The Coming War on China Page #2

---

to protect the health and

wellbeing of the people.

A nightmare began.

The islands were turned into a laboratory

for the testing of nuclear weapons

and the people into guinea pigs.

- Crossroads, scene 24, take two.

(clicks)

- [John Narrating] In

this propaganda film,

the Bikini islanders are being deceived.

Unknown to them, plans

were already underway

to destroy their paradise forever.

- Will you ask King Judah that

the United States government

now wants to attempt to turn this great,

destructive force into

something good for mankind

and that these experiments here at Bikini

are the first step in that direction.

(speaks foreign language)

Tell them that's fine,

everything being in God's

hands, it must be good.

(speaks foreign language)

- [Announcer] 87 ships

take position three miles

off Bikini to suffer the shattering impact

of the fifth atomic bomb.

- [John Narrating] An armada of warships

was assembled in Bikini Lagoon

in order to blow them to bits.

(chain clanking)

- [Announcer] The decks

of the 73 test ships

anchored in Bikini Lagoon

are scenes of feverish activity

as scientists plot experimental programs

designed to furnish data on blast effects

of the mighty atom bomb.

Animals of many kinds--

- [John Narrating] Animals

were strapped to the decks

like a perverse Noah's Ark.

The experiment was to see how they died,

how they burned.

- [Announcer] Special

ointments are applied

to determine their protective quality.

Other parts of the exposed areas

are being left bare to the atom blasts.

- [Soldier] Three, two, one.

(eerie music)

- [John Narrating] Being on Bikini today

is disturbing ghosts.

I struggle through the

jungle to the bunker

where they pressed the

button at 6:
45 on the morning

of the H-Bomb test.

Now claimed by the undergrowth,

it's like a subterranean

temple to modern times.

They drank Milk Maid Powdered Milk,

smoked Lucky Strike Cigarettes,

and later this sign was

erected that's beyond irony.

It says,

"Please leave this

property as you find it,

"thank you for your

kindness and understanding."

(water drips)

(jovial music)

- [Announcer] The Momselles

give their all for their art

and you can just bet

that audience is giving

with the wolf calls.

- [Male Announcer] The bikini, named after

the atomic explosion in the Pacific.

The bikini was an explosion everywhere.

- [John Narrating] In 1946, the

bikini swimsuit was launched

to celebrate the nuclear explosions

that had destroyed life on Bikini Island.

The inventor of the bikini, a Frenchman,

made his fortune.

Today a bikini body is

promoted in magazines

as an object of desire and good health.

The bodies of the people

of Bikini and other islands

are the most irradiated in the world.

All these women have had thyroid cancer.

Today, Bikini is unfit for human life.

Radiation poisons the food and water,

and issues registered

unsafe on a Geiger Counter.

The abandoned cemetery looks out to where

the sun rose one morning, then rose again

as apocalypse.

The equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb

was exploded in these islands

everyday for 12 years.

A scarred beauty has

returned to the island

but the people haven't.

Exiled to barren islands,

many of them starved.

In 1968, President

Lyndon Johnson told them

it was safe to go home.

(Geiger Counter clicks)

But it wasn't safe.

And the US authorities

knew it wasn't safe.

- What happened as a

result of the Bravo test

was that a cover-up was launched

very shortly after March one.

There's such a history

of wrong information,

outright lies, deception.

There was no attempt to take

the most conservative approach

and make sure that everybody was okay.

- They knew the way the

fallout was going to go.

And they took that risk and went ahead

and detonated the bomb, knowing full well

which way it was going to go.

They still had an opportunity to evacuate,

even on the day of the shot.

But these people were not evacuated,

we were not evacuated,

and the people in the

path were not evacuated.

So that only leaves one to believe that

number one, the United States

needed some guinea pigs

to study what the effects

of radiation would do.

And that's a pretty strong indication

that the United States knew that.

- It seems extraordinary, here we are,

this far into the 21st century,

talking to people still frightened

of all that nuclear

fallout, all those tests,

all those years ago.

The impression I get is that

there's so little trust among people.

- The US is trying to provide as much

information, as much good

information as we can.

And so I wouldn't accept

the characterization that

there've been lies and cover-ups.

- The word guinea pigs comes

up a lot from these survivors.

- I would refer you to our

embassy website on that.

- I've read it.

- And that question was looked at

during the Clinton administration

and that was not the

conclusion they came to.

- [John Narrating] The secret

of the Marshall Islands

is Project 4.1.

Declassified documents

reveal a scientific program

that began as a study of mice

and became a study of human

beings exposed to radiation.

- [Radio Announcer] Chicago

is where it all began.

And to the AEC Argonnne

Labs in Chicago last week

came seven men, natives

of the Marshall Islands.

Levin is from Omelek.

He and the rest were irradiated by our

March 19th '54 hydrogen bomb test.

John is mayor of Rongelap,

which is 100 miles from Bikini.

John, as we said, is a savage,

but a happy, amenable savage.

His grandfather ran almost

naked on his small atoll.

The white man brought money and religion

and a market for his copa.

John Reeds knows about God

and is a pretty good mayor.

The iron room is a radiation

detector for human beings.

Inside John the mayor,

whose first visit to

the white man's country

meant San Francisco cable

cars and Chicago skyscrapers

and streamlined trains,

whose first visit to

the white man's country

meant the iron room.

A savage governs his life by ritual

and he understands this because

he thinks of it as a new ritual.

Sitting alone inside the room,

outside, a strange kind of

priest in a long, white coat.

When the ritual of the iron

room was over for John,

it began for the others.

As each finished, he was told it was over

and he was given apples and

other good things to eat.

Then he took off the ritual clothing

and the seven men put on

the suits and top coats

they had been lent in Hawaii

which they would return in

Hawaii on their way back

in the Marshall Islands in the

middle of the Pacific Ocean.

- The United States government documents

clearly demonstrate that its scientists

conducted human radiation experiments

with Marshallese citizens.

Some of our people were injected with

or coerced to drink fluids

laced with radiation.

Other experimentation

involved the impurposeful

and premature resettlement of people

on islands highly

contaminated by weapons tests

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes