Bula Fiji, very well done 🙂 This is something very close to my heart. You’ll notice that Britain and the other WMD testers are still dragging their feet; and increasing their nuclear arsenals.
5 thoughts on “Fiji compensates atomic test veterans: Bula Fiji”
Janos
It is a honorable action from the government of Fiji. Those nuclear tests made damage on people and on nature and part of radiation is still measurable there I guess. Was the extent of damage made on natural environment ever estimated? Most probably wasn’t.
Thanks Janos, I don’t think the true extent of what happened in the Pacific was properly documented. I know that the Americans were, and probably still are, treating this as an ongoing experiment. They did prevent local people in Hiroshima & Nagasaki from receiving medical treatment ~ preferring instead to watch what happened as they succumbed to short, mid and long term disease. The process there was to gather all the victims together, register them and monitor the decline in their health, But, fortunately, some very brave Japanese doctors figured what was going on and helped where they could. There is an entire group of Japanese women shunned by society ~ I forget the name, but recently they have come forwards saying they should not be shamed, as they did not choose to be bombed. I agree.
The Kiritimati (Christmas Island) story was also bizarre. I met some of the ‘guinea-pigs’ from the late-1950s (exactly what Frank, Fiji Premier, was talking about). The British sailors & soldiers stationed on the atoll were lined up outside, then told to about face and look in a certain direction. Almighty flash and bang in the distance, and obviously radiation, then the command “OK chaps, carry on!” That was it … using folk for these awful experiments, without their permission. I imagine many are dead by now 🙁
Fiji may have start the ball rolling, but we need to also understand that both the UK and the US governments are too arrogant to accept faults. So we need to see what they do about it.
Using humans as guinea pigs is not new, and there are too many instances in history.
We are also hoping for something dramatic to happen shortly in Britain. Scotland does not want London’s WMD dumped on the Clyde: that was a central tenet of the independence campaign; which unfortunately we narrowly lost. Wales has just said that London should not even think about dumping the WMD there if they get chucked out of Scotland.
More to the point is that the British people are saying “why can you spend billions on Trident, whilst millions are starving and having to use charity food-banks in order to stay alive?” The Conservatives, and Labour, say that if we get rid of WMD then the Americans will be upset. How sad, too bad 🙁
It is a honorable action from the government of Fiji. Those nuclear tests made damage on people and on nature and part of radiation is still measurable there I guess. Was the extent of damage made on natural environment ever estimated? Most probably wasn’t.
Thanks Janos, I don’t think the true extent of what happened in the Pacific was properly documented. I know that the Americans were, and probably still are, treating this as an ongoing experiment. They did prevent local people in Hiroshima & Nagasaki from receiving medical treatment ~ preferring instead to watch what happened as they succumbed to short, mid and long term disease. The process there was to gather all the victims together, register them and monitor the decline in their health, But, fortunately, some very brave Japanese doctors figured what was going on and helped where they could. There is an entire group of Japanese women shunned by society ~ I forget the name, but recently they have come forwards saying they should not be shamed, as they did not choose to be bombed. I agree.
The Kiritimati (Christmas Island) story was also bizarre. I met some of the ‘guinea-pigs’ from the late-1950s (exactly what Frank, Fiji Premier, was talking about). The British sailors & soldiers stationed on the atoll were lined up outside, then told to about face and look in a certain direction. Almighty flash and bang in the distance, and obviously radiation, then the command “OK chaps, carry on!” That was it … using folk for these awful experiments, without their permission. I imagine many are dead by now 🙁
Fiji may have start the ball rolling, but we need to also understand that both the UK and the US governments are too arrogant to accept faults. So we need to see what they do about it.
Using humans as guinea pigs is not new, and there are too many instances in history.
Thanks Ven, yes France was notoriously unmoved by anyone’s opinions, Also they were all sharing data from the most recent tests in French Polynesia. 🙁
We are also hoping for something dramatic to happen shortly in Britain. Scotland does not want London’s WMD dumped on the Clyde: that was a central tenet of the independence campaign; which unfortunately we narrowly lost. Wales has just said that London should not even think about dumping the WMD there if they get chucked out of Scotland.
More to the point is that the British people are saying “why can you spend billions on Trident, whilst millions are starving and having to use charity food-banks in order to stay alive?” The Conservatives, and Labour, say that if we get rid of WMD then the Americans will be upset. How sad, too bad 🙁