Oversight on the Compact of Free Association with the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI): medical treatment of the Marshallese people

Original publisher: Washington : U.S. G.P.O., 2010. LC Number: KF27 .F639 2010f OCLC Number: (OCoLC)706475099 Subject: Nuclear weapons testing victims -- Medical care -- Marshall Islands -- Evaluation. Excerpt: ... 11 The people of Rongelap suffered a 9 percent increase in the can-cer rate. That is over 530 cancer victims that can be linked to U.S. nuclear tests. Their suffering and ill health were bad enough, but were astonishingly compounded by a bureaucratic and medical in-difference that would make Franz Kafka weep. Consider the medical treatment the Marshallese received. All 250 of them were given identification numbers and pictures were taken, many of them naked, to be kept on record for the effects of radiation. Exams were d1 yearly, each time with more pictures and more samples of blood and urine. But never were the 250 people whose lives and health were in jeopardy told how severe was their risk as we cooked them in a nuclear soup that we tested every year. In 2007, the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal, estab-lished by the United States until 1988, ruled that the residents of the island will were owed $ 1 billion in damage awards because of the radioactive fallout that contaminated the island and sickened the residents. The Bush White House refused to pay the claim. The U.S. courts have washed their hands of the matter. What will the Obama administration do? What will we do? Are we absolved? On the one hand, the United States has provided medical care and spent some $ 500 million on construction and clearing projects. On the other hand, the responsibility for the loss, all the pain, all the illness caused by the nuclear tests, lies with the United States. And in the end, trying isn't enough. In the end, apologizing isn't enough. There may be no justice in a case like this one. But it does not preclude the United States accepting responsibility for what it did and carrying that responsibility through until the last legiti-mate claim is satisfie...