About the Book
The hydrogen test-bomb Bravo, dropped on the Marshall Islands in 1954, had enormous consequences for the Rongelap people. Anthropologists Barbara Rose Johnston and Holly Barker provide incontrovertible evidence of physical and financial damages to individuals and cultural and psycho-social damages to the community through use of declassified government documents, oral histories and ethnographic research, conducted with the Marshallese community within a unique collaborative framework. Their work helped produce a $1 billion award by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal and raises issues of bioethics, government secrecy, human rights, military testing, and academic activism. The report, reproduced here with accompanying materials, should be read by everyone concerned with the effects of nuclear war and is an essential text for courses in history, environmental studies, bioethics, human rights, and related subjects.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations -- Prologue: Consequential Damages of Nuclear War -- The Rongelap Report: Hardships and Consequential Damages from Radioactive Contamination, Denied Use, Exile, and Human Subject Experimentation Experienced by the People of Rongelap, Rongerik, and Ailinginae -- Part 1: Introduction -- Summary of Relevant Findings -- Research Concerns -- Research Methods -- Report Framework -- Photo Essay after page -- Part 2: Loss of a Healthy, Sustainable Way of Life -- Valuing Land from a Marshallese Perspective -- Land and Sea Tenure -- Rules Governing Access and Use Rights -- Cultural Land and Seascapes -- Spiritual Values of Land and Seascape -- Environmental Knowledge and Sustainable Resource Use -- Flexible Patterns of Resource Use—Sustainable Living on Atoll Ecosystems 82 Taboos and Resource Management -- Concluding Discussion -- Part 3: Chain of Events and Critical Issues of Concern -- Evacuation from Rongelap to Lae in 1946 -- Damage and Continued Loss of Access to Rongerik -- The Bravo Event -- Relocation from Rongelap to Kwajalein in 1954 -- Project 4.1 Research on Kwajalein -- Relocation from Kwajalein to Ejit -- Long-Term Human Subject Research Plans, Priorities, and Policies -- Difficulties of Life in a Contaminated Setting -- Degenerative Health and Health Care Issues on Rongelap -- Human Subject Research Experiences -- Evacuation of Rongelap in 1985 -- Current Conditions Endured by a Fragmented Rongelap Community -- Part 4: Summary of Damages, Needs, and Compensation Concerns -- Claims by the People of Rongelap for Hardship and Related Consequential Damages of the Nuclear Weapons Testing Program -- Consequences of These Events and Injuries -- Household Economic Injuries -- Compensation Concerns -- Research Needs -- Ideas for Remedial Action -- Part 5: Conclusions and Recommendations -- Violations of Trustee Relationships -- Statements of Culpability -- Reparations -- Relevant Case Precedents -- Recommendations for Categories of Concern in This Claim -- Concluding Remarks -- Epilogue: Seeking Meaningful Remedy -- Appendix -- Sample Marshallese text from the memoir of John Anjain -- List of documents submitted to the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in support of the Rongelap claim -- Letter from the Advisory Committee on Biology and Medicine to Lewis Strauss, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, November 19, 1956 -- Memorandum from Gordon M. Dunning to C. L. Dunham, June 13, 1957. Subject: Resurvey of Rongelap Atoll -- Letter from Hermann Lisco, MD, Cancer Research Institute, New England Deaconess Hospital, to George Darling, Director, Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, April 29, 1966 -- Letter from Paul Seligman, U.S. Department of Energy, to Mayor James Matayoshi, Rongelap Atoll Local Government Council, April 29, 1999 -- Glossary -- Index.
About the Author :
Barbara Rose Johnston, Holly M. Barker
Review :
'When I began to read this book, I found I could not put it away. In this gripping story, Johnston and Barker make a persuasive argument for redefining the compensation principle to include community damages associated with the loss of a way of life. Contending with the classification and reclassification of key government documents, and incorporating persuasive evidence from oral histories, archival research, and cultural landscape mapping, they render in powerful detail the collateral damage from the Cold War and the gravity of local burdens borne in the name of the national interest.' Edward Liebow, Intel 'Consequential Damages of Nuclear War is a testament to why anthropology matters. Barbara Rose Johnston and Holly Barker bring heart, mind, memory and conscience to document a tragic past that many would have preferred be forgotten. Their careful scholarship and representative activism boldly declares the promise of engaged applied anthropology.' David Price, Saint Martin's University 'This powerful, sad, outrageous, important, spellbinding book is a dramatic history of America's second nuclear war, the one the United States Government waged with nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific against the Marshallese people, and with our own military personnel-the Atomic Veterans, who were ordered to participate in the atomic and hydrogen bomb tests of the postwar years. The consequences were devastating for both the natives and the service personnel, the cover-ups were criminal, and the lessons are palpable and relevant today. The Rongelap Report is at the top of my 2008 required reading list for both candidates and voters. That includes you!' Martin J. Sherwin, PhD, Pulitzer Prize winning author (with Kai Bird) of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer 'In this riveting study, Johnston and Barker show what happens when a defenseless population is exposed to radiation from a bomb 1000 times as large as the one that destroyed Hiroshima. The 1954 Bravo test in the Marshall Islands damaged not only people's bodies but the way of life of entire communities as well as the natural environment. Following the bomb test, the U.S. government subjected the victims to decades of medical testing as part of a secret military research project-even going so far as to deliberately put evacuees back into harm's way for further exposure. With extraordinary sensitivity and insight, the authors draw upon extensive scientific and medical research but do so in a way that allows the Marshallese to tell their own story. The experience of those exposed is sadly reminiscent of that of survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who were also studied but not treated by U.S. occupation authorities, and who suffered from recurrent health concerns, psychological damage, social ostracism, sexual humiliation, miscarriages and birth defects, and perpetual worries about the well-being of future generations. The Consequential Damages of Nuclear War is not only a model community study; it is a must read for anyone interested in the impact of nuclear weapons' use upon any human society.' Peter J. Kuznick, Professor of History and Director, Nuclear Studies Institute, American University
