commodore Ben Wyatt when the American went to Bikini to
us the islanders on a Sunday after they'd just been

(26:07):
to church to give up their islands for the good
of all mankind so the US could test nuclear weapons there.
The close resemblance of the Bikinians flag to the flag
of the United States, it's to remind the people and
the government of the USA that a great debt is
still owed by them to the people of Bikini. In
today's episode, I want to pick up where we left

(26:29):
off yesterday in the hours after the Bravo shot. Here's
Ariana again.

Speaker 14 (26:35):
And so when that fallout had arrived, the children, you know,
they remember that they saw it in these movie nights.
They thought it was snow and they were playing in
this fallout. And then later on that day they started
to realize that this was maybe poisonous.

Speaker 13 (26:52):
They just were not sure.

Speaker 14 (26:54):
But by midnight that night, the people were not able
to move around as much. They were suffering dramatically. Their
stomachs were churning, their hair had started to fall out,
their skin was peeling off, and like. They said, it
was so itchy, and when they would scratch, the skin
just peels off as they scratched. And the fish that

(27:16):
the men were out fishing for when they had came
back that evening to eat, when they ate the fish,
they said it was like they were just munching on sand.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Johanna Jeanne, the mayor of rong Lapatol, gave an interview
in nineteen seventy seven recounting his experience with the fallout.

Speaker 4 (27:33):
It fell on me, It fell on my wife, It
fell on my infant son. It fell on the trees
and on the roofs of our houses. It fell onto
the reefs and into the lagoon. We were very curious
about this ash falling from the sky. Some people put
it in their mouths and tasted it. One man rubbed
it into his eye to see if it would cure

(27:54):
an old ailment. People walked in it and children played
in it.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Later, people on Utrech Atoll experienced the fallout as missed
minich Kel. One resident of the atoll, said that quote,
several of my babies, who were healthy at the time
they were born, died before they were a year old. Altogether,
I lost four babies. My son, Wynton, was born one
year after the bomb, and he has had two operations

(28:20):
on his throat for thyroid cancer. The Japanese fishing boat
Lucky Dragon number five also came into direct contact with
the fallout, which began raining down on them that same morning.
They'd been fishing outside the designated danger zone that the
US government had declared in advance, but when radioactive dust
began to fall on them, they scrambled to leave. Pulling

(28:43):
their gear took nearly six hours, during which time they
were covered in the dust and gathered some of it
in bags to take home and determine what this dust was.
Later in the day, they began to get sick as
they headed home. One member of the crew kept a
bag of the ash to have it analyzed on their
turn home, but he hung it from his bunk bed,
causing the crew to get continued exposure all the way home.

(29:05):
It took them two weeks to get back to Japan,
and doctors quickly determined the cause of their blisters, sickness,
and hair loss. They ask a US Atomic Energy Committee
for information on how to treat the fishermen. Instead, the
US sent two scientists to observe them. One of the
fishermen died and the others were sent home after fourteen
months in hospital. They faced stigma in public, and most

(29:29):
of them eventually died from liver cirrhosis or cancer. Thirty
six hours after the test, United States servicemen were evacuated
from Wrong Lap. Fifty four hours afterwards, the people of
Wrong Lappatole were evacuated, and seventy eight hours after the
fallout hit them, less than half of Utrich's four hundred
people were eventually evacuated. Here's Ariana again recounting the story

(29:54):
of one of those Wrong Lap residents.

Speaker 14 (29:56):
So they were evacuated on March fourth, nineteen fifty four,
and upon evacuation, the community was ordered to strip down
naked on the ships. They did not separate the males
from the females. The entire community stood naked. The community
stood naked on the ship and they were hosed down

(30:18):
with the pressure washer.

Speaker 13 (30:21):
When you talk stories with them today, it's they recall
it as you know.

Speaker 14 (30:27):
They say, you know, the holes was so strong, it
felt like those hoses that they used to put out fires.

Speaker 13 (30:34):
And after they were pressure.

Speaker 14 (30:36):
Washed, they were given a soldiers underwear and T shirt
to wear for their journey to Quadulant at all, and
for the bigger women that were a part of this
group that could not fit these soldiers underwears and T shirts,
they were given just a small towel to cover while
they were journeying to Quadulant. And also from these testimonies,

(31:00):
one of my neighbors, she was seven years old at
that time, and she said, you know, she's just a kid,
and when everybody was danding naked, and she saw her uncles,
and she thought it was funny at that time, but
she realized later that that was such a breach of
privacy and a moment of humiliation. And she recalls her

(31:20):
grandmother's skin falling off, and she said, it looked like
we all were like in a burning house, and everybody
had these scars on, like just the peel burning off.
But at that time she did not really realize it.
She did not have a lot of burns. She's still
alive today, but she did not have a lot of
burns because when the bomb was detonated, she was told

(31:42):
to go inside her house, and so she had a
little bit of protection.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
They were taken to Quadulin Naval Base, where things became
even worse for them. A week after the test, the
Atomic Energy Commission and the US Department of Defense sent
a joint medical team to Quadulin and these doctors. After
the memo stating that the exposed people should have quote
no exposure for the rest of their natural lives, one
hundred and eleven traditional Marshalisee leaders petition the United Nations

(32:10):
to be more cautious with testing and to stop it
entirely if at all possible. The UN decided to continue,
but without it precautions. It urged but did not compel
the US government to compensate the marshalise people. In fact,
the United States was only beginning the damage it would
do to the people of the Marshall Islands, and compensation
would not come for another three decades. I'll let Ariana

(32:33):
explain what actually happened next.

Speaker 14 (32:35):
On March ninth, nineteen fifty four, the Project four point
one scientists arrive, and then on March eleventh, nineteen fifty four,
the Project four point one officially commenced without consent from
the people. And this Project four point one was the
study of radiation on human beings and if you look
at the classified files. We have a lot of them

(32:58):
at the College of the Marshall Island Nuclear Institute. There's
you know, all different types of projects and for example,
like one project two point three could be the study
of radiation on corals, and then you know seven point
two is study of radiation on the trees and four
point one just so happened to be the study of
radiation on human beings. And when they were in Quadulin,

(33:23):
they were there for a couple of days. They were
ordered to bathe in the lagoon and salt water and
scrub their burns three times a day, every single day.
Also they were ordered to provide urine samples three times
a day. They also had to give blood samples three
times a day.

Speaker 13 (33:41):
And this went on. For the people of.

Speaker 14 (33:43):
Wudaruk it was three months, and for the people of
Romolap it was almost a year. And then they were
moved here to one of the small islands here where
they lived and waited for their home to be cleaned
up for them to return. And the thing is, while
they were taking these blood and urine sound amples and
having them bathed in the lagoon and scrubbing their burns

(34:04):
and saltwater three times a day, they all had clinical numbers,
and so even the pregnant women, their babies and their
wombs also were assigned a clinical number, because even if
there was still a baby, they were already monitoring these babies.
And the thing is, even with their hair falling off

(34:27):
and their skin peeling off, and their fingernails turning black
and just feeling very nauxious and having a severe headache,
they were not given paint medication. They were not given
any type of talanol or any of that. They were

(34:49):
just being monitored. And this whole time they thought they
were being treated, they didn't realize that they were a
part of this project that was just they're to study
how their body reacts to exposure to radiation.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Three years after being evacuated, the people of Rongolap were
allowed to return.

Speaker 14 (35:10):
And then they moved them back in nineteen fifty seven
because the bomb that they was exposed to was in
nineteen fifty four and they were there for twenty eight years.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
This wasn't a benevolent effort. It was a continuation of
the USA's use of the people of the Republic of
Marshall Islands subjects of experimentation.

Speaker 14 (35:28):
Later on, when they were going to move the people
of Romolap back to Ronolap. What they wanted to study
now was how radiation evolves on the food chain, because
when they had moved them back to Ronolap, this was
the original exposed group. When they went back, it was
not just the exposed group anymore because they were here

(35:49):
for three years and they took their family members that
were on Meguro and some of them got married, and
so when they went back there was four.

Speaker 13 (35:57):
Hundred of them.

Speaker 14 (35:58):
And I always which group was given a green card
and a red card, but like if it was a
red card, they were the exposed group, and the green
card was now the new control group that was going
to eat the crops on the land and eat off
of the land to see how the radiation has moved
in the food chain. And that's when my mother's father

(36:19):
was born on Ramala in nineteen fifty nine.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Eventually, the people of wrong Lap were evacuated nineteen eighty
five thanks to Greenpeace, who moved them to other atolls
when the US government refused to help them or acknowledge responsibility.
It was not just the people on wrong Lap and
the other atolls at the time who were impacted by
the radiation. The consequences have lasted for generations.

Speaker 14 (36:41):
And also we've had many cases of birth defects or
babies that were born, and according to the testimonies of
these mothers that had given birth, their babies were born
sometimes looking like jellyfish. Sometimes their babies were born without

(37:02):
a head, without limbs.

Speaker 13 (37:05):
All they could see.

Speaker 14 (37:06):
Was the heart beating and the blood flowing through their
veins and their intestines, and they just were not sure
whether they should bury this baby when the heart is
still beating, or if they should wait for the heart
to stop beating.

Speaker 13 (37:21):
And some mothers had told.

Speaker 14 (37:24):
Their stories of giving breaths to babies that they recalled
looking like octopus. Some others recalled their babies looking like turtles.
Some of them on many occasions they also had babies
that were looking like grapes.

Speaker 13 (37:42):
The fruit.

Speaker 14 (37:43):
It just looked like a bunch of grapes lump together.
And for many of these cases, these women were not
speaking up at that time because what they were told
by the Atomic Energy Commissions officials was that this is
the result of incest, and so it was a very
humiliating experience. Many of these women had no idea that

(38:08):
their own sisters were also giving birth to these monster
looking babies that they were giving birth to, and they
would oftentimes bury their babies alone where nobody else was watching.
And and it's a worldwide culture that when someone passes away,
we all gathered to mourn this loved one. But for

(38:29):
the women, the Marshally's woman at that time, it was
a very heartbreaking moment for them because they did not
want anybody else to see this baby that they had
given birth to, not realizing that their own sister was
also enduring the same crab.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Things were not much better for the Bikinians, who'd been
evacuated at the start of testing in nineteen forty six
after fouled attempt to settle them on another at all.
Many of the Kechennians elected to try living on Killi
as their new home. Killy Island lacked a coral reef,
and this made their traditional lifestyle of island hopping and
fishing in the calm Lagoon impossible. The Bikilians, inhabitants of

(39:12):
the most remote atoll in the already remote Marshall Islands,
were legendary for their ability to navigate using the stars
and seas, but on their new Island. The waves were
so big that their traditional canoes couldn't sail at all.
Soon the boat the USA had given them to import
food had sunk into the ferocious seas around the island,
and they were entirely reliant on air dropped food. Some

(39:34):
families moved to other islands or split their time between
Killi and the atolls with better resources. But life on
Killie was hard, and the lack of retected lagoon made
every delivery of food or supplies by boat a high
risk endeavor. Along with the loss of their homeland, many
generations of Bikinians began to lose their navigation skills and
their connection to the lagoon that provided so much sustenance

(39:55):
and material for their traditional lifestyle.

Speaker 14 (39:57):
They had suffered severe starve because for the people of Bikini,
the atoll that they were now living in was just
uninhabited in the first place, because all the fish around
the atoll or sicutara fish, so they could not eat
off the ocean. They couldn't they could not grow any crops.
And are you guys familiar with what a nony fruit?

Speaker 6 (40:19):
Is?

Speaker 14 (40:19):
A nony tree and it does not smell good, right,
But they started eating the nony fruit because they did
not have any bread fruit or papayas or anything.

Speaker 13 (40:29):
Growing on that land.

Speaker 14 (40:31):
And the men oftentimes had to sail out in their
canoes and they would be gone for almost a week
because they sailed out as far as they could to
be able to get fish that was edible for them.
Then for the people of Nlda, from their testimonies, the
at all that they were evacuated to was rat infested
and so their babies had to sleep in boxes. They

(40:53):
had to build like boxes for their babies or otherwise
the rats would come and nibble at their toes while
they're sleeping. And there was a lot of ways that
they were trying to figure out how to solve this
rat infestation. And at one time they were giving people
incentives like I think it was five cents if you
brought a rat's tail or something, you know, like, because

(41:15):
they were just trying to get rid of the rats
and they could not. And yeah, it's just a lot
of trauma and a lot of moving around. When the
people of Bikini were first moved from Bikini to this
new home of romric Atoll, where they lived for the
next two years. By the time the military had gone

(41:35):
back to pick them up when he's a very elderly
man now, but he was six years old at that time.
And the way he describes it is that he says
it was a very traumatizing moment for him because they
were carrying some of the people on leaves to the ship.

Speaker 13 (41:53):
They were very fragile.

Speaker 14 (41:55):
He said, if you have seen photos of the Holocaust,
this is this is what our people looked like because
there was just severe starvation at that time.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
In nineteen sixty eight, LBJ promised the Bikinians a chance
to return to their beloved home, and the US Trust
Territory began rebuilding the structures and decontaminating the soil. These
efforts were hampered by infrequent flights and delayed by the
discovery that the large coconut crabs on the island were
still dangerously contaminated. In nineteen seventy two, one hundred people

(42:26):
from three extended families moved back and began rebuilding their paradise,
but it wasn't long before it became clear that their
home was far from recovered. A visiting team of scientists
from France not the USA found dangerously high levels of
radioactivity and fruit, well water, and in the urine samples
of islanders. The islanders had sued the federal government and

(42:49):
more research was done. By nineteen seventy eight, scientists had
found an elevenfold increase in the caesium one hundred and
thirty seven body burdens of the people living on the islands, ever,
which the Department of the Interior called quote incredible. Once again,
the islanders were removed from their home. In nineteen eighty three,
the Republic of the Marshall Island gained its independence signed

(43:12):
the Compact of Free Association with the United States. When
the Compact came into effect in nineteen eighty six, the
Marshalies received their first financial settlement from the USA courtesy
of Section one hundred and seventy seven of the Compact
of Free Association, which pledged reparations for damages to the
former inhabitants of Bikini Enewattap, Rongolap, and utre catolls. They

(43:33):
were promised twelve percent rate of return on the trust fund,
which would be administered by the US and would provide
health care and property damage reimbursements. However, this fund relied
upon the fiction that only four a tolls were impacted
by the nuclear fallout. There is considerable evidence to suggest
that the entire republic of the Marshall Islands was directly

(43:53):
impacted by fallout from the Bravo shot. The trust fund
also tied the interest of the marshalise to those of
global cap As the value of the fund's investments went up,
so did their ability to fund healthcare and improve their
living conditions. But I found financial reports from that trust
fund in twenty sixteen. At the time, it had funds
invested in US domestic public equities twenty nine point five

(44:16):
percent of the portfolio. As of September thirty, twenty fifteen,
international equities made up twenty seven point four percent, fixed
income funds made up eighteen percent, real estate made up
five point five percent, hedge fund made up fifteen percent,
and a private equity fund made up the remaining four
point six percent. But the interests were low lying atoll

(44:38):
nation and those of global capital will never really be
fully aligned. The only reason hedge funds could offer such
astronomical returns for their investors is that they are comprised
of businesses who don't pay the full cost for their production.
This is nowhere more obvious than the rapidly shrinking atolls
of the Marshall Islands, where the rising sea levels driven

(44:58):
by the knee to inshure rising store prices, opposing a
new threat to people who endured and survived the largest
nuclear bomb the US is ever known to have deployed.
In nineteen eighty seven, a stock market collapse known as
Black Monday reduced the value of the fund, and even
to this day, despite other settlements and agreements, not one
single person in the Marshall Islands has received the full

(45:20):
amount of compensation that they were allocated. A great many
have received less than half. In nineteen ninety five, the
Island Council learned that the Environmental Protection Agency standard for
radiation reduction requirements was a lot lower than those of
the Department of Energy scientists had been using thus far
fifteen millirems as opposed to one hundred millirems. Between this

(45:43):
and the demand on settlement funds for services that would
lift the surviving islanders and their families out of poverty,
the cleanup of Bikinia Toll began to lose steam. Today,
six hundred people still live on killing subsisting largely a
US settlement fund. Their children, like many other marshal Eads,
go to boarding schools and other atolls, but they still
can't sale their canoes at home. Other Bikinians live on

(46:06):
one of the islands or Madro Atoll, but with no
matrilineal ties to their land, they don't have access to
that which defines them in their culture. Despite being so
isolated that the government thought it could safely nuke the
island without damaging the mainland or really anywhere it cared about,
the island's trust fund is still privy to the rising
and falling of the stock market, and it took a
significant hit in two thousand and eight. In twenty seventeen,

(46:31):
Trump's Department of the Interior allowed Bikini's mayor and council
to supervise the use of the fund in order to
quote restore trust and ensure that sovereignty means something. When
turned over, the fund was valued at fifty nine million
US dollars. Today it holds a little more than one
hundred thousand US dollars. The island's mayor and US in

(46:52):
GIEVUS oversaw the fund at the time of its depletion,
and has admitted to claiming personal expenses from the fund
and spending six figure sums on his trip to the
He's also made more popular purchases like a small aircraft
and two cargo ships to help supply the more isolated Bikinians,
as well as construction equipment to build sea walls to
protect the islanders against another crisis, rising sea levels, which

(47:14):
threatens to swallow their whole country in a few decades. Sadly,
the spending has left the fund virtually empty and the
Czech's Bikinians god, which amounted to about eighty dollars per
person per month, have stopped coming. These stipends help feed
Bikinians and pay for medical care, and without them things
are even harder. Today. A few caretakers live on Bikinia

(47:35):
at all, and you can visit to scuba dive, but
the community that once existed there is gone. Edward Madison,
one of those caretakers, was grandson of one of the
residents removed in nineteen forty six. Madison helped lead dives
in the islands, tested clean up methods, and monitored the
pollutants for the US Department of Energy, as well as

(47:56):
mapping the lagoon's World War II. Rex he passed away
on Mark twenty ninth, twenty twenty. On any Watakatoll, the
cleanup will never happen. Even after it ended nuclear testing,
the US tested conventional and biological weapons there. It shot

(48:16):
missiles from California at the atoll and tested airborne bioweapons.
From nineteen seventy seven to nineteen eighty, the US began
scraping radioactive topsoil off the various islands it had tested
for both nuclear and biological weapons, and transporting that waste,
along with some race from Nevada to run It Island.

(48:37):
Once on run It, the waste was mixed with concrete
and secured in a giant concrete dome. Jeff's families from
that island, but thanks to the levels of radiation which
rival Fukushima Chernobyl, he can't go back.

Speaker 7 (48:50):
My grandfather is from this island.

Speaker 5 (48:52):
Oh wow, yes, sucks.

Speaker 7 (48:55):
But I've never been to that island.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Is that where you're like? He did his father live
there and like his hold did they live there for
a long time? Your family before?

Speaker 7 (49:06):
Yeah, yeah, that's your traditional one.

Speaker 18 (49:09):
Do you want to go?

Speaker 7 (49:13):
The dome is there?

Speaker 17 (49:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (49:16):
Like all the people from that island they get to
test their radiation level.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Today, thanks to the other extinction level threat the US
has helped create, climate change, the dome is slowly sinking
and cracking. Hundreds of US servicemen developed cancer building the dome.
Six died. Many others have struggled to get full VA benefits.
As the ocean rises, the concrete cap could simply slide
off the dome and the thirty three Olympic swimming pools

(49:44):
worth of nuclear and biological waste could flood out into
the ocean. Locally, this dome is called the Tomb. On
the fifth of March two thousand and one, the Nuclear
Claims Tribunal handed down a decision on a seven year
lawsuit that the Bikinians had brought against you the United
States were damages done to their islands and their people
during the nuclear testing on Bikini. The tribunal was created

(50:07):
by the Compact of Free Association and that always had
been underfunded. The settlement and the five hundred and sixty
three million dollars it awarded stood in Limbos the island
to sue the federal government for it. On the day
we left Marjerome, the Republican Marshalll Islands negotiations with the
USA over the renewal of the Compact of Free Association
had gone on until two in the morning Marshalise's time.

(50:30):
We ate breakfast that day with hille Hine, the first
woman to be president of the Marshall Islands and the
first woman president in the Pacific. I didn't get great
audio there, but she shared with us the ongoing struggle
that the Marshalise people have had to secure adequate and
fair compensation. With the US offering seven hundred million and
the calculated costs of health care and cleanup closer to

(50:52):
three billion, there is a long way for the US
to come to make the islanders whole. They also, even
six decades on, haven't apologized to the people who had
no quarrel with them and whose homes and lives they destroyed.
The case of the people of the Pacific Proving Grounds
illustrates rather well how we can't find financial settlements they're

(51:14):
going to offset the kind of disasters the climate change
is bringing. This doesn't mean that people who are harmed
shouldn't be compensated, but it does mean that no amount
of cash can right the wrongs done. This is why
I wanted to anchor this series, which is about the
future with a story about the past, because in the
next couple of episodes we're going to hear a lot

(51:35):
about what might happen to the Marshall Islands, and again
how virtually none of it is the fault of the islanders.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't accept their leadership on these issues, though,
as we saw at the negotiations that led to the
Paris Accords, the Marshall Islands can and should take a
place at the heart of global discussions about climate change
because they are the ones most impacted by the constant

(51:56):
growth neoliberal model that makes other people pay for its
negative exit. As we will learn in the next few episodes,
we should ask the people impacted how they want to
be helped, and not tell them what they need. I
want to end today's episode with a poem and a
very Marshal East moment. I tried to meet the poet
who wrote this while I was on the island, because

(52:17):
I remember the impact of her poetry at the UN
Climate Summit. She was off island while I was there,
but it turned out the hill behind the former president
who I was having breakfast with was her mum. With
Kathy gentle kids. Note reading a poem she wrote for
her own daughter to the United Nations.

Speaker 19 (52:36):
Dear Marta Felibino, you are a seven month old sunrise
of gummy smiles. You are bald as an egg and
bald as a buddha. You are thighs that are thunder
shrieks that are lightning. So excited for bananas, hugs and
our morning walks along the lagoon. Dear Marta Felibino, I

(52:57):
want to tell you about that lagoon, that lazy lounging lagoon,
lounging against the sunrise. Men say that one day that
lagoon will devour you. They say it will gnaw at
the shoreline, two at the roots of your bread fruit trees,
gulp down rows of sea walls, and crunch through your
island shattered bones. They say you, your daughter and your

(53:20):
granddaughter too, will wander rootless, with only a passport to
call home. Dear Mante felip Benam, don't cry. Mommy promises
you no one will come and devour you. No greedy
wail of a company sharking through political seas, no backwater
bullying of businesses with broken morals, no blindfolded bureaucracies gonna

(53:45):
push this mother ocean over the edge. No one's drowning, baby,
no one's moving, No one's losing their homeland. No one's
becoming a climate change refugee, or should I say no
one else? To the Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea

(54:05):
and to the Tarot Islanders of Fiji, I take this
moment to apologize to you. We are drawing the line
here because we baby are going to fight your mommy, daddy,
booboo dema, your country and your president too. We will
all fight. And even though there are those hidden behind
platinum titles who like to pretend that we don't exist,

(54:29):
who like to pretend that the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Kidobas, Maldives, Typhoon,
Hayan and the Philippines, floods of Algeria, Colombia, Pakistan, and
all the hurricanes, earthquakes.

Speaker 16 (54:41):
And tidal waves didn't exist.

Speaker 19 (54:45):
Still there are those who see us, hands reaching out, fists,
raising up, banners, unfurling, megaphones booming, and we are canoes
blocking coat ships. We are are the radiance of solar villages.
We are the fresh clean soil of the farmer's past.

(55:06):
We are teenagers blooming petitions. We are families biking, recycling, reusing,
engineers building, dreaming, designing, artists, painting, dancing, writing, and we
are spreading the word. And there are thousands out on
the streets marching hand in hand, chanting for change now.

(55:29):
And they're marching for you, baby, They're marching for us,
because we deserve to do more than just survive. We
deserve to thrive. Dear mate, Felivinum. Your eyes heavy with
drowsy weight, So just close those eyes and sleep in peace,

(55:50):
because we won't let you down.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
You'll see United Airlines Flight one five four starts a Honolulu.

(56:21):
When it leaves, it carries not only a full load
of passages, but also a mechanic and spare parts for
the plane. On its journey, it stops in the Marshall
Islands at Marjora and Quadrilin before heading west to make
three stops in Micronesia, and finally it stops in Gua.
The next day, it turns around does the same route
in a reverse landing. In Marjoro, you can see the

(56:43):
ocean on both sides of the plane. In fact, you
can see the ocean on both sides of the plane
from a disturbingly low height, and despite this being one
of the larger islands in the Marshall Islands, it almost
looks like the plane won't fit on it without a
wingtip overhanging the lagoon. The plane does fit, of course,
and there's even room left at major airport for the
best airport bar that I've ever seen. But even after

(57:06):
a couple of hours in the company of the island's
finest whiskey collection, it's very clear that the Marshall Islands
are in a great deal of danger when it comes
to rising sea levels. The Marshall Islands don't have much
land to begin with, and through no fault of their own,
their island paradise is being gradually lost to the ocean
start with. I want to let Kathy Gentle Kitchener, the
poet who he heard from yesterday, outline the scale of

(57:28):
the threat.

Speaker 19 (57:30):
Climate change is a challenge that few want to take on,
but the price of inaction is so high. Those of
us from Oceania are already experiencing it firsthand. We've seen
waves crashing into our homes and our bread fruit trees
wither from the salt and drought. We look at our
children and wonder how they will know themselves or their

(57:50):
culture should we lose our islands. Climate change affects not
only US islanders, it threatens the entire world. To tackle it,
we need a radical change.

Speaker 13 (58:02):
Of course, this isn't easy.

Speaker 11 (58:04):
I know.

Speaker 19 (58:05):
It means ending carbon pollution within my lifetime. It means
supporting those of us most affected to prepare for unavoidable
climate impacts, and it means taking responsibility for irreversible loss
and damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The people who
support this movement are indigenous mothers like me, families like mine,

(58:27):
and millions more, standing up for the changes needed and
working to make them happen. I ask world leaders to
take us all along.

Speaker 18 (58:37):
On your ride.

Speaker 13 (58:38):
We won't slow you down.

Speaker 19 (58:40):
Will help you win the most important race of all,
the race to save humanity.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
Currently, Pacific island nations are responsible for less than zero
points zero three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but
the United Elations estimates that more than fifty thousand people
in the Pacific displaced every year, many of them by
climate change. Of course, people leave for other reasons. Perhaps
they're looking for work, which can be hard to find
on a small Island, or perhaps they want the opportunities

(59:09):
at the United States life offers. Thanks to their compact
of free association, Marshalise people can live and work in
the USA without a visa. Most marshal These people who
do leave the islands move to Springdale, Arkansas. It's where
the largest off island Marshallyse community is gathered, and they
tend to cluster around the reliable jobs offered by the
Tyson Chicken Factory. In twenty twenty, the Tyson Chicken Factory

(59:32):
remained open during lockdowns, and people who had left the
islands for a more steady income and a better chance
for a stable future suddenly face more great risks at work.
Life is by no means easy for marshal Ease people,
both in the US and at home, and the choices
they face because of climate change constricting global economy and
the United States refusing to pay its fair share of

(59:52):
compensation don't make that any easier. On my last night
in the Marshall Islands, I was having a beer in
a bar and chatting with a local journalists. I asked
him what I should write. He said that I needed
to tell you that people in the rami aren't moving
because they're afraid of waves. We're not afraid of the ocean,
he said. We're ocean people. We go in the ocean

(01:00:13):
every day. He was right, of course. The drivers of
migration are complicated, and they always have been. I always
tell people who ask me what I cover that they
cover climate and conflict and migration, because in fact they're
largely the same things. There are many reasons for migrating
from the Marshall Islands if there are people who have left,
and all of them are valid. But everyone I spoke to,

(01:00:35):
whether they'd left or come back or stayed there their
whole lives, were pretty clear that nobody wants the community
to leave. The people of the Marshall Islands love their
islands and they want to raise their children and grandchildren
on their ancestral land. But the people making the choices
that impact their ability to do that are a long
way from the lagoon that's creeping closer and closer to
the houses around magro at All. Climate change making the

(01:00:59):
islands unhabit doesn't necessarily mean they'll be swallowed entirely by
the ocean. Long before the last scrap of land disappears.
The rising saltwater will kill bread fruit trees, and flooding
will destroy homes. To get a scent of that threat,
we spoke to a meteorologist.

Speaker 5 (01:01:16):
I'm regally white, regional white, and I'm the meteorologist in charge.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Here ready explained what climate change might do to make
the islands less easy to live on and eventually perhaps
impossible to live on. If something doesn't change. It's hard
for people to see these kind of creeping changes. When
we think about climate change rendering an island uninhabitable, we
think about the island ceasing to exist, or the house
is being swept away by a storm surge or a

(01:01:42):
massive king tide. Perhaps, but in fact the changes are
more gradual, but no less destructive.

Speaker 5 (01:01:48):
We have to go back to the emasion scenarios that
IP is produced, and based on them worst case scenario,
if we look at it, I have to open up
the computer at the table. But in one hundred years
we may be not completely stening, and that's not what's
important here. What is important is the islands.

Speaker 20 (01:02:09):
Will be uninevitable way before they sink, because we will
not be able to drive on the road, we will
not be able to rely on our water lenses, because
they'll all have salt water into them.

Speaker 5 (01:02:21):
As more and more frequent salt water intros and get
on top and down into the water lens, they will
be undrinkable. So at what stage can we put that target.
I'm not comfortable at this moment to point that out,
but I think anyone of us can look at the
numbers and decide, based on this emission scenario, this is

(01:02:45):
the day. Based on that the mission scenario, that is
the day. So there's not a set day or a
what do you call it? The hair that broke the
camel's back? What was it? What was the American saying?

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
As Reggie explained, the impact of rising sea levels is
already being seen, particularly in the case of flooding.

Speaker 5 (01:03:07):
Oh, there are many but in a low lying at
all you're most concerned is flooding, coastal flooding. So we've
seen more frequent flooding during Landinia. Landinea is the face
where in the Marshall Islands, specifically, you get elevated sea
levels about ten centimeters or so eight to twelve inches

(01:03:32):
on top of the normal sea level at any given time.
So when there is a storm, search king tide, those
things compound on one another to give us more frequent
coastal floodings in the low lying areas. If you go
in the bag of Measuro, you will see people building
up sea walls to protect their properties. With those sea walls,

(01:03:55):
the impact there's been lessened a bit, but without those
walls now sence flooding has been almost a monthly occurrence
during allninial phases.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
In twenty twenty one, the World Bank and the Marshalleasee
government produced a report which allowed visualization of the impact
of climate change on each building in Marjuro in broad strokes.
The report stated that quote rising sea levels and the
atoll nation of the Marshall Islands are projected to endanger
forty percent of existing buildings in the capitol Marjoro, with

(01:04:30):
ninety six percent of the city at risk for frequent
flooding introduced by climate change. According to a World Bank study,
change seems to be very hard for the corporations and
governments most responsible for it. Indeed, one could argue that
seeing that change is hard because of those corporations and governments.
Namia Rescuers, a Harvard historian of science, studies the propaganda

(01:04:52):
that has allowed major corporations to deny the damage they
do to the planet and generate massive profits by not
paying for the negative xconalities of their actions. Negative excenalities,
if you're not familiar, are the costs that their business
imposes on other people but they don't pay. In her
book Merchants of Doubt, Arescus traces how nuclear testing did

(01:05:14):
huge damage to the ozone layer. Indeed, much of the
technology we used today to track global climate change was
developed using government money. Part of the reason why was
to assess with the Soviet Union was doing nuclear testing
by tracking the environmental damage that was done. Using some
of the data these instruments created, scientists, among them Carl Sagan,

(01:05:34):
began to discuss the possibility of a nuclear winter and
the fact that any use of nuclear weapons or even
a nuclear accident could put the future of all humanity
at risk. Unsurprisingly, as huge public relations ever spun up
to dismiss the idea of nuclear winter and attack the
concept of nuclear war being an unwinnable proposition. There was,
after all, a huge amount of money at stick. In

(01:05:56):
an excellent New York caressing on the subject, Jill Lapour,
another Harvard historian, outlines a campaign to discredit those scientists
and their claims. In nineteen eighty four, in an effort
to count to Carl Sagan and to defend what was
called the Strategic Defense Initiative, the George C. Marshall Institute
was founded by Robert Jastro, a NASA physicist, Frederick Seitz,

(01:06:18):
a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, and
William Nihrenberg, a past director at the Script's Institute of Oceanography.
Right here where I live in San Diego. The Marshall
Institute began trying to get PBS to not air documentaries
opposing the Strategic Defense initiative. The so called star Wars
program wouldn't be of any use of a single nuclear

(01:06:39):
incident could trigger devastating change in the global climate. Another
Master Institute scientist, Seltz's cousin Russell, who was a physicist
at Harvard Center for International Affairs, published an essay in
the National Interest in the fall of nineteen eighty six
dismissing the idea of nuclear winter and saying it was
nothing but a series of long conjectures. He described vibes

(01:07:00):
the nuclear winter theory as dead course of death, notorious
lack of scientific integrity. By nineteen eighty eight, the Institute
have pivoted and it began publishing the first of many
papers on climate change. Other scientists there, including Fred Singer,
challenged the model that predicted a nuclear winter. They've gone
on to do the same with climate change, claiming that

(01:07:22):
in both cases it was far from certain that catastrophic
consequences would occur. Singer incidentally was a consultant for Arco, Exxon,
Shell Oil, and sol Oil. He died in twenty twenty
after serving for years as a director of Science and
environment policy at the Heartland Institute, which was founded in

(01:07:42):
nineteen eighty four. Its position on global warming at the
time was quote most scientists do not believe human greenhouse
gas emissions are a proven threat to the environment or
human well being, despite a barrage of propaganda insisting otherwise
coming from the environmental movement and eco by its sick
ephants in the mainstream media. In the Marshall Islands, this

(01:08:04):
kind of de nihilism, no matter how well funded and qualified,
really isn't going to stick. Everyone here is personally seen
the impacts of rising sea levels eroding away on their
precious land, but it's the actions of people everywhere that
impact people here, so they have to persuade the rest
of the world to care about them.

Speaker 5 (01:08:22):
I will bet that every Marshal Marshalise understand impacts because
every Marshalise has been a victim of some coastal inovision,
has been you know, has been impacted by those, so
they understand.

Speaker 21 (01:08:38):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:08:39):
The youngest ones maybe they experienced there first, but the
older ones, they've been around during those days when there,
you know, coastal flooding wasn't an issue.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
One of the things I like to do in my
free time is to freedom. Sometimes I can collect sea
urchins or cool shells, but lots of the time I
just like to be underwater. I've never done scuba diving.
All the gear and equipment kind of scares me, but
holding my breath and swimming around the reef is probably
the closest thing I'll ever feel to flying. To be
able to hold your breath for a minute or two underwater,

(01:09:13):
you need to get your heart rate very low, and
this means being very calm, letting tension and stress float away.
It's a magical feeling and one that I've tapped into
even outside the water. In stressful situations. Sometimes that ability
to calm yourself could be a bit too effective. I
remember once starting to walk off a broken pelvis and
passing out from blood loss later. Sometimes that calm focus, though,

(01:09:36):
can be exactly what you need, Like when you're holding
your breath on the bottom of the ocean and you
realize that you got your fins tangled and abandoned fishing
line and you need to cut it so you can
get back to the surface and breathe. I saw that
same ability to remain calm and even happy despite what
seems like another impending crisis every time I spoke to
marshal Lease people about climate change. Between their nuclear past

(01:09:57):
and their perilous future, the Marshalise people have every right
to be angry, and maybe they are angry when they're
not told them to British journalists. But whenever I ask people,
they still seem hopeful, upbeat and excited about the future
of their country. As we're going to see tomorrow, marshal
Le's people are still very much investing in their shared future.

(01:10:17):
I think that's something we can all learn from. Resilience
to the Marshallei's community, even in the face of what
seems like a second apocalyptic threat. He's Reggie discussing how
climate change makes him feel well.

Speaker 5 (01:10:28):
I try not to dwell on what could happen. I
could try to think of what we could do now
to change people's heart, to change how we behave while
we treat the world. I mean, it's our only home.
You go out in space and look back. It's one
lonely place in an entire galaxy of stars and whatever.

(01:10:49):
You But when you look at it that way, you
begin to realize I must respect my police. Who else
will respect? The divide?

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
It's worth noting that some people we talk to concerned
about climate change.

Speaker 22 (01:11:02):
My name is Juliet Miranda from Mussel Island. I live
on Takhan.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Juliet's an older resident of wrong Rum, one of the
outer islands on madro At. All her life there is
in many senses adyllic. Her cook house is built around
a large breadfruit tree. The tree also serves as a
work service. It's like a solar punk vision of the
future where we live in harmony with nature. But for
her it's just a place she makes lunch along with

(01:11:28):
the other wrong Wung islanders. She served a visiting group
that I was part of a delicious lunch of coconut breadfruit, pandanas,
crabs and rice. Well, we talked about what brought her
back to the Marshall Islands after thirty years living in
the United States.

Speaker 22 (01:11:43):
Well, so, though you always are own sick when I'm
in USA, I miss my you know, around freedom, like USA,
you cannot go the next door. It goes trust passing.
But around here you do everything.

Speaker 14 (01:12:05):
Yes, it's it's different, lots different.

Speaker 22 (01:12:08):
So I love the USA. Tell lives could and a
lot of different things youis do then modules so I
love it here. I do all my old thing I
usually do, breaking and make my home chicken and join

(01:12:28):
me and on pigeon. Santa Barbara, you have to get
a guy good.

Speaker 15 (01:12:34):
Go to the peach over year reporting beach.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
She clearly loves her little piece of paradise, and it's
easy to see why she was happy to share it
with us, as were all the islands. On Wrong Wrong
a short walk away from her house, Her neighbor's children
played in the sand with their pigs, chickens and dogs,
and it's certainly a very different place from Santa Barbara.

Speaker 18 (01:12:55):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
She spent much of her time in the United States,
but it's no less special. Like many Marshal LEAs. She
has a very strong faith and that faith is helping
her explain why climate change is happening.

Speaker 17 (01:13:07):
Do you think it's because their sea levels rising?

Speaker 8 (01:13:12):
You can get gotta make it harder for people.

Speaker 22 (01:13:14):
To live in Some people do that, but I don't
believe in Only God will do it.

Speaker 15 (01:13:22):
I believe in God.

Speaker 22 (01:13:23):
When they do the weather and said it's going to
rain tomorrow and tomorrow is not going to be raining.
God's going to make it rain, the nost No, you
know it, you're mister.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
For others, the threat is already here. Here's one conversation
with Monique and Francine from Core and Akram, a local
NGO who you'll hear a lot about tomorrow. They're doing
incredible work investing in the future of the Marshall Islands
by installing water filters and smokeless stoves and homes across
the nation. You might never have had to worry about
clean water or never been concerned, but cooking your food

(01:14:02):
might hurt your lungs. But both of those things are
massive public health issues. We don't have access to electricity,
gas and clean water from a pipe that comes into
your home. One night before dinner, we talked to them
about climate change.

Speaker 23 (01:14:15):
The scientists are saying that you've got so many years
until all eyes melts and affects us. We don't have
mountains to run to. In some places they can just
front of the mountains.

Speaker 10 (01:14:33):
We don't.

Speaker 17 (01:14:34):
Yeah, so it's Marshall Islands.

Speaker 14 (01:14:44):
We're at the front.

Speaker 23 (01:14:45):
Clients, so you're also blessed that you get to see
the Marshall Islands.

Speaker 9 (01:14:53):
Yeah, I really will really see firsthand what the pass the.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Impact goes beyond the individual though. When we heard from
the Ministry of Health and the impact the climate change
is already having on the well being of marshal Ly's people,
they reminded us of both the physical and mental health
of residents has been affected.

Speaker 24 (01:15:14):
So well, yeah, well, as active secretary is my name
is Nathan Carbon and Climate Change and Admin.

Speaker 18 (01:15:27):
Uh.

Speaker 9 (01:15:28):
Well, first of all.

Speaker 25 (01:15:29):
We'll come to to visit us.

Speaker 26 (01:15:34):
I think Michael Jackson has said in best do you
want to see change in the world, you have to
look in the mirror.

Speaker 9 (01:15:42):
So this is our Climate Change in Health department.

Speaker 25 (01:15:45):
Uh uh, climate impacts on health and well being.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
Nathan went on to explain what that means both in
terms of mental health and in physical health, as mosquitoes
and other disease vectors adapted to change in climate and
rising sea.

Speaker 25 (01:16:00):
Levels, I communicable diseases and xdise reducing vulnerabilities with the
vector borne diseases and then improving mental health resilience. So
the mental health resilience is a really key them. We
have our seminar that's ongoing right now partnership with Jojugu,

(01:16:26):
which lets the youth express how climate change makes their
feel and also.

Speaker 26 (01:16:35):
Involving the community and getting their feedback. You know, the
climate issue is not just at a national level, it's
mostly at the community level.

Speaker 2 (01:16:52):
All of these changes are hard to predict, but it's
easy to see the impact climate change has already had.
We spoke to the island's Environmental Rotection Agency to get
a sense of what that meant.

Speaker 27 (01:17:02):
My name is Marianna Phillip and I'm the general manager here.

Speaker 10 (01:17:07):
As you can see, we're a very.

Speaker 27 (01:17:08):
Small organization with a very broad mandate anything environmental related.
We are accountable too, and we're supposed to provide advice
to the government and the Marshal Lease.

Speaker 10 (01:17:28):
People about new issues that are coming up.

Speaker 9 (01:17:32):
And so.

Speaker 28 (01:17:35):
You know, we're easily overwhelmed and outmatched, and then, you know,
you throw in climate change into the mix, and suddenly.

Speaker 10 (01:17:50):
I can't even imagine what the change is going to
be like in the next five years or ten years.
It's hard for me to imagine. When I was a child,
I used to.

Speaker 27 (01:18:01):
Go to the school across the street is a DS
is a public school, and we would cross the road
and swim from here all the way to develop and
then cross the road and go home. This was all
white Sandy Beach. You know, obviously that's not the case anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
One way that the marshal Least community has responded to
climate change is to take a position of leadership on
mitigating carbon emissions. We heard about this all over the island,
with solutions ranging from electric canoes to sailboats to a
grid that runs on renewable energy. They've also taken leadership
and how aid money is spent. Rather than just accepting
the projects as founders suggest them, the RMI has been

(01:18:48):
vocal in making sure that the unique challenges that they
face are reflected with unique solutions that they propose. For example,
they simply don't have the space for larger solar farms
even though they do have the funding.

Speaker 14 (01:19:00):
My name is Angeline Heini Rimmers.

Speaker 12 (01:19:03):
Other than being part of GEO, I'm also the director
for the National Energy Office, and then I'd like to
introduce you to Ben. He's the deputy director. So we're
a very small office. It's newly created. It was developed

(01:19:23):
in twenty eighteen, so we're trying to be creative and
we partnered with our local government in exchange building them
basketball courts. The reason why there's so many basketball courts
is that we'll be installing rooftop and on the rooftop
that's we're going to be housing the solar, connecting it

(01:19:45):
to the grid. And it's with this project we had.
It took us I think more than a year. Ben
right so went back and forth with our partner because
they just wanted to go ahead and put on solar.

Speaker 2 (01:19:58):
Sometimes the scale live the programs larger countries use simply
isn't a good fit for the marshals.

Speaker 12 (01:20:04):
We get funding to go on trips to places like Korea, Japan,
Okinawa to see all these systems that in the eyes
of big countries that you see as islands like Jju
Island and Korea, but they're like so advanced compared to here.

Speaker 13 (01:20:22):
You go there and.

Speaker 12 (01:20:23):
They have ocean thermal and to us where like, okay,
what about our corals that's where our reefish lives in.

Speaker 13 (01:20:33):
Do we have to get rid of our corals?

Speaker 18 (01:20:36):
Maybe we should rethink of that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
Or they also make sure to incorporate traditional methods and
their culture along with m modern solutions.

Speaker 17 (01:20:45):
I want to love more about the electric canoes that
they are very pretty.

Speaker 21 (01:20:50):
Cool and.

Speaker 17 (01:20:53):
I'm interested to know, like a well, Jeremy area, like
that you were incorporating in the traditional ways white ignoring,
because that's something that the entry community. That's something that
was framed up here at the wham. And can you

(01:21:14):
talk about how surfused completion and how much fun it
might save.

Speaker 12 (01:21:17):
Then do you want to start without who came up
with the idea for the and and then where we
are at?

Speaker 6 (01:21:26):
Yeah, So WALM started the initiative of the boat building
and they wanted to it strictly started with womb. We
we had no idea about that project. But initially they
got a project from a donor for boat building where
they would modernize these traditional canoes just to make modifications

(01:21:52):
to like make the hull bigger for catching fish or
just whatnot. And then out of the blue, the director
for WAM said, hey, what if we put solar on
this boat. I think there's something in the market. So
we just out of the blow just wanted to test it. Unfortunately,
when we purchased the motor and they're going to start

(01:22:13):
the testing, WAM burned down and the motor burned down
with it. But they did a few runs in the lagoon.

Speaker 13 (01:22:22):
With it and it was really awesome. I wrote on it.

Speaker 6 (01:22:25):
At one point they started using wind and the wind
died down, turned on the motor, and they started using
the motor, and then one pick up they turned off
the motor. It was really awesome. But we Anio, the
director wanted to procure another one, so we procured another
one with our own funds. So it's on its way
and it should be here very shortly to do some

(01:22:46):
real testing. Nice, but we wanted we also partnered with
WAM because of that just pilot project. We saw the
need to build more of the similar kind canoe, so
we we ask another donor if we can use their
funding to fund the second phase of that project. So
right now they've been approved and they're building an additional

(01:23:10):
eighteen more canoes for each each island. And so the
process is they bring in these boat builders from the
outer islands, they train them how they build these new
style canoes with modern technology, and then they ship it
back out. One success story without the motor is in

(01:23:30):
the atoll of Linkyap. They completely stop using their motorized
boat because they're one hundred percent using the canoe, and
the canoe can carry up to a ton. So they've
been carrying copra from one island to another, back and
forth with the canoe, and they said they'd save so

(01:23:51):
much money that they decided to do a fishing tournament
at their outer island from.

Speaker 13 (01:23:56):
The money they save.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
You he's right talking about how he sees his role
in combating climate change.

Speaker 18 (01:24:04):
Oh.

Speaker 5 (01:24:06):
I don't enjoy being helpless. I don't believe that the
impacts of others, should you know, impact me. I make
the changes where I can. I try to behave in
a manner that is not detrimental to the earth. And
I preach that to my kids and hopefully the compounding

(01:24:30):
effect or you know, it will grow exponentially from them
to other ambassadors to spread the word that you know,
we need to do something. It's not about politics and
it's about you know, the your overhead or how much
profit you gain at the end of the day, it's
about how you gain those by, you know, being a

(01:24:53):
good ambassador to preserving the earth and the climate, you know,
all the all the other inhabitants, not just humans.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
Wherever we went in the Republic of the Marshall Islands,
it was hard to find dooming gloom with regards to
climate change. What we found everywhere was people adapting and
making changes, both the kind of changes that reduce their
carbon emissions and the kind that made their homes more
defensible because the rest of the world is not making
that first kind of changes. Resilience doesn't just mean sea

(01:25:26):
walls and houses on stilts that can withstand flood. Those
are important. It also means making hard choices and forming
strong communities. Here's Mariana again.

Speaker 10 (01:25:38):
There's a lot of attention on us as frontline countries,
you know, in the face of climate change, and we
get a lot of reporters come in asking us questions.
We get a lot of consultants that come in and
out and collect data.

Speaker 21 (01:25:55):
You know.

Speaker 10 (01:25:55):
Of course we're seen as sort of the said country
trees that will eventually face the reality of having no
land to live on, right, so forced relocation, displacement. I

(01:26:17):
don't want to say migration, because that's not exactly a migration.
If you have to leave, you're you're you're being displaced.
Our concern is that.

Speaker 6 (01:26:31):
We're not We.

Speaker 27 (01:26:33):
Don't have all the capabilities in the science at our
fingertip to help inform the government or you know, everyone
interested donors about how much is changing, how much is

(01:26:54):
going to change, and especially.

Speaker 10 (01:26:57):
How that change is going to change us.

Speaker 9 (01:27:00):
You know, it's.

Speaker 10 (01:27:03):
It's overwhelming. We we have a national adaptation Plan.

Speaker 28 (01:27:12):
I hope that you will get into that.

Speaker 27 (01:27:15):
When you get the chance to h that's the survival plan.
In that survival plan, there is you know, there is
very scary reality that we may need to take down

(01:27:38):
some islands to elevate some islands, you know, and every
island have their landowners and what happens to those people.
Marshalis are connected to their land so much culturally, and
so how do we adapt to that when it comes

(01:28:02):
so quickly?

Speaker 10 (01:28:04):
That's scary.

Speaker 2 (01:28:06):
Everywhere you go in the Marshall Islands you see the
impact of climate change and rising sea levels but you
also see the community responding and supporting itself through the
existential threat. The Rami isn't a sad place, quite the opposite.
It's a tremendously happy and beautiful place, and I had
one of the most enjoyable weeks I can remember there.
I'd go back in a heartbeat. But the joy with

(01:28:27):
which people approach every day doesn't mean they aren't concerned,
and it certainly doesn't mean they're not worthy of our concern. Tomorrow,
we're going to discuss how the people of the Republic
of Marshall Lions, and in particular the women of the
Republic of Marshall Lions, and making sure that marshal Lei's
people have a safe and healthy future.

Speaker 13 (01:28:57):
This is for all you guys, so you get there.

Speaker 2 (01:29:14):
Twice in the week I spent on Marjorro, I didn't
get to sleep until after midnight because the hotel's event
space was about eight feet from my pillow and someone
in that event space was having an absolute rageo. Before
trying and failing to go to sleep, a chatter with
some folks who were at the party to see what
was going on. The first night was a first birthday party,
infant mortality has been so high in this area in

(01:29:36):
the past that children making it through the first year
of their life was a cause for massive celebration. It
was rather sweet to see adults enjoying such a good
time around a one year old who had no idea
what was going on. The next party a few days
later was no less festive, but for a much more
somber reason. It was a celebration to remember an eight
year old girl who died exactly one year before. People

(01:29:59):
showed me her photo, and despite my condolences, they assured
me that it wasn't a sad affair. I don't want
to make this series a sad affair either, because despite
the incredible challenges they have faced, Marshally's people have persevered,
and they clearly have a great pride in their islands,
and I don't think they would want to be seen
as helpless and acted upon by global forces beyond their control. Instead,

(01:30:19):
they should be seen as a strong community that has
withstood some of the worst things a history can thriller
community and continue to thrive. As we spoke about yesterday,
they're taking huge steps to ensure that they lead the
way on sustainable development they're also ensuring their future in
other ways. Some of those might not be as shiny
and glitzy as solar power grids or canoes powered by

(01:30:40):
the sun, but which have made a huge difference to
the residents of the country, particularly in the outer atolls.
What I want to talk about today is one of
those projects. It's a project imagined, implemented and executed by
the women of Korra Inokrane. The name means women who
rise at dawn, and it's very appropriate every interview you've

(01:31:01):
heard so far and every place we went to thanks
to the women of Kio. The trip I was part
of was there to witness the installation of the final
water filters on the island of Wrong Room that will
bring to a successful conclusion a five year project to
ensure that every single person in the Marshall Islands had
access to clean water. I'll let them introduce themselves to
you as it did to us.

Speaker 10 (01:31:22):
My name is Francine wasase Jacklick, but most people around
town called me, so if you hear Francine, they're not
going to go to this. I am a QUEU member,
I'm one of the officers as the secretary.

Speaker 9 (01:31:36):
And I've been a queue member of gosh.

Speaker 10 (01:31:41):
I can't remember when, but you know we've got we've
come along when Q is about seventeen years old, right now, wow, seventeen.

Speaker 9 (01:31:50):
Yeah, it's been a very fund right.

Speaker 10 (01:31:55):
It's my fun job outside from Kio. As my fun work,
I work at the Ministry of Health and Human Services.
My permanent position is the Deputy Secretary overseeing Office of
Health Planning, Policy, Preparedness, Personnel and epidem analogy. And three

(01:32:15):
months ago I was also given the authority rule as
the acting Secretary of Health because the secretary was not
the new politics. So yeah, Q is Q Corina Rani
and we're very happy because our founder is here and

(01:32:39):
it's money.

Speaker 9 (01:32:40):
So we'll do introduction and then we'll go into the agenda.
Is that okay?

Speaker 21 (01:32:45):
Okay?

Speaker 9 (01:32:45):
So I will hand it to the back, which is
our founder money. Somebody go ahead, Hello everyone, Hi, welcome money.
I am the home founder. But enough, we're really happy
that you've made it.

Speaker 29 (01:33:06):
You know, your flight wasn't canceled last week, so many
flights are canceled.

Speaker 9 (01:33:11):
So were but welcome. In our language we say yahwey
yeah means rainbow and quays you. So you are a
rainbow to us.

Speaker 18 (01:33:26):
I am.

Speaker 9 (01:33:28):
A mother for now, I don't I don't work. Most
of us have their work, but I'm a full time
mother and this is.

Speaker 19 (01:33:39):
My baby.

Speaker 9 (01:33:39):
Actually, Kiyo started sixteen years ago. Myself and a friend.
We were in school in the East Coast and graduated
and we all came back. And you know, we were
raised with this mentality that get back. We have lots

(01:34:02):
of Marshalis proverbs and what bagayo means to turn the tides.
So it was our time to turn the tides.

Speaker 23 (01:34:11):
So we bended together always like mine name Smart Ladies
and created Q and it's a volunteer organization.

Speaker 9 (01:34:22):
We do this in our sleep.

Speaker 29 (01:34:24):
Basically all volunteer, yes, so we do various work from
small projects like you know, reading with the kids and.

Speaker 9 (01:34:38):
Just some big projects like waters water culture project. My
name is Kathleen.

Speaker 10 (01:34:44):
I work for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Commerce
with the Fisheries.

Speaker 9 (01:34:51):
Memora and I've been in film members since.

Speaker 10 (01:34:57):
To push here were sixteen years old.

Speaker 9 (01:35:01):
Then it is like moving said, it's.

Speaker 10 (01:35:07):
It's an honor and we are very humble. When you visited, Uh,
welcome you all and hope you have a great visitor.

Speaker 9 (01:35:15):
Thank you okay, thanks. Yeah, but my name is Samantha.

Speaker 22 (01:35:22):
I work at the Ministry of Finances as accountant and
I'm cure of treasure.

Speaker 10 (01:35:29):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 30 (01:35:34):
Yeah, hey everyone, and welcome to our shore. My name
is Raised, but everyone call me Kuma, So.

Speaker 9 (01:35:41):
I'm very pleased to meet all of you.

Speaker 10 (01:35:44):
When they say we have uh all these media, you know,
big news media, I was just coming from the state.
I was kind of nervous.

Speaker 30 (01:35:54):
But anyways, uh, I've been up to member since two
thousand fourteen and I was told me, is why all
the work that these names have been doing for the
Marshall Islands. I'm they're probably be part of Quete Club.
I work at ROMA at All local government and I'm
not sure you know, but rongav is one of those

(01:36:16):
it's all that was affected by the nuclear testing, so again, welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:36:22):
Kure worked with Sawyer, the people who make the Ubiquitous
water filter, which is a favorite for through hikers and
other outdoors people, to provide a water filtration system that
allows Marshal's people to filter the rain water they collect
and remove harmful bacteria that can cause diarrhea and vomiting. Well,
these might seem undesirable listeners in the US, they can
be fatal in other settings. Twenty nineteen, around one point

(01:36:44):
five million people died from diarrheal diseases. That's more than
all violent deaths combined. Around half a million of those
deaths were children. One thing that's remarkable about the project
is the way it was realized. Curee began just to
should in the most remote and hard to reach a tolls,
taking tiny boats across choppy seas for days at a

(01:37:05):
time to get to remote islands, and then working with
traditional women leaders to ensure that everyone on the islands
knew how to use the filters. Then they began working
towards Marjora, the capitol. I've seen lots of ENDO projects
in dozens of countries I've worked with someone, but I've
rarely seen a model that prioritizes need this well. In

(01:37:26):
far too many cases, proximity to power ensures access to resources.
This is a global problem. Just look at how the
US distributed masks and COVID resources to reservations last or
if I step outside, they can see how the lowest
income parts of San Diego, the city I live in,
have the worst roads and get the least infrastructure spending.
The fact that Keio do things differently is a testament

(01:37:49):
to the strength of their commitment to their community. In fact,
the project finished distribution during my trip to Marshall Islands,
completing the last island on Major Atoll in early July,
but a few days later than that, when KEO invited
myself and some other journalists to a goodbye breakfast, they
presented a filter to the former president of the Republic
of Marshall Islands, Hilde Hind Despite being the last person

(01:38:11):
to get one. She was very grateful and it served
as the great illustration of the priorities of the group.
They wanted to go to the hardest places first because
they knew people there needed help the most. His president
Hilde Heine, after receiving her filter, I.

Speaker 18 (01:38:26):
Was telling morning that we don't drink from our tab
water ours. We have our own system, but we don't
know if it's clean, so we buy our drinking water
all the time. So with this one I probably will
stop bang for.

Speaker 2 (01:38:44):
To be pure water. I joined Kio and several other
journalists for the final leg of their project, which involves
installing the water filters. This doesn't really take long they're
basically a soil filter attached to a five gallon bucket
with a length of flexible hoe, and then explaining their
value and upkeep to the community. As we heard yesterday,

(01:39:06):
ground water is harder and harder to come by in
the Marshall Islands thanks to climate change, and so people
rely almost exclusively on rainwater. They collect rainwater in giant
plastic tanks. They've only recently replaced a hodgepodge of different
collection vessels. Incidentally, a visiting scientist from the CDC told
me that the installation of these tanks has increased a
safe disposal of waste because people no longer need to

(01:39:27):
take their bins to collect rainwater when it rains. Once
water is in the tanks, the residents can draw it
out into their five gallon bucket and then filter it
for safe drinking. The soil filter system may seem very simple,
and it is, but that's what makes it a perfect
solution here. A complicated electric filter, or one that relied
on pipe water pressure or had a ton of moving

(01:39:49):
parts would require constant maintenance, which is hard given a
long journey to the outer Islands. In my career in
journalism and in nonprofit. I've seen countless well intentioned aid
projects completely failed to consider the need for sustainability and
become useless odities. In a few years. Cargo bikes made
a huge different coffee farmers in Rwanda until they needed

(01:40:10):
new brake pads and there wasn't an importer for them.
The same goes for countless glucometers I've seen distributed to
people who can't access the batteries they use or the
test strips they rely on. This won't happen in the
Marshall Islands in part because the project was led by
the community itself and not by outside nonprofits looking to
maximize donation dollars or media opportunities, and in part because

(01:40:32):
the only maintenance or sor filter needs is a backflush
of the filtered water that it makes. Yesterday we had
a little from the Marshal Lee's Environmental Protection Agency about
how they grapple with climate change. Today, I want to
explain how they're working alongside Kio to ensure that even
as sea levels rise, Marshali's people will have access to
safe water. The Marshal lyse Epa works to ensure that

(01:40:55):
the water in people's tanks isn't contaminated, and the filters
that Kio provided were to make sure that even if
it is, people won't get sick. They often travel to
the outer isons together to reduce the cost sharing a
small boat. It's a rare example of a nonprofit in
the government working together without competing or doing the same
thing twice. At first, Marianna explained, people weren't sure that

(01:41:17):
such a tiny filter could make such a big difference,
so Kio worked with the EPA to use a visual
test for microbial activity to show people how effective it was.
He She is explaining how the EPA helped Kio build
trust in the efficacy of the soil filters.

Speaker 27 (01:41:32):
When Sires and Kio approached us with the filters, before.

Speaker 10 (01:41:40):
That, a lot of people were already asking us, so,
can we can we trust this? You know, can you
do a test in your lab to tell us and
confirm that this is, you know, as good as they
claim it to be.

Speaker 2 (01:41:57):
Doing the test allowed the EPA to help Ko get
greater uptake for their filters and allowed Kio to help
the EPA achieve one of its mandated goals.

Speaker 9 (01:42:05):
And so when we.

Speaker 27 (01:42:07):
Produce these very visual like Quanta quanta or quanti trays.

Speaker 21 (01:42:13):
The the.

Speaker 10 (01:42:15):
Experts will get into it.

Speaker 27 (01:42:17):
But when we produce them and show a visual contrast
between the water before the filter and then the water
before the after the filter filtration, it was you know, amazing,
like it's it's so clean, and you know, we make

(01:42:39):
decisions based on science, and that science right there, and
so we use that visual photograph outside of that that
that meeting to show people.

Speaker 10 (01:42:53):
You know, we're not going to get into the microbils
of whatever. This is the difference the water before the
filter and then after.

Speaker 29 (01:43:03):
And so.

Speaker 10 (01:43:06):
We're just really happy that Kiyo was able to include us.

Speaker 27 (01:43:11):
This is one of our mandates, but we're never resourced
that way to you know, do all of the things
that we want to do to address water quality issues.

Speaker 2 (01:43:22):
Of course, it's impossible to deal with the water issue
in isolation. Everything in the Marshall Islands are really anywhere
else where you're paying attention has to take into account
the impact of climate change and how communities are going
to survive when faced with an increasingly hostile home planet.
Now yain't explained how access to clean water helps make
the community in the Marshall Islands even more resilient.

Speaker 10 (01:43:44):
Well, if you're.

Speaker 27 (01:43:45):
Trying to survive, the last thing you want to worry
about is an outbreak of diarrhea or apatitis or.

Speaker 10 (01:43:55):
You know, water born diseases that are.

Speaker 27 (01:43:58):
Preventable and so clean water, you know you're much much
more better as a community if you can thrive and.

Speaker 10 (01:44:12):
On clean water. It's as simple as that water is life.

Speaker 2 (01:44:23):
One night during my trip to the Marshall Islands, I
was able to join Kia for a dinner that celebrated
the completion of their water project, meaning that everyone in
the Marshall Islands had access to water that won't make
them sick. To get a better sense of what this
really means, I wanted to talk to some families who
had received those filters and to see what the clean
water access meant to them. We've all heard that water

(01:44:45):
is life, and that was a slogan news for Kio's project,
but it's difficult to appreciate that if you live in
a place where you can just turn on a tap
and have access to clean, safe water whenever you want.
When Kio made their posters for that dinner, they included
a photo of a girl on Arno Island who had
been one of the first to receive their filters, happily
drinking from a jar of clean water. That was back

(01:45:07):
in twenty eighteen. Since then, they thought they'd heard the
terrible news that she died, but just before the dinner
they found out she hadn't, and so they invited her
to join the celebration. I was able to sit down
with her, her mother, and other recipients of the filters
for a quick interview via translator on the tiny island
of Boken Boat.

Speaker 21 (01:45:28):
So they never filtered the water before. They would drink
straight in the water wells or the water catchments.

Speaker 2 (01:45:38):
Sometimes, she said, people would get sick. We also spoke
to Aneedi, a resident of Wrong Wrong, on the day
that she got her filter. Frontine helped to translate her responses.

Speaker 30 (01:45:48):
Yeah, what are they in?

Speaker 13 (01:45:49):
Nine?

Speaker 2 (01:45:50):
Thank you?

Speaker 10 (01:45:56):
What she had heard about that there was going to
be filter is coming through the island. When she first heard,
she thought the filters were going to go directly to
the water tanks. And now that it's more accessible, it's
like she saw this bucket. She's happy. It's better, it's better, okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:46:17):
Recently there have been an outbreak of diary around the atoll,
so this was a welcome relief.

Speaker 10 (01:46:22):
So she had heard that there was optic of cases
in major the capital and when she had first learned
about her she was scared and worried.

Speaker 9 (01:46:36):
But to hear that there's.

Speaker 10 (01:46:41):
Folks coming here to the island to check on the water,
it made them feel a little bit more.

Speaker 19 (01:46:47):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:46:48):
Add EA's the family from Ana who traveled a long
way on a small boat to meet us. We're looking
forward to getting back to their home. Life on the
outer Atolls isn't easy, but it's not one they want
to walk away from. With the threat of climate change
already putting their home in peril, having access to clean
water must be a welcome relief. I asked to say,

(01:47:08):
preferred life here on the capitol at all or back home?

Speaker 21 (01:47:11):
Yeah, she says life in the outer islands is better.
There's more space, more freedom to move around.

Speaker 10 (01:47:17):
For the kids.

Speaker 2 (01:47:18):
There are things she'd like to change the course, but
mostly her concern was preserving their little piece of paradise
for future generations.

Speaker 21 (01:47:25):
She'd like her kids to be able to enjoy access
to clean water, whether it be through more water catchments
that are being available to the family, and also the
electric city, as you mentioned, perhaps with the generator stuff

(01:47:51):
like that to make life more easier in the outer lands.
She'd like to, you know, like in the future, be
able to see the fishing grounds preserved as well as
the land for their farming needs.

Speaker 2 (01:48:11):
The way KIR works with local communities, because they're from
local communities, enables them to be much more effective than
a nonprofit which comes from outside the community. On wrong
wrong they joke to laugh at local women Whenik's husband
comes from the island, so they were already welcome, and
then after some time bantering, they explained the way to
water filters work. In Marshal Leeds families, they're still a

(01:48:33):
fairly gender division of labor in many cases, and it
seemed to be that the women on the island were
the ones who stayed to learn about the filters, so
it was appropriate that it was women who were teaching them.
Preservation doesn't mean there can't be change. The Marshall Islands
have seen a huge change in the last few years,
and much of that is down to the dedicated work

(01:48:53):
of a large number of women who have formed community
groups to empower each other and address social, ecological and
public health issues that are facing their communities. The umbrella
organization that works with these women's groups it's called with Me.
I let Maria from Whitey explain what that means and
why they started the group in the first place.

Speaker 16 (01:49:11):
First of all, welcome. As you know, with ME stands
for women in edited together, marshal allance. It also means
in marshalise your flower, and that's how we wanted the
acronym to be to mean both English and marshalist. And
as this is said, it was established in nineteen eighty
seven to fill a gap with respect to the advancement

(01:49:36):
of women. In nineteen seventy five there was the Decade
for Women en Decade for Women, and there were two
countriences that took place and there were a lot of
issues that came about in those two meetings. They were
dealing with domestic violence, alcohol abuse, suicide, the youth, other problems,

(01:50:04):
child abuse and neglect. So from those women started to meet,
at least some women started to talk about this was
there were no representatives of women in the decision making bodies,
whether at the local government levels or at the national level.

Speaker 10 (01:50:23):
So that's.

Speaker 16 (01:50:27):
And we got the support of our traditional women leaders.

Speaker 2 (01:50:32):
Woman Works alongside traditional leaders are not around them. The
same was true of all the programs that have been
successful on the islands. On our last day, we visited WHAM,
the program that builds the canoes we heard about. Although
the programs founded to preserve the cultural heritage of the
islands and their unique seafaring technologies, some of which are
only just being replicated in modern craft in Europe and

(01:50:52):
the USA, it also responded to a need that the
community had. In this case, that need was education.

Speaker 31 (01:50:59):
So we are training program for at risk young men
and women of the martial arts who It started out
as a project back in the eighties. One of our
twenty found uh, co founder of this program.

Speaker 21 (01:51:14):
UH.

Speaker 31 (01:51:14):
The museum contracted him to go through various islands within
the Republic, And you're talking about back in the eighties
and we were losing our designs fasts. People were coming
to Magro or going to the States, which is going
off islands to the many reasons, and because of that,
they wanted to capture that uniqueness of these design But

(01:51:38):
when he was going through from one actual to another,
he noticed that there were a lot of young kids
not going to school.

Speaker 13 (01:51:46):
So I'm not sure if you're aware of it.

Speaker 31 (01:51:48):
But throughout the republic there's only about four or five
high schools and most of them are boarding school So,
for example, I grew up in Jeluity, and in that
at all there's a high school, boarding high school and
then it gators to about six or seven other app pilings.

(01:52:09):
So parents have no choice but to send their kids.
If they want to go beyond ad grade, you have
to leave home and go to the boarding schools.

Speaker 2 (01:52:19):
In addition to offering a skill set and an education,
the program has counselors in mental health and addiction. They
teach young men and women maths, literacy and how to
build the canoes, but they also empower them in creating
the sustainable alternative transport method that will be vital in
building a sustainable future for their home. Likewise would meet
the approach. It's based on listening to people.

Speaker 32 (01:52:40):
Women chiefs you know, will let them know what we'll
be doing and what what would they want us to do,
and we ask them to talk with their you know,
like because these women chiefs are owning some of the
neighboring islands and they know their people and do need
assessments so they can really understand what their needs are,
because all they need greenhalents.

Speaker 9 (01:53:00):
Are different means.

Speaker 2 (01:53:02):
They make an effort to tie their efforts to traditional
Marshalist principles and in doing so they keep their culture alive.

Speaker 16 (01:53:08):
So being together and getting this the other thing that
would be done, which is connect our our being to
our culture. Being a materlineal society, we have different sayings
or traditional traditional roles of women. Yeah, and then we

(01:53:29):
have the domestic balance when it's called whether in mellor
weather meaning it's a land parcel, MA mean to be alive,
to live and not to be killed.

Speaker 10 (01:53:43):
As opposed to being abused.

Speaker 16 (01:53:46):
So whether in is somewhere you go to and you're
able to live freely or in being I mean you're
well protected. So in all our conferences we we do
use these traditional so it's something that it's not new,
it's traditional, so they cannot say, you know, you cannot

(01:54:06):
do that because it's a tradition, and we keep the
culture alive through that way as well.

Speaker 2 (01:54:17):
Almost everyone you've heard from in this series, aside from
the Men, is a member of Kio or Whitney or both.
Keo is one of the chapters of Whitney and many
of the Keo leaders as the daughters of Whitman's leadership.
Whitney have implemented parent as teacher, early childhood education programs,
domestic violence prevention programs, and many other social, economic and
political programs across the islands. The results are easy to see.

(01:54:41):
All over the Marshall Islands, government officers and NGOs are
run by women. Now, the Marshall Islands had the first
woman president in the whole Pacific, and she was elected
in January twenty sixteen, a year when rampant misogyny was
more evident than ever in the United States presidential election.
Of course, many marshal Lea's women go to the United
States and what these members are no exception.

Speaker 16 (01:55:03):
One of the major challenges has been to make sure
that that we keep the organization intact because it's especially
at present time because there's a lot about migration that
we have to constantly work, especially with women in the
islands where they're they come and then they'll stay long

(01:55:24):
in the urban areas, they just migrate out. So now
there are so many of them that they're trying to
form women's groups in the in the United States as well,
so they come and visit us and we communicate with
them occasionally share in sharing information or other issues because

(01:55:49):
what issues they experience here, they also experience in the
United States, and so they need to be aware of
how we're trying to deal with those.

Speaker 2 (01:55:58):
But many women also go to the US for their
education and then return to be part of their community
and help lift their community up. Now, thanks to whipm's
hard work and the government's efforts, women don't have to
leave to get these skills. The Energy Department has trained
women on outer islands, for example, to fix their own
power grades.

Speaker 12 (01:56:17):
Yeah, so we're kind of all over the place.

Speaker 2 (01:56:19):
At one time we went and.

Speaker 12 (01:56:23):
Actually uh train a community of all women, like we
had to include men to allow women to be part
of the training. And we have nine women that graduated
certified trainers and we awarded them with tools and everything

(01:56:46):
so when there's a power outages and their solar home
systems and they can address it. And Grace who's in
the middle, that that's the island where she's from where
we train the woman to become trainers. And it's our
first ever. So when we found that it was successful,

(01:57:06):
we try to extend it out to the other islands.
So I think that's one of the reasons why it's
difficult for countries such as US where we've been colonized
and trying to find a balance between a modern day
government form of democracy where you're taught that individualism is
important and your rights are important, and then you have

(01:57:29):
your traditional structure when where you when you're grow up,
you're taught that it's a collective society. You your piety
is important, respecting it's your thoughts are not worth it,
your elders and your you know, your chiefs in so

(01:57:50):
I think that's where we have to find the balance.

Speaker 2 (01:57:53):
This comment that Angeline made in our chat after her
excellent presentation on energy sovereignty really got me thinking about
the post colony future of the Marshall Islands. Today, they're
empowered as an independent nation, but they still have to
exist within a framework where corporations and more powerful governments
don't have to pay for the consequences of their actions.
In twenty twenty two, the US unsealed indictment of a

(01:58:15):
Chinese couple who bribe five Marshalise members of parliament and
attempted to bribe a six in order to help them
carve out a kind of mini state, a so called
special economic zone as a tax haven or Wrongolappatol. This
is one of the places heavily impacted by the nuclear
testing we spoke about earlier. Hildehein, among others, opposed this.
She said economic development is and should be encouraged, but

(01:58:38):
not at the expense of money laundering and other similarly
ill activities that are usually a part of money laundering.
As was obvious in the wrongol Appatol Special Administrative Region legislation,
the people of wrong alapp deserved better standards of living
and economic development. Well, there's no evidence of CCP involvement
in the scheme. It came as part of a larger

(01:58:59):
panic about Beijing's influence in the region. Twenty twenty two,
the Solomon Islands signed a pact with China to help
improve their internal security, and China has already provided the
Solomons with police training and donated replica guns and riot
control equipment such as water canon vehicles. The Solomon Islands
are still covered in bombs from the US and Japan's
fighting in the Pacific, but instead of helping dispose of these,

(01:59:23):
this form of investment is sending more weapons to the government,
not help to the people there. According to a recent
published study in the journal Science, the world's corporations produce
so much climate change causing pollution that it would eat
up forty four percent of their profits if they had
to pay damages for the impact of their activity. Your
reusable straw might help, and it's good that you're using it.

(01:59:44):
But until the world and giant corporations especially listen to
the voices of people impacted by our choices, things won't change.
I want to end by talking about the future of
the Marshall Islands and how Marshallese people are determining that
in the last century they've been let down by the
League of Nations who reallocated the islands to the Japanese

(02:00:04):
under Southeast Mandate, then let down by the US and
the UN after the war, and they're still being let
down by international institutions today when their demands for climate
fairless are ignored. But this doesn't mean they can't benefit
from international solidarity. It was American made water filters and
a significant donation from a company better known for hiking

(02:00:25):
that helped every single person in the Marshall Island to
get clean water. It was Greenpeace who relocated people when
the US government wouldn't, and it was Marshally's women who
took week long norse or inducing boat rides across dangerous
seas to distribute those water filters that save lives in
places where there's less access to care. With access to
the right resources and international solidarity and goodwill, the possibilities

(02:00:49):
for the Marshall Islands seem endless. They've endured World War,
survived the dropping of the atom bond, and they're adapting
to climate change by centering community and their obligations to
each other rather than trying to each take what they
can and get out. With access to clean water and
homes free of smoke, their children will be healthier, and
every child I met on the island seem to have

(02:01:10):
bright hopes for the future. I met one kid who
wanted to be a basketball player and another who aspired
to apparently be as tall as I am. People in
the Islands don't focus on their past, but on their future,
and with a little solidarity and decency from the rest
of the world, they have a very bright one. I
wonder finish this series with the explanation we got from
Whitney of the Marshally's flag. It's a great flag, by

(02:01:32):
the way, and you should look it up if you
haven't seen it. It's one of the most common flags
of convenience for merchant vessels all over the world. I've
seen it in several continents, but never really knew what
it meant. At least for now, it seems to mean
that these tirely islands, which have been through so much,
still have great hopes for the future.

Speaker 16 (02:01:50):
The Marshalis flair there's two the orange other white light,
and they represent that the relic chain and the rather chain,
the sunrise chain of island and the sunset chain of
violent which form the martial alum. So those two lines.
But those lines, there's one orange and one whit. Orange

(02:02:14):
is for courage to start, it's called Kio, and the
white is for peace. But these lines are not parallel.
I mean they become larger as they move up, and
they don't start from the corner. They start from a

(02:02:35):
little bit over the corner of the flag, meaning that
we have a past. We didn't start from the beginning
when we started this milk government in nineteen seventy nine.
And then it moves out. It doesn't go all the
way to the corner at the top. Because we're always growing.
There's so you know, we're always growing.

Speaker 13 (02:02:56):
We need to grow.

Speaker 16 (02:02:56):
It's very important.

Speaker 1 (02:03:25):
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 2 (02:03:30):
It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 27 (02:03:42):
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources.

Speaker 4 (02:03:47):
Thanks for listening.

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Behind the Bastards News

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Robert Evans

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