September 6, 2023 • 32 mins
In the second episode, James looks at the USA’s failure to apologize to or adequately compensate the people of the RMI.
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Speaker 1 (00:27):
The music you just heard was 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.
(00:48):
The thought is overwhelming, 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. Bikinia Toll has a flag
as well. It looks a lot like the US flag,
(01:10):
but in the top 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
(01:30):
hand corner represent 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.
(01:51):
The Marshallese words running across the bottom of the flag
men ottemjj regi elo benonije translate to everything is in
the hands of God. These represent the words spoken in
nineteen forty six by the Bikinian leader Judah to the
US commodore Ben Wyatt, when the American went to Bikini
to us the islanders on a Sunday after they'd just
(02:13):
been 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
(02:35):
left off yesterday in the hours after the Bravo shot.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Here's Ariana again, 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.
They just were not sure. But by midnight that night,
(03:02):
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 the men were out fishing for
(03:24):
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 1 (03:31):
Johanna Jean, the mayor of rong Lapatol, gave an interview
in nineteen seventy seven, recounting his experience with the fallout.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
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
(04:00):
an old ailman. People walked in it, and children played
in it.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
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
(04:26):
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
(04:49):
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 As they
headed home. One member of the crew kept a bag
of the ash to have it analyzed on their return home,
but he hung it from his bunk bed, causing the
crew to get continued exposure all the way home. It
(05:11):
took them two weeks to get back to Japan, and
doctors quickly determined the cause of their blisters, sickness, and
hair loss. They asked 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 of
(05:35):
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 of
(06:00):
one of those Wrong La presidents.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
And 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
(06:24):
with the pressure washer. When you talk stories with them today,
it's they recall it as you know, they say, you know,
the hose was so strong, it felt like those hoses
that they used to put out fires. And after they
were pressure washed, they were given a soldiers underwear and
(06:46):
T shirt to wear for their journey to Quadulan Atoll.
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 Quadulin. And also from
these testimonies, one of my neighbors, she was seven years
(07:08):
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 grandmother's skin falling off and she
(07:29):
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 to go inside her house, and so
(07:51):
she had a little bit of protection.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
They were taken to Quadulin Naval Base, where things became
even worse for them. A week after the test, MIC
Energy Commission and the US Department of Defense sent a
joint medical team to Quijulin, and these doctors drafted a
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 to
(08:16):
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 explain
(08:39):
what actually happened next.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
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 being. And if you look
at declassified files, we have a lot of them at
(09:04):
the College of the Marshall Islands Nuclear Institute. There's 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.
(09:27):
And when they were in Quadulin, 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, and
(09:47):
this went on for the people of Woodluk 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 clean out for them
to return. And the thing is, while they were taking
these blood and urine samples and having them bathed in
(10:08):
the lagoon and scrubbing their burns 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
(10:28):
thing is, even with their hair falling off and their
skin peeling off, and their fingernails turning black and just
feeling very nauseous and having a severe headache, they were.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Not given paint medication. They were not given any type
of talanol or any of that. They were just being monitored.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
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 there to study how their body
reacts to exposure to radiation.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Three years after being evacuated, the people of Rondolap were
allowed to return.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
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 1 (11:25):
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 2 (11:34):
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
(11:55):
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 hundred of them.
And I always switch up 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
(12:17):
eat off of the land to see how the radiation
has moved in the food chain, and that's when my
mother's father was born on Romola in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
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 2 (12:47):
And also we've had many cases of birth defects or
babies that were born. And according to the testimonies of
these these mothers that had given birth, their babies were
born sometimes looking like jellyfish. Sometimes their babies were born
(13:08):
without a head, without limbs. All they could see 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.
And some mothers had told their stories of giving birth
(13:32):
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 the fruit. It just looked like a bunch of
grapes lump together. And for many of these cases, these
(13:56):
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 their own sisters were also giving birth
(14:18):
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 the woman, the marshally's woman at
that time, it was a very heartbreaking moment for them
(14:40):
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 they.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Things were not much better for the Bikinians who had
been evacuated at the start of testing in nineteen forty
six after a failed attempt to settle them on another atoll.
Many of the Bikinians elected to try living on Killi
as their new home. Kille Island lacked a coral reef,
and this made their traditional lifestyle of island hopping and
fishing in the calm lagoon impossible. The Bikylians, inhabitants of
(15:29):
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 sell 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
(15:51):
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 protected lagoon made
every delivery of food or supplies by both a high
risk in devor. Along with the loss of their homeland,
many generations of Bikinians began to lose the navigation skills
and that connection to the lagoon that provided so much
(16:11):
sustenance and material for their traditional lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
They had suffered severe starvation 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 sictara 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
(16:36):
is a nony tree and it does not smell good, right,
But they started eating the nony fruit because they did
not have any breadfruit or papayas or anything.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Growing on that land.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Edible for them.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And then for the people of Nwella, from their testimonies,
the at all that they were evacuated to was rat
infested and so their babies had to sleep in boxes.
They 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
(17:20):
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 tale or something, you know, like,
because 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
(17:44):
this new home of rondric at All, where they lived
for the next two years. By the time the military
had gone back to pick them up. When he's a
very elderly man now, but he was six years old
at that time. He describes it is that he says
it was a very traumatizing moment for him because they
(18:07):
were carrying some of the people on leaves to the ship.
They were very fragile. He said, if you have seen
photos of the Holocaust, this is what our people looked like,
because there was just severe starvation at that time.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
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 decontaminating the soil. These efforts
were hampered by infrequent flights delayed by the discovery that
the large coconut crabs on the island were still dangerously contaminated.
In nineteen seventy two, one hundred people from three extended
(18:44):
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 have sued the federal government and more research
(19:07):
was done. By nineteen seventy eight, scientists had found an
eleven fold increase in the caesium one hundred and thirty
seven body burdens of the people living on the islands,
a level 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
(19:27):
its independence signed the Compact of Free Association with the
United States. When the Compact came into effect in nineteen
eighty six, the Marshalis 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
(19:48):
utre catolls. They 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
(20:09):
Islands was directly impacted by fallout from the Bravo shot.
The trust fund also tied the interest of the Marshal
Ease to those of global capital. 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
(20:31):
equities twenty nine point five percent of the portfolio. As
of September thirty of 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
(20:53):
the interests to are low lying atoll 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 by the
(21:15):
need to ensure rising stock prices, are posing 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 amount
(21:38):
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 and
(22:00):
the demand on settlement funds for services that would lift
the surviving islanders and their families out of poverty, the
cleanup of Bikini Atoll began to lose steam. Today, six
hundred people still live on Kilie, subsisting las You're a
US settlement fund. Their children, like many other marshal Eis,
go to boarding schools and other atolls, but they still
can't sale their canoes at home. Other Bikinians live on
(22:23):
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,
(22:47):
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, Anderson Gievus, oversaw the fund
(23:10):
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 USA. 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 protect the islanders
against another crisis, rising sea levels, which threatens to swallow
(23:32):
their whole country in a few decades. Sadly, the spending
has left the fund virtually empty, and the Czechs Bikinians got,
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 at all, and you
(23:53):
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
cleanup methods, and monitored the pollutants for the US Department
of Energy, as well as mapping the lagoons World War
(24:14):
II rex He passed away on March twenty ninth, twenty
twenty on any Watakatoll, the cleanup will never happen. Even
(24:37):
after it ended nuclear testing, the US tested conventional and
biological weapons there. It shot 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,
(24:59):
and transport that waste, along with some race from Nevada
to run It Island once and run It. The waste
was mixed with concrete and secured in a giant concrete dome.
Jeff's family is from that island, but thanks to the
levels of radiation which rival Fukushima Chernobyl. He can't go back.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
My grandfather is from this island. Oh wow, yes, but
I've never been to that island.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Is that where you are? Like he did his his
father live there and like his whole did they live
there for a long time? Your family before?
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah, that's your traditional Do you want to go?
Speaker 5 (25:39):
Not gonna go? Gus The dome is there, yeah, like
all the people from that island, they get to test
their radiation level today.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
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, died,
and many others had 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
(26:11):
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 the United States
for damages done to their islands and their people during
the nuclear testing on Bikini. The tribunal was created by
(26:34):
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 limbo as the island to
sue the federal government for it. On the day we
left Marjero, the Republican Marshall 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. We
(26:57):
ate breakfast that day with Hillehine, 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
Marshalaisee 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 three billion,
(27:20):
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 going to
(27:41):
offset the kind of disasters that 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 about what might happen
(28:03):
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 growth neoliberal
(28:24):
model that makes other people pay for its negative externalities.
As we will learn in the next U 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 when I was on the islands, because I
(28:44):
remembered 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. Here Kathy, gentle
kids note reading a poem she wrote for her own
laor to the United Nations.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
Dear Monte Felip Benum, 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 Monte Felip Benum,
(29:23):
I 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 eyeland shattered bones. They say you, your
(29:46):
daughter and your granddaughter too, will wander rootless, with only
a passport to call home. Dear Monta Philip Benum, don't cry,
Mommy promises you know. No one will come and devour you.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
No greedy whale.
Speaker 6 (30:03):
Of a company sharking through political sees, No backwater bullying
of businesses with broken morals, No blindfolded bureaucracies gonna 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
(30:27):
one else? To the carter Rt Islanders of Papua New
Guinea 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
(30:51):
platinum titles who like to pretend that we don't exist,
who like to pretend that the Marshall Islands Tuvalu, Kidos, Maldives,
Typhoon Hayan in the Philippines, floods of Algeria, Columbia, Pakistan,
and all the hurricanes, earthquakes and tidal waves didn't exist.
(31:12):
Still there are those who see us, hands reaching out,
fists raising up, banners, unfurling, megaphones booming, And we are
canoes blocking coat shifts. We are the radiance of solar villages.
We are the fresh clean soil of the farmer's past.
(31:33):
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.
(31:56):
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 Matefeli venom. Your eyes heavy with
drowsy weight, So just close those eyes and sleep in peace,
(32:17):
because we won't let you down. You'll see.
Speaker 7 (32:28):
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,
you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
The music you just heard was 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.
(00:48):
The thought is overwhelming, 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. Bikinia Toll has a flag
as well. It looks a lot like the US flag,
(01:10):
but in the top 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
(01:30):
hand corner represent 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.
(01:51):
The Marshallese words running across the bottom of the flag
men ottemjj regi elo benonije translate to everything is in
the hands of God. These represent the words spoken in
nineteen forty six by the Bikinian leader Judah to the
US commodore Ben Wyatt, when the American went to Bikini
to us the islanders on a Sunday after they'd just
(02:13):
been 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
(02:35):
left off yesterday in the hours after the Bravo shot.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Here's Ariana again, 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.
They just were not sure. But by midnight that night,
(03:02):
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 the men were out fishing for
(03:24):
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 1 (03:31):
Johanna Jean, the mayor of rong Lapatol, gave an interview
in nineteen seventy seven, recounting his experience with the fallout.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
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
(04:00):
an old ailman. People walked in it, and children played
in it.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
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
(04:26):
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
(04:49):
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 As they
headed home. One member of the crew kept a bag
of the ash to have it analyzed on their return home,
but he hung it from his bunk bed, causing the
crew to get continued exposure all the way home. It
(05:11):
took them two weeks to get back to Japan, and
doctors quickly determined the cause of their blisters, sickness, and
hair loss. They asked 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 of
(05:35):
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 of
(06:00):
one of those Wrong La presidents.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
And 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
(06:24):
with the pressure washer. When you talk stories with them today,
it's they recall it as you know, they say, you know,
the hose was so strong, it felt like those hoses
that they used to put out fires. And after they
were pressure washed, they were given a soldiers underwear and
(06:46):
T shirt to wear for their journey to Quadulan Atoll.
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 Quadulin. And also from
these testimonies, one of my neighbors, she was seven years
(07:08):
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 grandmother's skin falling off and she
(07:29):
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 to go inside her house, and so
(07:51):
she had a little bit of protection.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
They were taken to Quadulin Naval Base, where things became
even worse for them. A week after the test, MIC
Energy Commission and the US Department of Defense sent a
joint medical team to Quijulin, and these doctors drafted a
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 to
(08:16):
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 explain
(08:39):
what actually happened next.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
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 being. And if you look
at declassified files, we have a lot of them at
(09:04):
the College of the Marshall Islands Nuclear Institute. There's 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.
(09:27):
And when they were in Quadulin, 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, and
(09:47):
this went on for the people of Woodluk 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 clean out for them
to return. And the thing is, while they were taking
these blood and urine samples and having them bathed in
(10:08):
the lagoon and scrubbing their burns 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
(10:28):
thing is, even with their hair falling off and their
skin peeling off, and their fingernails turning black and just
feeling very nauseous and having a severe headache, they were.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Not given paint medication. They were not given any type
of talanol or any of that. They were just being monitored.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
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 there to study how their body
reacts to exposure to radiation.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Three years after being evacuated, the people of Rondolap were
allowed to return.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
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 1 (11:25):
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 2 (11:34):
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
(11:55):
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 hundred of them.
And I always switch up 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
(12:17):
eat off of the land to see how the radiation
has moved in the food chain, and that's when my
mother's father was born on Romola in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
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 2 (12:47):
And also we've had many cases of birth defects or
babies that were born. And according to the testimonies of
these these mothers that had given birth, their babies were
born sometimes looking like jellyfish. Sometimes their babies were born
(13:08):
without a head, without limbs. All they could see 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.
And some mothers had told their stories of giving birth
(13:32):
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 the fruit. It just looked like a bunch of
grapes lump together. And for many of these cases, these
(13:56):
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 their own sisters were also giving birth
(14:18):
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 the woman, the marshally's woman at
that time, it was a very heartbreaking moment for them
(14:40):
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 they.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Things were not much better for the Bikinians who had
been evacuated at the start of testing in nineteen forty
six after a failed attempt to settle them on another atoll.
Many of the Bikinians elected to try living on Killi
as their new home. Kille Island lacked a coral reef,
and this made their traditional lifestyle of island hopping and
fishing in the calm lagoon impossible. The Bikylians, inhabitants of
(15:29):
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 sell 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
(15:51):
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 protected lagoon made
every delivery of food or supplies by both a high
risk in devor. Along with the loss of their homeland,
many generations of Bikinians began to lose the navigation skills
and that connection to the lagoon that provided so much
(16:11):
sustenance and material for their traditional lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
They had suffered severe starvation 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 sictara 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
(16:36):
is a nony tree and it does not smell good, right,
But they started eating the nony fruit because they did
not have any breadfruit or papayas or anything.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Growing on that land.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
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.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
Edible for them.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And then for the people of Nwella, from their testimonies,
the at all that they were evacuated to was rat
infested and so their babies had to sleep in boxes.
They 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
(17:20):
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 tale or something, you know, like,
because 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
(17:44):
this new home of rondric at All, where they lived
for the next two years. By the time the military
had gone back to pick them up. When he's a
very elderly man now, but he was six years old
at that time. He describes it is that he says
it was a very traumatizing moment for him because they
(18:07):
were carrying some of the people on leaves to the ship.
They were very fragile. He said, if you have seen
photos of the Holocaust, this is what our people looked like,
because there was just severe starvation at that time.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
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 decontaminating the soil. These efforts
were hampered by infrequent flights delayed by the discovery that
the large coconut crabs on the island were still dangerously contaminated.
In nineteen seventy two, one hundred people from three extended
(18:44):
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 have sued the federal government and more research
(19:07):
was done. By nineteen seventy eight, scientists had found an
eleven fold increase in the caesium one hundred and thirty
seven body burdens of the people living on the islands,
a level 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
(19:27):
its independence signed the Compact of Free Association with the
United States. When the Compact came into effect in nineteen
eighty six, the Marshalis 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
(19:48):
utre catolls. They 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
(20:09):
Islands was directly impacted by fallout from the Bravo shot.
The trust fund also tied the interest of the Marshal
Ease to those of global capital. 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
(20:31):
equities twenty nine point five percent of the portfolio. As
of September thirty of 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
(20:53):
the interests to are low lying atoll 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 by the
(21:15):
need to ensure rising stock prices, are posing 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 amount
(21:38):
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 and
(22:00):
the demand on settlement funds for services that would lift
the surviving islanders and their families out of poverty, the
cleanup of Bikini Atoll began to lose steam. Today, six
hundred people still live on Kilie, subsisting las You're a
US settlement fund. Their children, like many other marshal Eis,
go to boarding schools and other atolls, but they still
can't sale their canoes at home. Other Bikinians live on
(22:23):
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,
(22:47):
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, Anderson Gievus, oversaw the fund
(23:10):
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 USA. 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 protect the islanders
against another crisis, rising sea levels, which threatens to swallow
(23:32):
their whole country in a few decades. Sadly, the spending
has left the fund virtually empty, and the Czechs Bikinians got,
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 at all, and you
(23:53):
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
cleanup methods, and monitored the pollutants for the US Department
of Energy, as well as mapping the lagoons World War
(24:14):
II rex He passed away on March twenty ninth, twenty
twenty on any Watakatoll, the cleanup will never happen. Even
(24:37):
after it ended nuclear testing, the US tested conventional and
biological weapons there. It shot 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,
(24:59):
and transport that waste, along with some race from Nevada
to run It Island once and run It. The waste
was mixed with concrete and secured in a giant concrete dome.
Jeff's family is from that island, but thanks to the
levels of radiation which rival Fukushima Chernobyl. He can't go back.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
My grandfather is from this island. Oh wow, yes, but
I've never been to that island.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Is that where you are? Like he did his his
father live there and like his whole did they live
there for a long time? Your family before?
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Yeah, that's your traditional Do you want to go?
Speaker 5 (25:39):
Not gonna go? Gus The dome is there, yeah, like
all the people from that island, they get to test
their radiation level today.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
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, died,
and many others had 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
(26:11):
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 the United States
for damages done to their islands and their people during
the nuclear testing on Bikini. The tribunal was created by
(26:34):
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 limbo as the island to
sue the federal government for it. On the day we
left Marjero, the Republican Marshall 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. We
(26:57):
ate breakfast that day with Hillehine, 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
Marshalaisee 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 three billion,
(27:20):
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 going to
(27:41):
offset the kind of disasters that 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 about what might happen
(28:03):
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 growth neoliberal
(28:24):
model that makes other people pay for its negative externalities.
As we will learn in the next U 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 when I was on the islands, because I
(28:44):
remembered 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. Here Kathy, gentle
kids note reading a poem she wrote for her own
laor to the United Nations.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
Dear Monte Felip Benum, 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 Monte Felip Benum,
(29:23):
I 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 eyeland shattered bones. They say you, your
(29:46):
daughter and your granddaughter too, will wander rootless, with only
a passport to call home. Dear Monta Philip Benum, don't cry,
Mommy promises you know. No one will come and devour you.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
No greedy whale.
Speaker 6 (30:03):
Of a company sharking through political sees, No backwater bullying
of businesses with broken morals, No blindfolded bureaucracies gonna 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
(30:27):
one else? To the carter Rt Islanders of Papua New
Guinea 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
(30:51):
platinum titles who like to pretend that we don't exist,
who like to pretend that the Marshall Islands Tuvalu, Kidos, Maldives,
Typhoon Hayan in the Philippines, floods of Algeria, Columbia, Pakistan,
and all the hurricanes, earthquakes and tidal waves didn't exist.
(31:12):
Still there are those who see us, hands reaching out,
fists raising up, banners, unfurling, megaphones booming, And we are
canoes blocking coat shifts. We are the radiance of solar villages.
We are the fresh clean soil of the farmer's past.
(31:33):
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.
(31:56):
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 Matefeli venom. Your eyes heavy with
drowsy weight, So just close those eyes and sleep in peace,
(32:17):
because we won't let you down. You'll see.
Speaker 7 (32:28):
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,
you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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