From 1999-2001, CPE Senior Fellow Barbara Rose Johnston collaborated with anthropologist Holly Barker on a research initiative commissioned by the Office of the Public Advocate, Republic of the Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal. This work involved:
- Developing methods and strategies for documenting and determining compensatory values for loss of a way of life.
- Documenting hardships and consequential damages from radioactive contamination, denied use, exile, and human subject experimentation experienced by the people of Rongelap, Rongerik, and Ailinginae Atolls, Republic of the Marshall Islands.
- Serving as expert witnesses in the 2001 Nuclear Claims Tribunal Hearing on the Rongelap claim.
In 2004, the Center for Political Ecology received funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to support Barbara Rose Johnston and Holly Barker in followup research in the Marshall Islands and at various US archives to refine and update their work. Research findings were assessed and further developed in 2006-07, with a Weatherhead residential scholar appointment for Barbara Rose Johnston at the School for Advanced Research on the Human Condition (Santa Fe, NM), and published as contributions to the book Half-Lives and Half-Truths, Confronting the Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War (BR Johnston, ed., SAR Press 2007).
On April 17, 2007, some sixteen years since the first claims were filed, the Nuclear Claims Tribunal issued their decision in the Rongelap case. As laid out in the 34-page judgement: “The Tribunal has determined the amount of compensation due to the Claimants in this case is $1,031,231,200. This amount includes $212,000,000 for remediation and restoration of Rongelap and Rongerik Atolls. This award further includes $784,500,000 for past and future lost property value of Rongelap, Rongerik and Ailinginae Atolls as a result of the Nuclear Testing Program. Finally, it includes $34,731,200 to the Claimants for consequential damages.” Notably, the loss of land award reflects “loss of way of life damages” including the loss of the means to live in a healthy fashion on the land (people were on island, but exposed to high levels of radiation). And, the consequential damages award includes not only the resulting pain, suffering and hardships from “loss of a healthy way of life” but also awards personal injury awards to subjects identified as receiving chromium-51 injections which were “an additional burden to the already considerable exposure from consuming contaminated foods and living in a radioactive environment.” With regard to the larger involvement of the Rongelap people in four decades of human subject research, the Tribunal found that “the emotional distress resulting from the participation in these studies and the manner in which they were carried out, warrants compensation, and is a component in the consequential damages related to the period of time the people spent on Rongelap from 1957 to 1985.”
Despite the Tribunal’s findings, no reparation has been paid by the RMI Nuclear Claims Tribunal; due to the lack of funds this Tribunal has ceased operations. The Rongelap award, the prior awards in the claims for damages to Bikini, Enewetak, and Utrik atolls and communities, as well as a huge portion of the Marshall Islands national personal injury awards – will not ever be paid unless US Congress acts on the RMI’s “changed circumstance” petition initially filed in September 2000. That petition claims the right to request additional funds given that new information has come to light – including public awareness that nuclear weapons tests adversely affected the entire nation, new scientific evidence that low-level exposures to radiation produces significant health risks, and substantive evidence demonstrating these risks were known by the US but not disclosed to the Marshall Islands when the Compact was originally negotiated.
Advocacy to encourage meaningful reparation continues, with renewed momentum following a United Nations Special Rapporteur investigation into toxic waste and environmental contamination resulting from the US nuclear weapons test in the Marshall Islands. The Center for Political Ecology continues to play a role as advisor and civil society advocate.
More information
“Environmental Disaster and Resilience – The Marshall Islands Story Continues to Unfold” Barbara Rose Johnston and Brooke Takala Abraham, in Cultural Survival Quarterly Fall 2016, Vol.40(3):19-20
UPR statement on RMI nuclear issues Civil Society Statement submitted 15 September 2014 to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in support of the Universal Periodic Review of human rights in the Marshall Islands
UPR Statement on United States – nuclear issues in RMI Civil Society Statement submitted 15 September 2014 to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in support of the Universal Periodic Review of human rights in the United States
The Mouse That Roared – Marshall Islands versus the Nuclear Nations by Barbara Rose Johnston (CounterPunch, 25 April 2014).
“Nuclear Weapons Tests, Fallout, and the devastating impact on Marshall Islands environment, health and human rights” BR Johnston, pp., 88-93 in Unspeakable Suffering: The Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, edited by Beatrice Fihn (Reaching Critical Will/WILPF). Supporting document: Intergovernmental Conference on the Catastrophic Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons, 04-05 March 2013, Oslo, Norway.
Nuclear Betrayal in the Marshall Islands by Barbara Rose Johnston (CounterPunch, 17 September 2012).
Consequential Damages of Nuclear War – The Rongelap Report by BR Johnston & HM Barker (Left Coast Press) 2008.
Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World, 2nd edition by Holly M. Barker (Wadsworth/Cengage) 2004, 2012.
Seeking Compensation for Radiation Survivors in the Marshall Islands by BR Johnston and HM Barker, Cultural Survival Quarterly 24:1 (Spring 2000).