The other nuclear powers have no better record on the issue of information provision or consideration for local people. In fact the most notorious nuclear incident involved a US test in 1954 in the Marshall Islands. It has been suspected that the weapon was actually exploded with the knowledge that fallout could contaminate neighboring islands, but the intention was for its inhabitants to become a subsequent basis for research into the nuclear aftermath.
Following the blast, radioactive ash showered the nearby island of Rongelap to a depth of five centimetres and turned its water blackish-yellow. The inhabitants’ immediate symptoms included extreme lethargy and severe itching and by the third day they were all evacuated by a US destroyer. Since 1958 the rates of stillbirths and miscarriages had become double those amongst unaffected Marshallese women. Some of the deformities invoke a Dantesque nightmare, such as those known as ‘jellyfish babies’ – beings born without faces or bones. Growth retardation amongst children, premature ageing of the old, physical and mental deformity have all increased over the years and by 1985, seventy-seven per cent of the exposed community had developed tumours requiring surgery.
Source:
Cocker, Mark. “The Last Tasmanian.” Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples. Grove Press, 2001. 181. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Weingartner, The Pacific, Minority Rights Group Report, p. 20.
Further Reading:
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