The Handout

After The Fallout

A special committee of the Con gress of Micronesia has urged that the United States be called on to pay various types of compensation to people who suffered from radiation or had their lives disrupted by the hydrogen bomb explosion over Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954. The com mittee recommended that should the US not follow the guidelines for compensation legal action should be taken.

The committee report, tabled at a recent session of the Congress, said the US Government was negligent over the explosion. The people of Rongelap and Utirik were exposed to radio-active fall-out, which was the “proximate or sole cause of in juries” to them and their properties.

Additional nuclear tests after they were returned to their islands ex posed them to more radiation, which might have aggravated their con dition.

The committee’s report recom mended that $50,000 be paid each to the “real mother and father” of Lekoj Anjain, who died from leu kemia, directly caused by exposure to radiation. They should be allowed to use the money as they wished.

Those who had thyroid operations because of radiation-induced disease should receive $25,000 each. The people of Utirik, who were displaced from their island for three months, should receive $l,OOO each as an “inconvenience payment” to supple ment $ll6 offered by the Atomic

Energy Commission.

For all other damages and in juries, to people or property, past and future, funds of indeterminate life of $25,000 a year should be set up for Rongelap and Utirik. This money would be used to fund com munity projects decided on by the municipal councils of the islands.

The fund should be replenished each year so that $25,000 would always be available at the start of the next fiscal year.

The committee felt such funds would help to compensate people for their personal physical and pro perty losses which they actually suffered, and also for damage which could not be specifically determined.

They would also help to promote self-sufficiency. The money would also encourage people from both atolls, who had emigrated to district centres to look for work, to return home.

The committee recommended that legislation endorsing the compensa tion should be open-ended so that payments could be made to those who developed illness from radiation in future.

The US Government should spon sor an independent internationally staffed radio-ecological survey of both atolls and give its findings to the people of the atolls. That action should be taken because of the per sistent concern by both exposed and unexposed persons of both atolls about all local food.