The following is taken from a Sojourners interview with Julian Riklow, a native of the Marshall Islands. He was a Bible translator and was active in the United Church of Christ when this article appeared. He was also a participant in the 1980 Radiation Victims' Hearings in Washington, D.C.
--The Editors
I live on Ebeye, an island in the Kwajalein Atoll, which is part of the Marshall Islands. Kwajalein Atoll is the largest atoll in the world.
In 1857 the first missionaries sailed out of Boston, Massachusetts, with the intention of preaching the Word of God to the people of the islands. They landed on the southernmost tip of the Marshall Islands, and ever since that time, Christianity has played a great role in the lives of the Marshallese.
The United States' military presence began in the Marshall Islands in 1946, after World War II, when U.S. government officials wanted to use the islands for weapons testings. They had new weapons, and they wanted to see how powerful they were. So in 1946, they asked the people of Bikini Atoll to move off their islands to make way for the testings.
From that time until early 1964, the U.S. government tested several atomic bombs. Some of the tests were so powerful that six islands are now completely gone. The most important test, called "Bravo," was conducted in 1954. This bomb was 1,000 times stronger than the one dropped on Hiroshima.
The United States never warned the people about the Bravo test. As a result, more than 2,000 people were affected by the radioactive fallout, which at first caused skin burns and diarrhea. Later on, over a period of several years, the number of miscarriages, stillbirths, and deformed babies was higher among the people exposed to the radiation than on the other islands.
More and more people were being brought to the United States for treatment of thyroid cancers, leukemia, and other radiation-related diseases.
But even as we began to notice all these problems, the U.S. government doctors hid the medical records from the people, refusing to let them know the truth about the health effects of radiation. So we have been asking independent doctors to come to the Marshall Islands, investigate the radiation effect, and tell us the truth.
When the United States military people finally stopped the atomic bomb tests, they began conducting missile tests on Kwajalein Atoll. The missiles were shot from Vandenberg Air Force Base down to the lagoon on Kwajalein, 4,300 miles away. In order for them to do these tests, they had to relocate the people. Hundreds of us were evicted from our own home islands and relocated on Ebeye, a 66-acre island.
We are still on Ebeye today, where the population is approaching 9,000 people and life is unbearable. Ebeye has all kinds of problems--water is very scarce, there is much disease, and we who live there are very dependent on the military.
The military people now live on Kwajalein, where we used to live. Kwajalein is 900 acres, or 13 times bigger than Ebeye, but the population of the Americans there is only 3,000.
Last year, because of growing dissatisfaction with living conditions on Ebeye, a majority of landowners voted to reoccupy our islands--Kwajalein and the others we had once lived on. On June 19,1982, we began what is called Operation Homecoming.
About 400 of us went to Kwajalein, and even though we were met by U.S. security guards, we started erecting our tents. The next day more and more people came, and when it became too crowded, we wanted to find another place on Kwajalein for everyone to stay. A group of our leaders and 10 other men went to a beach near the United States' residential area because it had water, houses, and bathrooms.
When they got there, they were again met by the security guards, and they were loaded into a bus and put in jail. We maintained contact with them over CB radio, and about 400 of us marched to the jail. When we got there, we found all the off-duty security guards as well as the colonel and the commanding officer.
Because I happened to be at the front of the group, I was asked to translate the conversation between the landowners and the security guards. The colonel asked us why we were there, and he said that we should go back to Ebeye. We told him that we would not go back unless they released our leaders. The colonel told two security guards to arrest me. They began to drag me to the jail, but some of our women tried to hold on to me. When the women finally had to let go, the two guards grabbed me, choking and beating me down to the floor.
Our lawyers in Washington heard about the situation, and they immediately got a court order to release the men who were in jail. But when we got out, we did not go back to Ebeye. We continued to resist the military people. We were told they would bring in several thousand Marines, but that did not scare us. They cut off the water, but some of our men went and started digging wells. Then they turned the water on again, because they were afraid that we might disturb underground wires with our digging.
We stayed on the restricted islands for four months, and during that time the United States conducted two missile tests. We heard that the people in the Pentagon were arguing with each other: some said they should not conduct tests with people in the restricted areas, and others said they didn't care about the people. The two missiles landed in the lagoon, and fortunately no one was hurt.
We enjoyed the four months on Kwajalein, because we were living the kind of life that we used to live. The children enjoyed the freedom of going out to fish and climbing the coconut trees. We received lots of support for our reoccupation action from people around the Pacific Islands, the United States, and Europe.
In October, 1982, we came to Washington, D.C., and negotiated another agreement with the Department of Defense, which gave the United States the right to use the islands for three more years, until 1985. The agreement provided that six previously restricted islands be given to us, although Kwajalein was not one of them. The U.S. government also agreed to give us money to improve the living conditions on Ebeye. One of the most important achievements was that the United States recognized that it could not simply ignore the landowners and continue operation of the military base.
Still, the military is imposing many restrictions on the people and discrimination is bad. We are looking forward to the 1985 negotiation, because more and more people now believe that our islands should not be used for military purposes.
The missionaries came to teach us to love one another. We like to think of ourselves as friends of the American people; we don't like to make other people our enemy. But now the United States is using our islands for the purpose of killing other people. This is contradictory to our belief.
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