Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 2: About twenty years ago, maybe thirty, a circus fitted to Majorro,
Speaker 2: the largest island on the Madro Atoll, in the capital
Speaker 2: city of the Marshall Islands. They came to Major as
Speaker 2: almost everything that isn't breadfruit, pandanas or fish does on
Speaker 2: a boat. After performing, they couldn't find a boat to
Speaker 2: take them to their next destination, and so the resident
Speaker 2: tiny island, which at times is no wider than the
Speaker 2: single road which travels its whole length, decided that they'd
Speaker 2: have to share the food that they themselves had imported
Speaker 2: a great cost, and they set about gathering apples, bananas,
Speaker 2: and anything else that they thought an elephant might like
Speaker 2: to eat while it waited for a way off an
Speaker 2: island that barely has enough room for its own people,
Speaker 2: let alone the largest land animal on earth. The people
Speaker 2: of the Marshall Islands, for whom hospitality is as natural
Speaker 2: as the times of the sea, greet each other the
Speaker 2: same way they do strangers by saying yo quai. The
Speaker 2: word has several meanings, but I'll let David Kabua explain them.
Speaker 2: He's the President of the Republic of the Marshal Islands,
Speaker 2: so he seems like he'd be a good source.
Speaker 3: I would say the word yupik yupe is treating word
Speaker 3: yabuey has a lot of several meanings, and you can't
Speaker 3: say when you meet someone first time, you say yaguey
Speaker 3: when you greet someone, and when you also say goodbye,
Speaker 3: instead of say good bye, you also yuh pay, So
Speaker 3: it's you can't use that. Also, like during the weekend
Speaker 3: there was a tournament, fishing tournament, and if you were
Speaker 3: fishing and you got it. You have a big fish
Speaker 3: on the land and you really m you're about to
Speaker 3: land the fish.
Speaker 4: But the land's not.
Speaker 3: So what do you say, said, oh, yeah, way, hello
Speaker 3: to the fish, But you just say yeah because you
Speaker 3: lost the pig catch. So it can't be used that way.
Speaker 3: Like when you lose someone or someone passed away. You've
Speaker 3: missed that. Yeh way, so and so he was here
Speaker 3: but no one could hear. So we can say yeh pay.
Speaker 3: So it has several meanings, but the deeper meaning of
Speaker 3: yapay is you are beautiful like the rainbow. Yeah means
Speaker 3: rainbow and ways.
Speaker 5: So we combine the two words.
Speaker 6: You are a rainbow.
Speaker 3: You goombool as are.
Speaker 2: On the map. The Marshall Islands look like the little
Speaker 2: dots that appear in my photos of the beach at Marjiro.
Speaker 2: But unlike those little specks of dust that manage to
Speaker 2: sneak their way onto my camera center, Marshall Islands belong here.
Speaker 2: Here is a pretty vague turn. The twenty nine coral
Speaker 2: atolls and five islands that allow fifty four thousand Marshal
Speaker 2: Eies to live on one hundred and eighty two square
Speaker 2: kilometers of land span an oceanic territory of two hundred
Speaker 2: thousand kilometers. It's like you took a small American town
Speaker 2: and scattered it across an area more than a half
Speaker 2: times the size of Alaska. Even though the RMI is
Speaker 2: ninety eight percent water, every inch of land is precious
Speaker 2: to the marshal Eies, whose matrilineal society ensures that land
Speaker 2: passes from mother to daughter and ties families to the
Speaker 2: remote islands that make up the low lying atolls of
Speaker 2: the Republic. It was on one of the bigger chunks
Speaker 2: of land that I recorded the music you heard a
Speaker 2: minute ago. Marjoro is an atoll that's a coral ring
Speaker 2: that encircles the lagoon and its biggest islands. About thirty
Speaker 2: miles long but often less than one hundred yards wide.
Speaker 2: There's one road that runs the length of it and
Speaker 2: sometimes also spans the width of it. It's also home
Speaker 2: to about half the Urmis population. The highest point on
Speaker 2: the atoll lies just three meters above sea level. If
Speaker 2: you want to get higher than that, then your only
Speaker 2: options are houses or palm trees. From the top of
Speaker 2: the fifth floor of the NAPA Auto Parts Store, which
Speaker 2: also houses the UNDP and the marshal Owns Olympic Committee,
Speaker 2: you can see the whole island. For Marshallese people, these
Speaker 2: tiny pieces of paradise that barely poke their heads out
Speaker 2: from the top of the ocean are everything. Their land
Speaker 2: and their ties to it define them. Without their place,
Speaker 2: they can't be themselves. Even though many thousands of Marshales
Speaker 2: live in the diasper of the United States, they still
Speaker 2: important handicrafts made from little shells and the outer islands
Speaker 2: and coconut husks. Many of them come back to the
Speaker 2: islands to retire, but slowly the ocean is taking those
Speaker 2: islands back. Rising sea levels and more extreme tidal surges
Speaker 2: have placed this tiny Pacific nation on the front lines
Speaker 2: of climate change. There isn't an exact estimate as to
Speaker 2: how long the Marshall Islands have or what they can
Speaker 2: do to halt the creeping advance of the ocean. They've
Speaker 2: always existed on just a few square kilometers of land
Speaker 2: among millions of square kilometers of ocean, and they depend
Speaker 2: on that ocean for everything. But now it's threatening to
Speaker 2: take everything away from them one day. They fear their
Speaker 2: islands will become uninhabitable. A salt water invads of water
Speaker 2: table and their trees die, while storms bring more and
Speaker 2: more frequent floods that sweep away their homes and their possessions.
Speaker 2: They don't want to leave, but they can't stand alone
Speaker 2: against climate change either. But the marshally Is are resilient people.
Speaker 2: They've weathered many storms to get to where they are now.
Speaker 2: The tiny museum in Maduro artifacts of several crises that
Speaker 2: would seem apocalyptic, a nuclear bomb, the Second World War,
Speaker 2: But in the end these did little de cruss the
Speaker 2: incredible kindness of the tenacity of the Marshals. The islands
Speaker 2: that make up the Aramai have been inhabited by indigenous
Speaker 2: people for thousands of years, and they've been variously ruled
Speaker 2: by the Spanish, German, Japanese, and United States governments before
Speaker 2: becoming an independent republic. Before they were named by a
Speaker 2: British sailor, the islands had their own name. I'll let
Speaker 2: Jeff a Marshal's renaissance man who was at once a driver,
Speaker 2: the head of the World Health Organization's EMT program on
Speaker 2: the islands, a registered nurse, and the custodians an incredible
Speaker 2: collection of Marshalise music explained what they were called before that, or.
Speaker 7: Before I used to call La la la la larali like.
Speaker 6: El or el.
Speaker 7: Nahli l o lp lap laps.
Speaker 8: Before it turn out turns into Marshall. Because this work
Speaker 8: Marshall games from this guy oh abound these islands.
Speaker 2: Captain Marshall undeniably, the Marshall Islands are not a bad
Speaker 2: place to find yourself on a summer afternoon, and in
Speaker 2: the time I spent there, I took several trips to
Speaker 2: the smaller islands around madro Atoll. They look like the
Speaker 2: Platonic idea of a tropical island, complete with coconut palms,
Speaker 2: vibrant coral reefs, white sand, and turquoise water. I love
Speaker 2: free diving and dropping down onto a wrecked aircraft and
Speaker 2: dozens of brightly colored species of fish in almost infinite
Speaker 2: visibility without even needing to put on a wet sue
Speaker 2: or a weight belt. Might be the closest I'll ever
Speaker 2: get to flying. But I wasn't just here for a
Speaker 2: dip in the ocean. I'm actually here to tell you
Speaker 2: a story of incredible resilience. Much of a America, both
Speaker 2: on the left and on the right, spends much of
Speaker 2: its time and money preparing for its own imagined version
Speaker 2: of the crisis. For some, that's the unimaginable destruction of
Speaker 2: nuclear war. For others, it's the encroaching of the ocean
Speaker 2: on it's the land and a resulting loss of places
Speaker 2: to live and grow food and for others. It's a
Speaker 2: collapse of basic services like power and clean water that
Speaker 2: we take for granted. These are all storms. So the
Speaker 2: tiny island nation who hath already weathered, and it hasn't
Speaker 2: done so in the atomized and individualistic way that so
Speaker 2: many American preppers fantasize about online. It's done so as
Speaker 2: an incredibly strong, optimistic, and welcoming community. There's a lot
Speaker 2: we can learn from the people of the Marshal Islands
Speaker 2: and their story, and so this week I'll be doing
Speaker 2: my best to share the stories that they shared with me.
Speaker 2: If you're familiar with the islands, it's likely because of
Speaker 2: the history of one of the other atolls in the group,
Speaker 2: Bikini Atoll. The name is the German bastardization of a
Speaker 2: Marshal Lese word pikini pick meaning plain surface, and knee
Speaker 2: meaning coconut tree. It's a flat base where coconuts grew,
Speaker 2: but you likely don't know the island for its coconuts,
Speaker 2: and those aren't safe to eat anymore anyway. If you've
Speaker 2: heard of Bikinia Toll, it's because of what the United
Speaker 2: States did there after the Second World War On the
Speaker 2: eighteenth of July and nineteen forty seven, the Marshall Islands
Speaker 2: were placed in a Strategic Trust Territory by the United Nations.
Speaker 2: This territory was administered by the United States, which are
Speaker 2: supposed to administer the islands in the best interest of
Speaker 2: their inhabitants out of international peace and security. But a
Speaker 2: year before the trust territory was created, the US began
Speaker 2: nuclear testing in the lagoon at Bikinia Toll, a site
Speaker 2: that would, over the next fifteen years, become the most
Speaker 2: heavily bombed place on Earth, with some islands entirely removed
Speaker 2: from the map and much of their population left dead sick,
Speaker 2: without the land that defines them and their ability to
Speaker 2: thrive on these ti iny islands amidst the endless ocean.
Speaker 2: As far as possible, I want to let the marshal
Speaker 2: Ease survivors of the nuclear tests and their families tell
Speaker 2: their own stories. They call what happened on Bikini and
Speaker 2: Awatakatoll the nuclear legacy of their country. Talking about the
Speaker 2: nuclear legacy is a difficult topic for the marshal Eise,
Speaker 2: especially the time when none of them have been paid
Speaker 2: the compensation they were allotted, and the US was negotiating
Speaker 2: a new agreement with the Marshalise government. It was very
Speaker 2: far from settled and the numbers of the US were
Speaker 2: offering were very far from sufficient. I was very fortunate
Speaker 2: to join a few other journalists on the tiny island
Speaker 2: of boken Bowton, a short boat ride away from Mitro
Speaker 2: and home to perhaps most beautiful coral reef I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: We had lunch, walked around the island and then had
Speaker 2: a talk on the nuclear legacy from descendants of some
Speaker 2: of the survivors. I'll let them introduce themselves.
Speaker 9: My name is Zachabkivion.
Speaker 10: I'm from the Marshall Island.
Speaker 11: I am a student at CMI car Chacta Marshall Allen,
Speaker 11: and I am currently the president for the CMI Nuclear Club,
Speaker 11: which we mostly work under National Nuclear Commission with with
Speaker 11: our director Mary Suck and our Commissioner Arianna.
Speaker 12: All Reat.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Well, once again, my name is Ariana teven Kilima. I
Speaker 14: work as a Commissioner and Nuclear Justice Envoy for the
Speaker 14: RMI National Nuclear Commission.
Speaker 13: Him.
Speaker 14: Once again, thank you very much for having us this afternoon.
Speaker 15: Yooel, welcome to the Marshall Allen. My name is Evelyn Ralpho.
Speaker 15: I'm the Director for Education and Public Awareness. Once again, welcome,
Speaker 15: enjoy the rese of your days here.
Speaker 9: Well that my name is Sincretin Pernett.
Speaker 16: I work with the National Nuclear Commission as an admin
Speaker 16: and physical officer.
Speaker 9: I'm not sure if it's necessary for me to come.
Speaker 16: But since the past that we all go, so that's
Speaker 16: important support the plastic work on the same boat in
Speaker 16: the Martiall Islands.
Speaker 15: She's from Mayata, She's from Yeah.
Speaker 14: The three of us are all descendants of nuclear survivors.
Speaker 14: They were exposed to fall out. Her mother was exposed
Speaker 14: to fall out. Her mother, Grace's mother was also exposed
Speaker 14: to the radioactive fallout, as well as my great grandfather.
Speaker 14: I think that's what really drives us to share.
Speaker 9: This with you.
Speaker 2: Almost everyone in the RMI has a family member directly
Speaker 2: impacted by the testing and the decade of mistreatment that
Speaker 2: came after it. Although we know the name Bikinia Toll,
Speaker 2: the entire republic was impacted by nuclear fallout, including Mardro itself,
Speaker 2: thanks to the elevised decision to drop bombs on a
Speaker 2: day when the populated atolls were downwind of the test site,
Speaker 2: in fact, right next to our hotel. Showing the same
Speaker 2: parking lot. There's the US Department of Energy office. What
Speaker 2: that was doing there?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 17: I saw there's a diary office like health office in
Speaker 17: the street here, the one in.
Speaker 7: The next to the auto, that's the office where they
Speaker 7: do the radiation testing. And there's the one near the
Speaker 7: Ami Marshall that's the clinic for those survivors. Now, the survivors,
Speaker 7: there's few of them life like, maybe less than fifty.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: The RMI is still fighting in the Second World War.
Speaker 2: It's memorialized in murals across Marjorro. In nineteen forty three
Speaker 2: and early nineteen forty four, the USA bombed and then
Speaker 2: fought the Imperial Japanese military who have been occupying the
Speaker 2: island since nineteen fourteen. US soldiers and marines, along with
Speaker 2: marsh Ley's scouts, landed on Marjorro Quadulan in anywhere thout
Speaker 2: on Higgins boat that were virtually identical to the boat
Speaker 2: we took across the lagoon to Bocan Boton. The fighting
Speaker 2: was fierce and the scale of the destruction metz. Overall,
Speaker 2: the Americans lost six hundred and eleven men and suffered
Speaker 2: two thousand, three hundred and forty one wounded, two hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty one were missing. Meanwhile, the Japanese lost over
Speaker 2: eleven thousand men and had three hundred and fifty eight captured. Today,
Speaker 2: the Bikinia Toll Lagoon still holds the ghostly remains of
Speaker 2: the ships and plains that fought that battle, alongside the Nagato,
Speaker 2: the flagship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the ship
Speaker 2: from whose bridge Admiral Yamamoto launched the attack on Pearl Harbour.
Speaker 2: It was a shadow of this war that was evoked
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty six when one hundred and sixty seven
Speaker 2: a Bikini A Tolls inhabitants were forcibly relocated by the
Speaker 2: United States. They initially accepted this settlement quote for the
Speaker 2: good of mankind and to end all wars, in the
Speaker 2: words of the US commandant at the time. Assisted by U. S.
Speaker 2: Navy seabees, they disassembled their church and moved to different atolls.
Speaker 2: Nine of the eleven family heads from Bikini elected to
Speaker 2: be transported one hundred and twenty five miles to rong
Speaker 2: gric Atoll, an island with about one quarter of the
Speaker 2: land mass of Bikini Atoll. Many believed the island to
Speaker 2: be haunted. By the time the navy left them with
Speaker 2: a few weeks of water and food, they had every
Speaker 2: reason to be afraid. I let Ariana explain what that
Speaker 2: removal process was like.
Speaker 14: They had asked the people if they were willing to
Speaker 14: give up their homelands for the good of mankind and
Speaker 14: to end all wars. And because our people are people
Speaker 14: of faith in Christianity, they and they were very afraid.
Speaker 13: They did not want to leave.
Speaker 14: But because of the amount of power that the military
Speaker 14: showed up with with their big ships compared to our
Speaker 14: small canoes, and the amount of troops that were on
Speaker 14: that island on that morning, it was very hard for
Speaker 14: them to fight against what was being.
Speaker 13: Asked of them.
Speaker 14: And if you have time to look through documentaries of
Speaker 14: the nuclear legacy, you will see a certain part where
Speaker 14: the commander, a commodore, his name was Ben Wyatt. He
Speaker 14: was sitting down and asking the chief at that time,
Speaker 14: can we use this island for the good of mankind?
Speaker 14: And in response, the people all respond in unison elmn,
Speaker 14: which means okay. And from their testimonies, they had to
Speaker 14: take that shot over forty times to make sure that
Speaker 14: you know they all said MMn at the same time,
Speaker 14: to get the best shot they could for you know,
Speaker 14: maybe for reports to the UN. But it was a
Speaker 14: very frustrating time for them.
Speaker 2: Following their removal, the testing began. The idea was to
Speaker 2: test nuclear bombs on ships. To the US bought ninety
Speaker 2: five ships fully loaded with weapons and fuel. At this time,
Speaker 2: this would have ranked the a Bikinia told just outside
Speaker 2: the top five biggest fleets in the world, but those
Speaker 2: boats didn't stay afloat for long. Now you might think that,
Speaker 2: given the testing was on ships, the atoll's navy would
Speaker 2: be some kind of mid century Mary Celeste, but you'd
Speaker 2: be wrong. Three hundred and fifty experimental rats, goats, and
Speaker 2: pigs died in the service as its strange nuclear experiment,
Speaker 2: some of them after being subjected to the great indignity
Speaker 2: of being covered in sunscreen, which bizarrely scientists thought might
Speaker 2: be useful in alleviating the impact of radiation. It's rather
Speaker 2: staggering that this research was being done three years after
Speaker 2: the United States dropped nuclear bombs on whole cities full
Speaker 2: of human beings. But as you've maybe already picked up
Speaker 2: in this story, the possibility of unintended but entirely predictable
Speaker 2: human suffering does not seem to have been top of
Speaker 2: the priority list. The first test of the island somehow misfired.
Speaker 2: The gathered press would disappointed, and many of them went home,
Speaker 2: But the second, codenamed Baker didn't. Chemist Glen t Seborg,
Speaker 2: the longest serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, called
Speaker 2: the Baker test the world's first nuclear disaster. It drove
Speaker 2: a two thousand foot wide pillar of water into the air.
Speaker 2: It sunk the USS Arkansas, and released massive amounts of
Speaker 2: radiation across the islands of the atoll, which at the
Speaker 2: time the residents had been expecting to return to. Just
Speaker 2: five days after the first bomb went off, Louis Road,
Speaker 2: a French mechanical engineer who was working as manager of
Speaker 2: his mother's lingerie shop in Paris, introduced a new swimsuit
Speaker 2: designed named the Bikini after the atoll. It was one
Speaker 2: wright equipped the atom bomb of fashion. The people of
Speaker 2: the atoll, however, gained little from the outfit or the testing.
Speaker 2: January of nineteen forty eight, just two years after their removal,
Speaker 2: doctor Leonard Mason visited the Bikinians on Rongerik and was
Speaker 2: appalled to find the people there had almost starved to death.
Speaker 2: We were dying, but they didn't listen to us, one
Speaker 2: of them said to him. Mason, an anthropologist at the
Speaker 2: University of WAYI asked that food and water be bought immediately.
Speaker 2: The US built houses for Bikiniatol residents on Ujilangatol, but
Speaker 2: it decided to use these for the residents of Aniwata Katol,
Speaker 2: where it was also about to begin conducting nuclear experiments. Instead.
Speaker 2: The Bikini Islanders were placed in tents alongside a runway
Speaker 2: before they eventually chose Kille Island, a line of less
Speaker 2: than one square kilometer, as their next home. Also evacuated
Speaker 2: where Aniwata, Krangalap and Warthaw islanders. They too, thought this
Speaker 2: was a temporary arrangement and that they could go home
Speaker 2: in a short period of time. They too, found out
Speaker 2: later that this was not the case. Over the course
Speaker 2: of their exile, they've been moved several more times, staffed
Speaker 2: half to death, cheated of their compensation, and stripped to
Speaker 2: their ancestral homeland. For the next twelve years, the United
Speaker 2: States would drop increasingly large bombs, culminating in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: four with the Bravo Shot of Operation Castle, also known
Speaker 2: as Castle Bravo, the biggest nuclear device that we know
Speaker 2: of the US ever deploying.
Speaker 14: Within those twelve years, there were sixty seven known devices
Speaker 14: that were tested here. There could have been more, but
Speaker 14: all we know of is sixty seven. One of them
Speaker 14: was the Castle Bravo shat that yielded fifteen megatons, which,
Speaker 14: when sciences calculated the equivalent of the Bravo shat, would
Speaker 14: have required testing the Hiroshima bomb one and a half
Speaker 14: times every single day for twelve years.
Speaker 2: That fifteen megaton Bravo shot yielded more than two point
Speaker 2: five times the estimated six megaton explosion. When it was
Speaker 2: detonated on an artificial island in the Bikinia Toll, the
Speaker 2: device's mushroom cloud reached a height of forty seven thousand feet,
Speaker 2: which is fourteen hundred meters, and a diameter of seven
Speaker 2: miles or eleven kilometers in about one minute. Eventually it
Speaker 2: reached a height of forty kilometers and a diameter of
Speaker 2: one hundred kilometers. This took less than ten minutes, traveled
Speaker 2: more than one hundred meters per second, and covered seven
Speaker 2: thousand kilometers of the Pacific Ocean and everything in it
Speaker 2: with nuclear fallout. On the eve of the Bravo shot,
Speaker 2: weather reports indicated that the quote conditions were getting less favorable,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless a decision to go ahead with the first
Speaker 2: test was taken by Alvin Sea Graves jointed task for
Speaker 2: seven ships located thirty miles east of Bikini, and what
Speaker 2: was thought to be an upwin position began detecting high
Speaker 2: levels of radiation just two hours after the test. Very
Speaker 2: soon after, they began traveling south at full speed to
Speaker 2: avoid the fall out, but directly down wind to the
Speaker 2: blast and unable to travel were wrong. A lap and
Speaker 2: A Lingeni Atolls Arianna explained the impact to fall out there,
Speaker 2: which residents were not warned about. American services people there
Speaker 2: want to stay inside, not eat or drink anything, but
Speaker 2: no such warning was given to the local residents.
Speaker 14: Some said it looked like the sky was changing colors
Speaker 14: from red to yellow to orange. It was just a
Speaker 14: very very bright morning, and then they started hearing like
Speaker 14: thunderous roars a couple of minutes later, and it was
Speaker 14: just like roars after wars, and it was a very
Speaker 14: frightening time. Because this was just not something you know,
Speaker 14: does not happen every day. And then around ten am,
Speaker 14: the fallout.
Speaker 13: Had started to arrive.
Speaker 14: And these are counts from rongolap at All, which is
Speaker 14: the closest to Bikini. The fallout had started to arrive
Speaker 14: and they were not sure what was going on.
Speaker 13: There was men out fishing.
Speaker 14: There was also stories from these witnesses that prior to
Speaker 14: this test, the military had gone to and they had
Speaker 14: movie nights and they would show the community of movies
Speaker 14: where it's snowing.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow we'll hear more about the consequences of the Bravo
Speaker 2: shop for the people who, despite never having any quarrel
Speaker 2: with the USA, with the recipient of the largest nuclear
Speaker 2: bomb it's ever decimated. The music you just heard was
Speaker 2: the anthem of Bikinia Toll, sung at their church on
Speaker 2: Kille Island in nineteen ninety seven. The words translators follows,
Speaker 2: no longer can I stay It's true? No longer can
Speaker 2: I live in peace and harmony? No longer can I
Speaker 2: rest on my sleeping matt pillow Because of my island
Speaker 2: and the life I once knew there. The thought is overwhelming,
Speaker 2: rendering me helpless and in great despair, my spirit leaves
Speaker 2: drifting around and far away, where it becomes caught in
Speaker 2: a current of immense power, and only then do I
Speaker 2: find tranquility. B has a flag as well. It looks
Speaker 2: a lot like the US flag, but in the top
Speaker 2: left blue rectangle you'll only find twenty three white stars.
Speaker 2: They represent the islands of Bikinia Toll. The three black
Speaker 2: stars and the upper right of the flag represent the
Speaker 2: three islands that were vaporized by the March first, nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four fifteen megatine hydrogen bomb blast codenamed Bravo. The
Speaker 2: two black stars in the lower right hand corner represent
Speaker 2: where the Bikinians live now, Killy Island, four hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty five miles to the south of Bikinia Toll, an
Speaker 2: egypt island on the Majuro Atoll. These two stars are
Speaker 2: symbolically far away from Bikini stars on the flag, as
Speaker 2: the islands are far away in real life, both in
Speaker 2: distance and in terms of quality of life. The Marshallese
Speaker 2: words running across the bottom of the flag men o
Speaker 2: temzj regi elo benonije translate to everything is in the
Speaker 2: hands of God. These represent the words spoken in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty six by the Bikinian Lee Judah to the US
Speaker 2: commodore Ben Wyatt when the American went to Bikini to
Speaker 2: us the islanders on a Sunday after they'd just been
Speaker 2: to church to give up their islands for the good
Speaker 2: of all mankind so the US could test nuclear weapons there.
Speaker 2: The close resemblance of the Bikinians flag to the flag
Speaker 2: of the United States, it's to remind the people and
Speaker 2: the government of the USA that a great debt is
Speaker 2: still owed by them to the people of Bikini. In
Speaker 2: today's episode, I want to pick up where we left
Speaker 2: off yesterday in the hours after the Bravo shot. Here's
Speaker 2: Ariana again.
Speaker 14: And so when that fallout had arrived, the children, you know,
Speaker 14: they remember that they saw it in these movie nights.
Speaker 14: They thought it was snow and they were playing in
Speaker 14: this fallout. And then later on that day they started
Speaker 14: to realize that this was maybe poisonous.
Speaker 13: They just were not sure.
Speaker 14: But by midnight that night, the people were not able
Speaker 14: to move around as much. They were suffering dramatically. Their
Speaker 14: stomachs were churning, their hair had started to fall out,
Speaker 14: their skin was peeling off, and like. They said, it
Speaker 14: was so itchy, and when they would scratch, the skin
Speaker 14: just peels off as they scratched. And the fish that
Speaker 14: the men were out fishing for when they had came
Speaker 14: back that evening to eat, when they ate the fish,
Speaker 14: they said it was like they were just munching on sand.
Speaker 2: Johanna Jeanne, the mayor of rong Lapatol, gave an interview
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy seven recounting his experience with the fallout.
Speaker 4: It fell on me, It fell on my wife, It
Speaker 4: fell on my infant son. It fell on the trees
Speaker 4: and on the roofs of our houses. It fell onto
Speaker 4: the reefs and into the lagoon. We were very curious
Speaker 4: about this ash falling from the sky. Some people put
Speaker 4: it in their mouths and tasted it. One man rubbed
Speaker 4: it into his eye to see if it would cure
Speaker 4: an old ailment. People walked in it and children played
Speaker 4: in it.
Speaker 2: Later, people on Utrech Atoll experienced the fallout as missed
Speaker 2: minich Kel. One resident of the atoll, said that quote,
Speaker 2: several of my babies, who were healthy at the time
Speaker 2: they were born, died before they were a year old. Altogether,
Speaker 2: I lost four babies. My son, Wynton, was born one
Speaker 2: year after the bomb, and he has had two operations
Speaker 2: on his throat for thyroid cancer. The Japanese fishing boat
Speaker 2: Lucky Dragon number five also came into direct contact with
Speaker 2: the fallout, which began raining down on them that same morning.
Speaker 2: They'd been fishing outside the designated danger zone that the
Speaker 2: US government had declared in advance, but when radioactive dust
Speaker 2: began to fall on them, they scrambled to leave. Pulling
Speaker 2: their gear took nearly six hours, during which time they
Speaker 2: were covered in the dust and gathered some of it
Speaker 2: in bags to take home and determine what this dust was.
Speaker 2: Later in the day, they began to get sick as
Speaker 2: they headed home. One member of the crew kept a
Speaker 2: bag of the ash to have it analyzed on their
Speaker 2: turn home, but he hung it from his bunk bed,
Speaker 2: causing the crew to get continued exposure all the way home.
Speaker 2: It took them two weeks to get back to Japan,
Speaker 2: and doctors quickly determined the cause of their blisters, sickness,
Speaker 2: and hair loss. They ask a US Atomic Energy Committee
Speaker 2: for information on how to treat the fishermen. Instead, the
Speaker 2: US sent two scientists to observe them. One of the
Speaker 2: fishermen died and the others were sent home after fourteen
Speaker 2: months in hospital. They faced stigma in public, and most
Speaker 2: of them eventually died from liver cirrhosis or cancer. Thirty
Speaker 2: six hours after the test, United States servicemen were evacuated
Speaker 2: from Wrong Lap. Fifty four hours afterwards, the people of
Speaker 2: Wrong Lappatole were evacuated, and seventy eight hours after the
Speaker 2: fallout hit them, less than half of Utrich's four hundred
Speaker 2: people were eventually evacuated. Here's Ariana again recounting the story
Speaker 2: of one of those Wrong Lap residents.
Speaker 14: So they were evacuated on March fourth, nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 14: and upon evacuation, the community was ordered to strip down
Speaker 14: naked on the ships. They did not separate the males
Speaker 14: from the females. The entire community stood naked. The community
Speaker 14: stood naked on the ship and they were hosed down
Speaker 14: with the pressure washer.
Speaker 13: When you talk stories with them today, it's they recall
Speaker 13: it as you know.
Speaker 14: They say, you know, the holes was so strong, it
Speaker 14: felt like those hoses that they used to put out fires.
Speaker 13: And after they were pressure.
Speaker 14: Washed, they were given a soldiers underwear and T shirt
Speaker 14: to wear for their journey to Quadulant at all, and
Speaker 14: for the bigger women that were a part of this
Speaker 14: group that could not fit these soldiers underwears and T shirts,
Speaker 14: they were given just a small towel to cover while
Speaker 14: they were journeying to Quadulant. And also from these testimonies,
Speaker 14: one of my neighbors, she was seven years old at
Speaker 14: that time, and she said, you know, she's just a kid,
Speaker 14: and when everybody was danding naked, and she saw her uncles,
Speaker 14: and she thought it was funny at that time, but
Speaker 14: she realized later that that was such a breach of
Speaker 14: privacy and a moment of humiliation. And she recalls her
Speaker 14: grandmother's skin falling off, and she said, it looked like
Speaker 14: we all were like in a burning house, and everybody
Speaker 14: had these scars on, like just the peel burning off.
Speaker 14: But at that time she did not really realize it.
Speaker 14: She did not have a lot of burns. She's still
Speaker 14: alive today, but she did not have a lot of
Speaker 14: burns because when the bomb was detonated, she was told
Speaker 14: to go inside her house, and so she had a
Speaker 14: little bit of protection.
Speaker 2: They were taken to Quadulin Naval Base, where things became
Speaker 2: even worse for them. A week after the test, the
Speaker 2: Atomic Energy Commission and the US Department of Defense sent
Speaker 2: a joint medical team to Quadulin and these doctors. After
Speaker 2: the memo stating that the exposed people should have quote
Speaker 2: no exposure for the rest of their natural lives, one
Speaker 2: hundred and eleven traditional Marshalisee leaders petition the United Nations
Speaker 2: to be more cautious with testing and to stop it
Speaker 2: entirely if at all possible. The UN decided to continue,
Speaker 2: but without it precautions. It urged but did not compel
Speaker 2: the US government to compensate the marshalise people. In fact,
Speaker 2: the United States was only beginning the damage it would
Speaker 2: do to the people of the Marshall Islands, and compensation
Speaker 2: would not come for another three decades. I'll let Ariana
Speaker 2: explain what actually happened next.
Speaker 14: On March ninth, nineteen fifty four, the Project four point
Speaker 14: one scientists arrive, and then on March eleventh, nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 14: the Project four point one officially commenced without consent from
Speaker 14: the people. And this Project four point one was the
Speaker 14: study of radiation on human beings and if you look
Speaker 14: at the classified files. We have a lot of them
Speaker 14: at the College of the Marshall Island Nuclear Institute. There's
Speaker 14: you know, all different types of projects and for example,
Speaker 14: like one project two point three could be the study
Speaker 14: of radiation on corals, and then you know seven point
Speaker 14: two is study of radiation on the trees and four
Speaker 14: point one just so happened to be the study of
Speaker 14: radiation on human beings. And when they were in Quadulin,
Speaker 14: they were there for a couple of days. They were
Speaker 14: ordered to bathe in the lagoon and salt water and
Speaker 14: scrub their burns three times a day, every single day.
Speaker 14: Also they were ordered to provide urine samples three times
Speaker 14: a day. They also had to give blood samples three
Speaker 14: times a day.
Speaker 13: And this went on. For the people of.
Speaker 14: Wudaruk it was three months, and for the people of
Speaker 14: Romolap it was almost a year. And then they were
Speaker 14: moved here to one of the small islands here where
Speaker 14: they lived and waited for their home to be cleaned
Speaker 14: up for them to return. And the thing is, while
Speaker 14: they were taking these blood and urine sound amples and
Speaker 14: having them bathed in the lagoon and scrubbing their burns
Speaker 14: and saltwater three times a day, they all had clinical numbers,
Speaker 14: and so even the pregnant women, their babies and their
Speaker 14: wombs also were assigned a clinical number, because even if
Speaker 14: there was still a baby, they were already monitoring these babies.
Speaker 14: And the thing is, even with their hair falling off
Speaker 14: and their skin peeling off, and their fingernails turning black
Speaker 14: and just feeling very nauxious and having a severe headache,
Speaker 14: they were not given paint medication. They were not given
Speaker 14: any type of talanol or any of that. They were
Speaker 14: just being monitored. And this whole time they thought they
Speaker 14: were being treated, they didn't realize that they were a
Speaker 14: part of this project that was just they're to study
Speaker 14: how their body reacts to exposure to radiation.
Speaker 2: Three years after being evacuated, the people of Rongolap were
Speaker 2: allowed to return.
Speaker 14: And then they moved them back in nineteen fifty seven
Speaker 14: because the bomb that they was exposed to was in
Speaker 14: nineteen fifty four and they were there for twenty eight years.
Speaker 2: This wasn't a benevolent effort. It was a continuation of
Speaker 2: the USA's use of the people of the Republic of
Speaker 2: Marshall Islands subjects of experimentation.
Speaker 14: Later on, when they were going to move the people
Speaker 14: of Romolap back to Ronolap. What they wanted to study
Speaker 14: now was how radiation evolves on the food chain, because
Speaker 14: when they had moved them back to Ronolap, this was
Speaker 14: the original exposed group. When they went back, it was
Speaker 14: not just the exposed group anymore because they were here
Speaker 14: for three years and they took their family members that
Speaker 14: were on Meguro and some of them got married, and
Speaker 14: so when they went back there was four.
Speaker 13: Hundred of them.
Speaker 14: And I always which group was given a green card
Speaker 14: and a red card, but like if it was a
Speaker 14: red card, they were the exposed group, and the green
Speaker 14: card was now the new control group that was going
Speaker 14: to eat the crops on the land and eat off
Speaker 14: of the land to see how the radiation has moved
Speaker 14: in the food chain. And that's when my mother's father
Speaker 14: was born on Ramala in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2: Eventually, the people of wrong Lap were evacuated nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: five thanks to Greenpeace, who moved them to other atolls
Speaker 2: when the US government refused to help them or acknowledge responsibility.
Speaker 2: It was not just the people on wrong Lap and
Speaker 2: the other atolls at the time who were impacted by
Speaker 2: the radiation. The consequences have lasted for generations.
Speaker 14: And also we've had many cases of birth defects or
Speaker 14: babies that were born, and according to the testimonies of
Speaker 14: these mothers that had given birth, their babies were born
Speaker 14: sometimes looking like jellyfish. Sometimes their babies were born without
Speaker 14: a head, without limbs.
Speaker 13: All they could see.
Speaker 14: Was the heart beating and the blood flowing through their
Speaker 14: veins and their intestines, and they just were not sure
Speaker 14: whether they should bury this baby when the heart is
Speaker 14: still beating, or if they should wait for the heart
Speaker 14: to stop beating.
Speaker 13: And some mothers had told.
Speaker 14: Their stories of giving breaths to babies that they recalled
Speaker 14: looking like octopus. Some others recalled their babies looking like turtles.
Speaker 14: Some of them on many occasions they also had babies
Speaker 14: that were looking like grapes.
Speaker 13: The fruit.
Speaker 14: It just looked like a bunch of grapes lump together.
Speaker 14: And for many of these cases, these women were not
Speaker 14: speaking up at that time because what they were told
Speaker 14: by the Atomic Energy Commissions officials was that this is
Speaker 14: the result of incest, and so it was a very
Speaker 14: humiliating experience. Many of these women had no idea that
Speaker 14: their own sisters were also giving birth to these monster
Speaker 14: looking babies that they were giving birth to, and they
Speaker 14: would oftentimes bury their babies alone where nobody else was watching.
Speaker 14: And and it's a worldwide culture that when someone passes away,
Speaker 14: we all gathered to mourn this loved one. But for
Speaker 14: the women, the Marshally's woman at that time, it was
Speaker 14: a very heartbreaking moment for them because they did not
Speaker 14: want anybody else to see this baby that they had
Speaker 14: given birth to, not realizing that their own sister was
Speaker 14: also enduring the same crab.
Speaker 2: Things were not much better for the Bikinians, who'd been
Speaker 2: evacuated at the start of testing in nineteen forty six
Speaker 2: after fouled attempt to settle them on another at all.
Speaker 2: Many of the Kechennians elected to try living on Killi
Speaker 2: as their new home. Killy Island lacked a coral reef,
Speaker 2: and this made their traditional lifestyle of island hopping and
Speaker 2: fishing in the calm Lagoon impossible. The Bikilians, inhabitants of
Speaker 2: the most remote atoll in the already remote Marshall Islands,
Speaker 2: were legendary for their ability to navigate using the stars
Speaker 2: and seas, but on their new Island. The waves were
Speaker 2: so big that their traditional canoes couldn't sail at all.
Speaker 2: Soon the boat the USA had given them to import
Speaker 2: food had sunk into the ferocious seas around the island,
Speaker 2: and they were entirely reliant on air dropped food. Some
Speaker 2: families moved to other islands or split their time between
Speaker 2: Killi and the atolls with better resources. But life on
Speaker 2: Killie was hard, and the lack of retected lagoon made
Speaker 2: every delivery of food or supplies by boat a high
Speaker 2: risk endeavor. Along with the loss of their homeland, many
Speaker 2: generations of Bikinians began to lose their navigation skills and
Speaker 2: their connection to the lagoon that provided so much sustenance
Speaker 2: and material for their traditional lifestyle.
Speaker 14: They had suffered severe starve because for the people of Bikini,
Speaker 14: the atoll that they were now living in was just
Speaker 14: uninhabited in the first place, because all the fish around
Speaker 14: the atoll or sicutara fish, so they could not eat
Speaker 14: off the ocean. They couldn't they could not grow any crops.
Speaker 14: And are you guys familiar with what a nony fruit?
Speaker 6: Is?
Speaker 14: A nony tree and it does not smell good, right,
Speaker 14: But they started eating the nony fruit because they did
Speaker 14: not have any bread fruit or papayas or anything.
Speaker 13: Growing on that land.
Speaker 14: And the men oftentimes had to sail out in their
Speaker 14: canoes and they would be gone for almost a week
Speaker 14: because they sailed out as far as they could to
Speaker 14: be able to get fish that was edible for them.
Speaker 14: Then for the people of Nlda, from their testimonies, the
Speaker 14: at all that they were evacuated to was rat infested
Speaker 14: and so their babies had to sleep in boxes. They
Speaker 14: had to build like boxes for their babies or otherwise
Speaker 14: the rats would come and nibble at their toes while
Speaker 14: they're sleeping. And there was a lot of ways that
Speaker 14: they were trying to figure out how to solve this
Speaker 14: rat infestation. And at one time they were giving people
Speaker 14: incentives like I think it was five cents if you
Speaker 14: brought a rat's tail or something, you know, like, because
Speaker 14: they were just trying to get rid of the rats
Speaker 14: and they could not. And yeah, it's just a lot
Speaker 14: of trauma and a lot of moving around. When the
Speaker 14: people of Bikini were first moved from Bikini to this
Speaker 14: new home of romric Atoll, where they lived for the
Speaker 14: next two years. By the time the military had gone
Speaker 14: back to pick them up when he's a very elderly
Speaker 14: man now, but he was six years old at that time.
Speaker 14: And the way he describes it is that he says
Speaker 14: it was a very traumatizing moment for him because they
Speaker 14: were carrying some of the people on leaves to the ship.
Speaker 13: They were very fragile.
Speaker 14: He said, if you have seen photos of the Holocaust,
Speaker 14: this is this is what our people looked like because
Speaker 14: there was just severe starvation at that time.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty eight, LBJ promised the Bikinians a chance
Speaker 2: to return to their beloved home, and the US Trust
Speaker 2: Territory began rebuilding the structures and decontaminating the soil. These
Speaker 2: efforts were hampered by infrequent flights and delayed by the
Speaker 2: discovery that the large coconut crabs on the island were
Speaker 2: still dangerously contaminated. In nineteen seventy two, one hundred people
Speaker 2: from three extended families moved back and began rebuilding their paradise,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't long before it became clear that their
Speaker 2: home was far from recovered. A visiting team of scientists
Speaker 2: from France not the USA found dangerously high levels of
Speaker 2: radioactivity and fruit, well water, and in the urine samples
Speaker 2: of islanders. The islanders had sued the federal government and
Speaker 2: more research was done. By nineteen seventy eight, scientists had
Speaker 2: found an elevenfold increase in the caesium one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty seven body burdens of the people living on the islands, ever,
Speaker 2: which the Department of the Interior called quote incredible. Once again,
Speaker 2: the islanders were removed from their home. In nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: the Republic of the Marshall Island gained its independence signed
Speaker 2: the Compact of Free Association with the United States. When
Speaker 2: the Compact came into effect in nineteen eighty six, the
Speaker 2: Marshalies received their first financial settlement from the USA courtesy
Speaker 2: of Section one hundred and seventy seven of the Compact
Speaker 2: of Free Association, which pledged reparations for damages to the
Speaker 2: former inhabitants of Bikini Enewattap, Rongolap, and utre catolls. They
Speaker 2: were promised twelve percent rate of return on the trust fund,
Speaker 2: which would be administered by the US and would provide
Speaker 2: health care and property damage reimbursements. However, this fund relied
Speaker 2: upon the fiction that only four a tolls were impacted
Speaker 2: by the nuclear fallout. There is considerable evidence to suggest
Speaker 2: that the entire republic of the Marshall Islands was directly
Speaker 2: impacted by fallout from the Bravo shot. The trust fund
Speaker 2: also tied the interest of the marshalise to those of
Speaker 2: global cap As the value of the fund's investments went up,
Speaker 2: so did their ability to fund healthcare and improve their
Speaker 2: living conditions. But I found financial reports from that trust
Speaker 2: fund in twenty sixteen. At the time, it had funds
Speaker 2: invested in US domestic public equities twenty nine point five
Speaker 2: percent of the portfolio. As of September thirty, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: international equities made up twenty seven point four percent, fixed
Speaker 2: income funds made up eighteen percent, real estate made up
Speaker 2: five point five percent, hedge fund made up fifteen percent,
Speaker 2: and a private equity fund made up the remaining four
Speaker 2: point six percent. But the interests were low lying atoll
Speaker 2: nation and those of global capital will never really be
Speaker 2: fully aligned. The only reason hedge funds could offer such
Speaker 2: astronomical returns for their investors is that they are comprised
Speaker 2: of businesses who don't pay the full cost for their production.
Speaker 2: This is nowhere more obvious than the rapidly shrinking atolls
Speaker 2: of the Marshall Islands, where the rising sea levels driven
Speaker 2: by the knee to inshure rising store prices, opposing a
Speaker 2: new threat to people who endured and survived the largest
Speaker 2: nuclear bomb the US is ever known to have deployed.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty seven, a stock market collapse known as
Speaker 2: Black Monday reduced the value of the fund, and even
Speaker 2: to this day, despite other settlements and agreements, not one
Speaker 2: single person in the Marshall Islands has received the full
Speaker 2: amount of compensation that they were allocated. A great many
Speaker 2: have received less than half. In nineteen ninety five, the
Speaker 2: Island Council learned that the Environmental Protection Agency standard for
Speaker 2: radiation reduction requirements was a lot lower than those of
Speaker 2: the Department of Energy scientists had been using thus far
Speaker 2: fifteen millirems as opposed to one hundred millirems. Between this
Speaker 2: and the demand on settlement funds for services that would
Speaker 2: lift the surviving islanders and their families out of poverty,
Speaker 2: the cleanup of Bikinia Toll began to lose steam. Today,
Speaker 2: six hundred people still live on killing subsisting largely a
Speaker 2: US settlement fund. Their children, like many other marshal Eads,
Speaker 2: go to boarding schools and other atolls, but they still
Speaker 2: can't sale their canoes at home. Other Bikinians live on
Speaker 2: one of the islands or Madro Atoll, but with no
Speaker 2: matrilineal ties to their land, they don't have access to
Speaker 2: that which defines them in their culture. Despite being so
Speaker 2: isolated that the government thought it could safely nuke the
Speaker 2: island without damaging the mainland or really anywhere it cared about,
Speaker 2: the island's trust fund is still privy to the rising
Speaker 2: and falling of the stock market, and it took a
Speaker 2: significant hit in two thousand and eight. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: Trump's Department of the Interior allowed Bikini's mayor and council
Speaker 2: to supervise the use of the fund in order to
Speaker 2: quote restore trust and ensure that sovereignty means something. When
Speaker 2: turned over, the fund was valued at fifty nine million
Speaker 2: US dollars. Today it holds a little more than one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand US dollars. The island's mayor and US in
Speaker 2: GIEVUS oversaw the fund at the time of its depletion,
Speaker 2: and has admitted to claiming personal expenses from the fund
Speaker 2: and spending six figure sums on his trip to the
Speaker 2: He's also made more popular purchases like a small aircraft
Speaker 2: and two cargo ships to help supply the more isolated Bikinians,
Speaker 2: as well as construction equipment to build sea walls to
Speaker 2: protect the islanders against another crisis, rising sea levels, which
Speaker 2: threatens to swallow their whole country in a few decades. Sadly,
Speaker 2: the spending has left the fund virtually empty and the
Speaker 2: Czech's Bikinians god, which amounted to about eighty dollars per
Speaker 2: person per month, have stopped coming. These stipends help feed
Speaker 2: Bikinians and pay for medical care, and without them things
Speaker 2: are even harder. Today. A few caretakers live on Bikinia
Speaker 2: at all, and you can visit to scuba dive, but
Speaker 2: the community that once existed there is gone. Edward Madison,
Speaker 2: one of those caretakers, was grandson of one of the
Speaker 2: residents removed in nineteen forty six. Madison helped lead dives
Speaker 2: in the islands, tested clean up methods, and monitored the
Speaker 2: pollutants for the US Department of Energy, as well as
Speaker 2: mapping the lagoon's World War II. Rex he passed away
Speaker 2: on Mark twenty ninth, twenty twenty. On any Watakatoll, the
Speaker 2: cleanup will never happen. Even after it ended nuclear testing,
Speaker 2: the US tested conventional and biological weapons there. It shot
Speaker 2: missiles from California at the atoll and tested airborne bioweapons.
Speaker 2: From nineteen seventy seven to nineteen eighty, the US began
Speaker 2: scraping radioactive topsoil off the various islands it had tested
Speaker 2: for both nuclear and biological weapons, and transporting that waste,
Speaker 2: along with some race from Nevada to run It Island.
Speaker 2: Once on run It, the waste was mixed with concrete
Speaker 2: and secured in a giant concrete dome. Jeff's families from
Speaker 2: that island, but thanks to the levels of radiation which
Speaker 2: rival Fukushima Chernobyl, he can't go back.
Speaker 7: My grandfather is from this island.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, yes, sucks.
Speaker 7: But I've never been to that island.
Speaker 2: Is that where you're like? He did his father live
Speaker 2: there and like his hold did they live there for
Speaker 2: a long time? Your family before?
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, that's your traditional one.
Speaker 18: Do you want to go?
Speaker 7: The dome is there?
Speaker 17: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Like all the people from that island they get to
Speaker 7: test their radiation level.
Speaker 2: Today, thanks to the other extinction level threat the US
Speaker 2: has helped create, climate change, the dome is slowly sinking
Speaker 2: and cracking. Hundreds of US servicemen developed cancer building the dome.
Speaker 2: Six died. Many others have struggled to get full VA benefits.
Speaker 2: As the ocean rises, the concrete cap could simply slide
Speaker 2: off the dome and the thirty three Olympic swimming pools
Speaker 2: worth of nuclear and biological waste could flood out into
Speaker 2: the ocean. Locally, this dome is called the Tomb. On
Speaker 2: the fifth of March two thousand and one, the Nuclear
Speaker 2: Claims Tribunal handed down a decision on a seven year
Speaker 2: lawsuit that the Bikinians had brought against you the United
Speaker 2: States were damages done to their islands and their people
Speaker 2: during the nuclear testing on Bikini. The tribunal was created
Speaker 2: by the Compact of Free Association and that always had
Speaker 2: been underfunded. The settlement and the five hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: three million dollars it awarded stood in Limbos the island
Speaker 2: to sue the federal government for it. On the day
Speaker 2: we left Marjerome, the Republican Marshalll Islands negotiations with the
Speaker 2: USA over the renewal of the Compact of Free Association
Speaker 2: had gone on until two in the morning Marshalise's time.
Speaker 2: We ate breakfast that day with hille Hine, the first
Speaker 2: woman to be president of the Marshall Islands and the
Speaker 2: first woman president in the Pacific. I didn't get great
Speaker 2: audio there, but she shared with us the ongoing struggle
Speaker 2: that the Marshalise people have had to secure adequate and
Speaker 2: fair compensation. With the US offering seven hundred million and
Speaker 2: the calculated costs of health care and cleanup closer to
Speaker 2: three billion, there is a long way for the US
Speaker 2: to come to make the islanders whole. They also, even
Speaker 2: six decades on, haven't apologized to the people who had
Speaker 2: no quarrel with them and whose homes and lives they destroyed.
Speaker 2: The case of the people of the Pacific Proving Grounds
Speaker 2: illustrates rather well how we can't find financial settlements they're
Speaker 2: going to offset the kind of disasters the climate change
Speaker 2: is bringing. This doesn't mean that people who are harmed
Speaker 2: shouldn't be compensated, but it does mean that no amount
Speaker 2: of cash can right the wrongs done. This is why
Speaker 2: I wanted to anchor this series, which is about the
Speaker 2: future with a story about the past, because in the
Speaker 2: next couple of episodes we're going to hear a lot
Speaker 2: about what might happen to the Marshall Islands, and again
Speaker 2: how virtually none of it is the fault of the islanders.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean we shouldn't accept their leadership on these issues, though,
Speaker 2: as we saw at the negotiations that led to the
Speaker 2: Paris Accords, the Marshall Islands can and should take a
Speaker 2: place at the heart of global discussions about climate change
Speaker 2: because they are the ones most impacted by the constant
Speaker 2: growth neoliberal model that makes other people pay for its
Speaker 2: negative exit. As we will learn in the next few episodes,
Speaker 2: we should ask the people impacted how they want to
Speaker 2: be helped, and not tell them what they need. I
Speaker 2: want to end today's episode with a poem and a
Speaker 2: very Marshal East moment. I tried to meet the poet
Speaker 2: who wrote this while I was on the island, because
Speaker 2: I remember the impact of her poetry at the UN
Speaker 2: Climate Summit. She was off island while I was there,
Speaker 2: but it turned out the hill behind the former president
Speaker 2: who I was having breakfast with was her mum. With
Speaker 2: Kathy gentle kids. Note reading a poem she wrote for
Speaker 2: her own daughter to the United Nations.
Speaker 19: Dear Marta Felibino, you are a seven month old sunrise
Speaker 19: of gummy smiles. You are bald as an egg and
Speaker 19: bald as a buddha. You are thighs that are thunder
Speaker 19: shrieks that are lightning. So excited for bananas, hugs and
Speaker 19: our morning walks along the lagoon. Dear Marta Felibino, I
Speaker 19: want to tell you about that lagoon, that lazy lounging lagoon,
Speaker 19: lounging against the sunrise. Men say that one day that
Speaker 19: lagoon will devour you. They say it will gnaw at
Speaker 19: the shoreline, two at the roots of your bread fruit trees,
Speaker 19: gulp down rows of sea walls, and crunch through your
Speaker 19: island shattered bones. They say you, your daughter and your
Speaker 19: granddaughter too, will wander rootless, with only a passport to
Speaker 19: call home. Dear Mante felip Benam, don't cry. Mommy promises
Speaker 19: you no one will come and devour you. No greedy
Speaker 19: wail of a company sharking through political seas, no backwater
Speaker 19: bullying of businesses with broken morals, no blindfolded bureaucracies gonna
Speaker 19: push this mother ocean over the edge. No one's drowning, baby,
Speaker 19: no one's moving, No one's losing their homeland. No one's
Speaker 19: becoming a climate change refugee, or should I say no
Speaker 19: one else? To the Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea
Speaker 19: and to the Tarot Islanders of Fiji, I take this
Speaker 19: moment to apologize to you. We are drawing the line
Speaker 19: here because we baby are going to fight your mommy, daddy,
Speaker 19: booboo dema, your country and your president too. We will
Speaker 19: all fight. And even though there are those hidden behind
Speaker 19: platinum titles who like to pretend that we don't exist,
Speaker 19: who like to pretend that the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Kidobas, Maldives, Typhoon,
Speaker 19: Hayan and the Philippines, floods of Algeria, Colombia, Pakistan, and
Speaker 19: all the hurricanes, earthquakes.
Speaker 16: And tidal waves didn't exist.
Speaker 19: Still there are those who see us, hands reaching out, fists,
Speaker 19: raising up, banners, unfurling, megaphones booming, and we are canoes
Speaker 19: blocking coat ships. We are are the radiance of solar villages.
Speaker 19: We are the fresh clean soil of the farmer's past.
Speaker 19: We are teenagers blooming petitions. We are families biking, recycling, reusing,
Speaker 19: engineers building, dreaming, designing, artists, painting, dancing, writing, and we
Speaker 19: are spreading the word. And there are thousands out on
Speaker 19: the streets marching hand in hand, chanting for change now.
Speaker 19: And they're marching for you, baby, They're marching for us,
Speaker 19: because we deserve to do more than just survive. We
Speaker 19: deserve to thrive. Dear mate, Felivinum. Your eyes heavy with
Speaker 19: drowsy weight, So just close those eyes and sleep in peace,
Speaker 19: because we won't let you down.
Speaker 2: You'll see United Airlines Flight one five four starts a Honolulu.
Speaker 2: When it leaves, it carries not only a full load
Speaker 2: of passages, but also a mechanic and spare parts for
Speaker 2: the plane. On its journey, it stops in the Marshall
Speaker 2: Islands at Marjora and Quadrilin before heading west to make
Speaker 2: three stops in Micronesia, and finally it stops in Gua.
Speaker 2: The next day, it turns around does the same route
Speaker 2: in a reverse landing. In Marjoro, you can see the
Speaker 2: ocean on both sides of the plane. In fact, you
Speaker 2: can see the ocean on both sides of the plane
Speaker 2: from a disturbingly low height, and despite this being one
Speaker 2: of the larger islands in the Marshall Islands, it almost
Speaker 2: looks like the plane won't fit on it without a
Speaker 2: wingtip overhanging the lagoon. The plane does fit, of course,
Speaker 2: and there's even room left at major airport for the
Speaker 2: best airport bar that I've ever seen. But even after
Speaker 2: a couple of hours in the company of the island's
Speaker 2: finest whiskey collection, it's very clear that the Marshall Islands
Speaker 2: are in a great deal of danger when it comes
Speaker 2: to rising sea levels. The Marshall Islands don't have much
Speaker 2: land to begin with, and through no fault of their own,
Speaker 2: their island paradise is being gradually lost to the ocean
Speaker 2: start with. I want to let Kathy Gentle Kitchener, the
Speaker 2: poet who he heard from yesterday, outline the scale of
Speaker 2: the threat.
Speaker 19: Climate change is a challenge that few want to take on,
Speaker 19: but the price of inaction is so high. Those of
Speaker 19: us from Oceania are already experiencing it firsthand. We've seen
Speaker 19: waves crashing into our homes and our bread fruit trees
Speaker 19: wither from the salt and drought. We look at our
Speaker 19: children and wonder how they will know themselves or their
Speaker 19: culture should we lose our islands. Climate change affects not
Speaker 19: only US islanders, it threatens the entire world. To tackle it,
Speaker 19: we need a radical change.
Speaker 13: Of course, this isn't easy.
Speaker 11: I know.
Speaker 19: It means ending carbon pollution within my lifetime. It means
Speaker 19: supporting those of us most affected to prepare for unavoidable
Speaker 19: climate impacts, and it means taking responsibility for irreversible loss
Speaker 19: and damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The people who
Speaker 19: support this movement are indigenous mothers like me, families like mine,
Speaker 19: and millions more, standing up for the changes needed and
Speaker 19: working to make them happen. I ask world leaders to
Speaker 19: take us all along.
Speaker 18: On your ride.
Speaker 13: We won't slow you down.
Speaker 19: Will help you win the most important race of all,
Speaker 19: the race to save humanity.
Speaker 2: Currently, Pacific island nations are responsible for less than zero
Speaker 2: points zero three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, but
Speaker 2: the United Elations estimates that more than fifty thousand people
Speaker 2: in the Pacific displaced every year, many of them by
Speaker 2: climate change. Of course, people leave for other reasons. Perhaps
Speaker 2: they're looking for work, which can be hard to find
Speaker 2: on a small Island, or perhaps they want the opportunities
Speaker 2: at the United States life offers. Thanks to their compact
Speaker 2: of free association, Marshalise people can live and work in
Speaker 2: the USA without a visa. Most marshal These people who
Speaker 2: do leave the islands move to Springdale, Arkansas. It's where
Speaker 2: the largest off island Marshallyse community is gathered, and they
Speaker 2: tend to cluster around the reliable jobs offered by the
Speaker 2: Tyson Chicken Factory. In twenty twenty, the Tyson Chicken Factory
Speaker 2: remained open during lockdowns, and people who had left the
Speaker 2: islands for a more steady income and a better chance
Speaker 2: for a stable future suddenly face more great risks at work.
Speaker 2: Life is by no means easy for marshal Ease people,
Speaker 2: both in the US and at home, and the choices
Speaker 2: they face because of climate change constricting global economy and
Speaker 2: the United States refusing to pay its fair share of
Speaker 2: compensation don't make that any easier. On my last night
Speaker 2: in the Marshall Islands, I was having a beer in
Speaker 2: a bar and chatting with a local journalists. I asked
Speaker 2: him what I should write. He said that I needed
Speaker 2: to tell you that people in the rami aren't moving
Speaker 2: because they're afraid of waves. We're not afraid of the ocean,
Speaker 2: he said. We're ocean people. We go in the ocean
Speaker 2: every day. He was right, of course. The drivers of
Speaker 2: migration are complicated, and they always have been. I always
Speaker 2: tell people who ask me what I cover that they
Speaker 2: cover climate and conflict and migration, because in fact they're
Speaker 2: largely the same things. There are many reasons for migrating
Speaker 2: from the Marshall Islands if there are people who have left,
Speaker 2: and all of them are valid. But everyone I spoke to,
Speaker 2: whether they'd left or come back or stayed there their
Speaker 2: whole lives, were pretty clear that nobody wants the community
Speaker 2: to leave. The people of the Marshall Islands love their
Speaker 2: islands and they want to raise their children and grandchildren
Speaker 2: on their ancestral land. But the people making the choices
Speaker 2: that impact their ability to do that are a long
Speaker 2: way from the lagoon that's creeping closer and closer to
Speaker 2: the houses around magro at All. Climate change making the
Speaker 2: islands unhabit doesn't necessarily mean they'll be swallowed entirely by
Speaker 2: the ocean. Long before the last scrap of land disappears.
Speaker 2: The rising saltwater will kill bread fruit trees, and flooding
Speaker 2: will destroy homes. To get a scent of that threat,
Speaker 2: we spoke to a meteorologist.
Speaker 5: I'm regally white, regional white, and I'm the meteorologist in charge.
Speaker 2: Here ready explained what climate change might do to make
Speaker 2: the islands less easy to live on and eventually perhaps
Speaker 2: impossible to live on. If something doesn't change. It's hard
Speaker 2: for people to see these kind of creeping changes. When
Speaker 2: we think about climate change rendering an island uninhabitable, we
Speaker 2: think about the island ceasing to exist, or the house
Speaker 2: is being swept away by a storm surge or a
Speaker 2: massive king tide. Perhaps, but in fact the changes are
Speaker 2: more gradual, but no less destructive.
Speaker 5: We have to go back to the emasion scenarios that
Speaker 5: IP is produced, and based on them worst case scenario,
Speaker 5: if we look at it, I have to open up
Speaker 5: the computer at the table. But in one hundred years
Speaker 5: we may be not completely stening, and that's not what's
Speaker 5: important here. What is important is the islands.
Speaker 20: Will be uninevitable way before they sink, because we will
Speaker 20: not be able to drive on the road, we will
Speaker 20: not be able to rely on our water lenses, because
Speaker 20: they'll all have salt water into them.
Speaker 5: As more and more frequent salt water intros and get
Speaker 5: on top and down into the water lens, they will
Speaker 5: be undrinkable. So at what stage can we put that target.
Speaker 5: I'm not comfortable at this moment to point that out,
Speaker 5: but I think anyone of us can look at the
Speaker 5: numbers and decide, based on this emission scenario, this is
Speaker 5: the day. Based on that the mission scenario, that is
Speaker 5: the day. So there's not a set day or a
Speaker 5: what do you call it? The hair that broke the
Speaker 5: camel's back? What was it? What was the American saying?
Speaker 2: As Reggie explained, the impact of rising sea levels is
Speaker 2: already being seen, particularly in the case of flooding.
Speaker 5: Oh, there are many but in a low lying at
Speaker 5: all you're most concerned is flooding, coastal flooding. So we've
Speaker 5: seen more frequent flooding during Landinia. Landinea is the face
Speaker 5: where in the Marshall Islands, specifically, you get elevated sea
Speaker 5: levels about ten centimeters or so eight to twelve inches
Speaker 5: on top of the normal sea level at any given time.
Speaker 5: So when there is a storm, search king tide, those
Speaker 5: things compound on one another to give us more frequent
Speaker 5: coastal floodings in the low lying areas. If you go
Speaker 5: in the bag of Measuro, you will see people building
Speaker 5: up sea walls to protect their properties. With those sea walls,
Speaker 5: the impact there's been lessened a bit, but without those
Speaker 5: walls now sence flooding has been almost a monthly occurrence
Speaker 5: during allninial phases.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, the World Bank and the Marshalleasee
Speaker 2: government produced a report which allowed visualization of the impact
Speaker 2: of climate change on each building in Marjuro in broad strokes.
Speaker 2: The report stated that quote rising sea levels and the
Speaker 2: atoll nation of the Marshall Islands are projected to endanger
Speaker 2: forty percent of existing buildings in the capitol Marjoro, with
Speaker 2: ninety six percent of the city at risk for frequent
Speaker 2: flooding introduced by climate change. According to a World Bank study,
Speaker 2: change seems to be very hard for the corporations and
Speaker 2: governments most responsible for it. Indeed, one could argue that
Speaker 2: seeing that change is hard because of those corporations and governments.
Speaker 2: Namia Rescuers, a Harvard historian of science, studies the propaganda
Speaker 2: that has allowed major corporations to deny the damage they
Speaker 2: do to the planet and generate massive profits by not
Speaker 2: paying for the negative xconalities of their actions. Negative excenalities,
Speaker 2: if you're not familiar, are the costs that their business
Speaker 2: imposes on other people but they don't pay. In her
Speaker 2: book Merchants of Doubt, Arescus traces how nuclear testing did
Speaker 2: huge damage to the ozone layer. Indeed, much of the
Speaker 2: technology we used today to track global climate change was
Speaker 2: developed using government money. Part of the reason why was
Speaker 2: to assess with the Soviet Union was doing nuclear testing
Speaker 2: by tracking the environmental damage that was done. Using some
Speaker 2: of the data these instruments created, scientists, among them Carl Sagan,
Speaker 2: began to discuss the possibility of a nuclear winter and
Speaker 2: the fact that any use of nuclear weapons or even
Speaker 2: a nuclear accident could put the future of all humanity
Speaker 2: at risk. Unsurprisingly, as huge public relations ever spun up
Speaker 2: to dismiss the idea of nuclear winter and attack the
Speaker 2: concept of nuclear war being an unwinnable proposition. There was,
Speaker 2: after all, a huge amount of money at stick. In
Speaker 2: an excellent New York caressing on the subject, Jill Lapour,
Speaker 2: another Harvard historian, outlines a campaign to discredit those scientists
Speaker 2: and their claims. In nineteen eighty four, in an effort
Speaker 2: to count to Carl Sagan and to defend what was
Speaker 2: called the Strategic Defense Initiative, the George C. Marshall Institute
Speaker 2: was founded by Robert Jastro, a NASA physicist, Frederick Seitz,
Speaker 2: a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, and
Speaker 2: William Nihrenberg, a past director at the Script's Institute of Oceanography.
Speaker 2: Right here where I live in San Diego. The Marshall
Speaker 2: Institute began trying to get PBS to not air documentaries
Speaker 2: opposing the Strategic Defense initiative. The so called star Wars
Speaker 2: program wouldn't be of any use of a single nuclear
Speaker 2: incident could trigger devastating change in the global climate. Another
Speaker 2: Master Institute scientist, Seltz's cousin Russell, who was a physicist
Speaker 2: at Harvard Center for International Affairs, published an essay in
Speaker 2: the National Interest in the fall of nineteen eighty six
Speaker 2: dismissing the idea of nuclear winter and saying it was
Speaker 2: nothing but a series of long conjectures. He described vibes
Speaker 2: the nuclear winter theory as dead course of death, notorious
Speaker 2: lack of scientific integrity. By nineteen eighty eight, the Institute
Speaker 2: have pivoted and it began publishing the first of many
Speaker 2: papers on climate change. Other scientists there, including Fred Singer,
Speaker 2: challenged the model that predicted a nuclear winter. They've gone
Speaker 2: on to do the same with climate change, claiming that
Speaker 2: in both cases it was far from certain that catastrophic
Speaker 2: consequences would occur. Singer incidentally was a consultant for Arco, Exxon,
Speaker 2: Shell Oil, and sol Oil. He died in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: after serving for years as a director of Science and
Speaker 2: environment policy at the Heartland Institute, which was founded in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four. Its position on global warming at the
Speaker 2: time was quote most scientists do not believe human greenhouse
Speaker 2: gas emissions are a proven threat to the environment or
Speaker 2: human well being, despite a barrage of propaganda insisting otherwise
Speaker 2: coming from the environmental movement and eco by its sick
Speaker 2: ephants in the mainstream media. In the Marshall Islands, this
Speaker 2: kind of de nihilism, no matter how well funded and qualified,
Speaker 2: really isn't going to stick. Everyone here is personally seen
Speaker 2: the impacts of rising sea levels eroding away on their
Speaker 2: precious land, but it's the actions of people everywhere that
Speaker 2: impact people here, so they have to persuade the rest
Speaker 2: of the world to care about them.
Speaker 5: I will bet that every Marshal Marshalise understand impacts because
Speaker 5: every Marshalise has been a victim of some coastal inovision,
Speaker 5: has been you know, has been impacted by those, so
Speaker 5: they understand.
Speaker 21: Uh.
Speaker 5: The youngest ones maybe they experienced there first, but the
Speaker 5: older ones, they've been around during those days when there,
Speaker 5: you know, coastal flooding wasn't an issue.
Speaker 2: One of the things I like to do in my
Speaker 2: free time is to freedom. Sometimes I can collect sea
Speaker 2: urchins or cool shells, but lots of the time I
Speaker 2: just like to be underwater. I've never done scuba diving.
Speaker 2: All the gear and equipment kind of scares me, but
Speaker 2: holding my breath and swimming around the reef is probably
Speaker 2: the closest thing I'll ever feel to flying. To be
Speaker 2: able to hold your breath for a minute or two underwater,
Speaker 2: you need to get your heart rate very low, and
Speaker 2: this means being very calm, letting tension and stress float away.
Speaker 2: It's a magical feeling and one that I've tapped into
Speaker 2: even outside the water. In stressful situations. Sometimes that ability
Speaker 2: to calm yourself could be a bit too effective. I
Speaker 2: remember once starting to walk off a broken pelvis and
Speaker 2: passing out from blood loss later. Sometimes that calm focus, though,
Speaker 2: can be exactly what you need, Like when you're holding
Speaker 2: your breath on the bottom of the ocean and you
Speaker 2: realize that you got your fins tangled and abandoned fishing
Speaker 2: line and you need to cut it so you can
Speaker 2: get back to the surface and breathe. I saw that
Speaker 2: same ability to remain calm and even happy despite what
Speaker 2: seems like another impending crisis every time I spoke to
Speaker 2: marshal Lease people about climate change. Between their nuclear past
Speaker 2: and their perilous future, the Marshalise people have every right
Speaker 2: to be angry, and maybe they are angry when they're
Speaker 2: not told them to British journalists. But whenever I ask people,
Speaker 2: they still seem hopeful, upbeat and excited about the future
Speaker 2: of their country. As we're going to see tomorrow, marshal
Speaker 2: Le's people are still very much investing in their shared future.
Speaker 2: I think that's something we can all learn from. Resilience
Speaker 2: to the Marshallei's community, even in the face of what
Speaker 2: seems like a second apocalyptic threat. He's Reggie discussing how
Speaker 2: climate change makes him feel well.
Speaker 5: I try not to dwell on what could happen. I
Speaker 5: could try to think of what we could do now
Speaker 5: to change people's heart, to change how we behave while
Speaker 5: we treat the world. I mean, it's our only home.
Speaker 5: You go out in space and look back. It's one
Speaker 5: lonely place in an entire galaxy of stars and whatever.
Speaker 5: You But when you look at it that way, you
Speaker 5: begin to realize I must respect my police. Who else
Speaker 5: will respect? The divide?
Speaker 2: It's worth noting that some people we talk to concerned
Speaker 2: about climate change.
Speaker 22: My name is Juliet Miranda from Mussel Island. I live
Speaker 22: on Takhan.
Speaker 2: Juliet's an older resident of wrong Rum, one of the
Speaker 2: outer islands on madro At. All her life there is
Speaker 2: in many senses adyllic. Her cook house is built around
Speaker 2: a large breadfruit tree. The tree also serves as a
Speaker 2: work service. It's like a solar punk vision of the
Speaker 2: future where we live in harmony with nature. But for
Speaker 2: her it's just a place she makes lunch along with
Speaker 2: the other wrong Wung islanders. She served a visiting group
Speaker 2: that I was part of a delicious lunch of coconut breadfruit, pandanas,
Speaker 2: crabs and rice. Well, we talked about what brought her
Speaker 2: back to the Marshall Islands after thirty years living in
Speaker 2: the United States.
Speaker 22: Well, so, though you always are own sick when I'm
Speaker 22: in USA, I miss my you know, around freedom, like USA,
Speaker 22: you cannot go the next door. It goes trust passing.
Speaker 22: But around here you do everything.
Speaker 14: Yes, it's it's different, lots different.
Speaker 22: So I love the USA. Tell lives could and a
Speaker 22: lot of different things youis do then modules so I
Speaker 22: love it here. I do all my old thing I
Speaker 22: usually do, breaking and make my home chicken and join
Speaker 22: me and on pigeon. Santa Barbara, you have to get
Speaker 22: a guy good.
Speaker 15: Go to the peach over year reporting beach.
Speaker 2: She clearly loves her little piece of paradise, and it's
Speaker 2: easy to see why she was happy to share it
Speaker 2: with us, as were all the islands. On Wrong Wrong
Speaker 2: a short walk away from her house, Her neighbor's children
Speaker 2: played in the sand with their pigs, chickens and dogs,
Speaker 2: and it's certainly a very different place from Santa Barbara.
Speaker 18: Well.
Speaker 2: She spent much of her time in the United States,
Speaker 2: but it's no less special. Like many Marshal LEAs. She
Speaker 2: has a very strong faith and that faith is helping
Speaker 2: her explain why climate change is happening.
Speaker 17: Do you think it's because their sea levels rising?
Speaker 8: You can get gotta make it harder for people.
Speaker 22: To live in Some people do that, but I don't
Speaker 22: believe in Only God will do it.
Speaker 15: I believe in God.
Speaker 22: When they do the weather and said it's going to
Speaker 22: rain tomorrow and tomorrow is not going to be raining.
Speaker 22: God's going to make it rain, the nost No, you
Speaker 22: know it, you're mister.
Speaker 2: For others, the threat is already here. Here's one conversation
Speaker 2: with Monique and Francine from Core and Akram, a local
Speaker 2: NGO who you'll hear a lot about tomorrow. They're doing
Speaker 2: incredible work investing in the future of the Marshall Islands
Speaker 2: by installing water filters and smokeless stoves and homes across
Speaker 2: the nation. You might never have had to worry about
Speaker 2: clean water or never been concerned, but cooking your food
Speaker 2: might hurt your lungs. But both of those things are
Speaker 2: massive public health issues. We don't have access to electricity,
Speaker 2: gas and clean water from a pipe that comes into
Speaker 2: your home. One night before dinner, we talked to them
Speaker 2: about climate change.
Speaker 23: The scientists are saying that you've got so many years
Speaker 23: until all eyes melts and affects us. We don't have
Speaker 23: mountains to run to. In some places they can just
Speaker 23: front of the mountains.
Speaker 10: We don't.
Speaker 17: Yeah, so it's Marshall Islands.
Speaker 14: We're at the front.
Speaker 23: Clients, so you're also blessed that you get to see
Speaker 23: the Marshall Islands.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I really will really see firsthand what the pass the.
Speaker 2: Impact goes beyond the individual though. When we heard from
Speaker 2: the Ministry of Health and the impact the climate change
Speaker 2: is already having on the well being of marshal Ly's people,
Speaker 2: they reminded us of both the physical and mental health
Speaker 2: of residents has been affected.
Speaker 24: So well, yeah, well, as active secretary is my name
Speaker 24: is Nathan Carbon and Climate Change and Admin.
Speaker 18: Uh.
Speaker 9: Well, first of all.
Speaker 25: We'll come to to visit us.
Speaker 26: I think Michael Jackson has said in best do you
Speaker 26: want to see change in the world, you have to
Speaker 26: look in the mirror.
Speaker 9: So this is our Climate Change in Health department.
Speaker 25: Uh uh, climate impacts on health and well being.
Speaker 2: Nathan went on to explain what that means both in
Speaker 2: terms of mental health and in physical health, as mosquitoes
Speaker 2: and other disease vectors adapted to change in climate and
Speaker 2: rising sea.
Speaker 25: Levels, I communicable diseases and xdise reducing vulnerabilities with the
Speaker 25: vector borne diseases and then improving mental health resilience. So
Speaker 25: the mental health resilience is a really key them. We
Speaker 25: have our seminar that's ongoing right now partnership with Jojugu,
Speaker 25: which lets the youth express how climate change makes their
Speaker 25: feel and also.
Speaker 26: Involving the community and getting their feedback. You know, the
Speaker 26: climate issue is not just at a national level, it's
Speaker 26: mostly at the community level.
Speaker 2: All of these changes are hard to predict, but it's
Speaker 2: easy to see the impact climate change has already had.
Speaker 2: We spoke to the island's Environmental Rotection Agency to get
Speaker 2: a sense of what that meant.
Speaker 27: My name is Marianna Phillip and I'm the general manager here.
Speaker 10: As you can see, we're a very.
Speaker 27: Small organization with a very broad mandate anything environmental related.
Speaker 27: We are accountable too, and we're supposed to provide advice
Speaker 27: to the government and the Marshal Lease.
Speaker 10: People about new issues that are coming up.
Speaker 9: And so.
Speaker 28: You know, we're easily overwhelmed and outmatched, and then, you know,
Speaker 28: you throw in climate change into the mix, and suddenly.
Speaker 10: I can't even imagine what the change is going to
Speaker 10: be like in the next five years or ten years.
Speaker 10: It's hard for me to imagine. When I was a child,
Speaker 10: I used to.
Speaker 27: Go to the school across the street is a DS
Speaker 27: is a public school, and we would cross the road
Speaker 27: and swim from here all the way to develop and
Speaker 27: then cross the road and go home. This was all
Speaker 27: white Sandy Beach. You know, obviously that's not the case anymore.
Speaker 2: One way that the marshal Least community has responded to
Speaker 2: climate change is to take a position of leadership on
Speaker 2: mitigating carbon emissions. We heard about this all over the island,
Speaker 2: with solutions ranging from electric canoes to sailboats to a
Speaker 2: grid that runs on renewable energy. They've also taken leadership
Speaker 2: and how aid money is spent. Rather than just accepting
Speaker 2: the projects as founders suggest them, the RMI has been
Speaker 2: vocal in making sure that the unique challenges that they
Speaker 2: face are reflected with unique solutions that they propose. For example,
Speaker 2: they simply don't have the space for larger solar farms
Speaker 2: even though they do have the funding.
Speaker 14: My name is Angeline Heini Rimmers.
Speaker 12: Other than being part of GEO, I'm also the director
Speaker 12: for the National Energy Office, and then I'd like to
Speaker 12: introduce you to Ben. He's the deputy director. So we're
Speaker 12: a very small office. It's newly created. It was developed
Speaker 12: in twenty eighteen, so we're trying to be creative and
Speaker 12: we partnered with our local government in exchange building them
Speaker 12: basketball courts. The reason why there's so many basketball courts
Speaker 12: is that we'll be installing rooftop and on the rooftop
Speaker 12: that's we're going to be housing the solar, connecting it
Speaker 12: to the grid. And it's with this project we had.
Speaker 12: It took us I think more than a year. Ben
Speaker 12: right so went back and forth with our partner because
Speaker 12: they just wanted to go ahead and put on solar.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the scale live the programs larger countries use simply
Speaker 2: isn't a good fit for the marshals.
Speaker 12: We get funding to go on trips to places like Korea, Japan,
Speaker 12: Okinawa to see all these systems that in the eyes
Speaker 12: of big countries that you see as islands like Jju
Speaker 12: Island and Korea, but they're like so advanced compared to here.
Speaker 13: You go there and.
Speaker 12: They have ocean thermal and to us where like, okay,
Speaker 12: what about our corals that's where our reefish lives in.
Speaker 13: Do we have to get rid of our corals?
Speaker 18: Maybe we should rethink of that.
Speaker 2: Or they also make sure to incorporate traditional methods and
Speaker 2: their culture along with m modern solutions.
Speaker 17: I want to love more about the electric canoes that
Speaker 17: they are very pretty.
Speaker 21: Cool and.
Speaker 17: I'm interested to know, like a well, Jeremy area, like
Speaker 17: that you were incorporating in the traditional ways white ignoring,
Speaker 17: because that's something that the entry community. That's something that
Speaker 17: was framed up here at the wham. And can you
Speaker 17: talk about how surfused completion and how much fun it
Speaker 17: might save.
Speaker 12: Then do you want to start without who came up
Speaker 12: with the idea for the and and then where we
Speaker 12: are at?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So WALM started the initiative of the boat building
Speaker 6: and they wanted to it strictly started with womb. We
Speaker 6: we had no idea about that project. But initially they
Speaker 6: got a project from a donor for boat building where
Speaker 6: they would modernize these traditional canoes just to make modifications
Speaker 6: to like make the hull bigger for catching fish or
Speaker 6: just whatnot. And then out of the blue, the director
Speaker 6: for WAM said, hey, what if we put solar on
Speaker 6: this boat. I think there's something in the market. So
Speaker 6: we just out of the blow just wanted to test it. Unfortunately,
Speaker 6: when we purchased the motor and they're going to start
Speaker 6: the testing, WAM burned down and the motor burned down
Speaker 6: with it. But they did a few runs in the lagoon.
Speaker 13: With it and it was really awesome. I wrote on it.
Speaker 6: At one point they started using wind and the wind
Speaker 6: died down, turned on the motor, and they started using
Speaker 6: the motor, and then one pick up they turned off
Speaker 6: the motor. It was really awesome. But we Anio, the
Speaker 6: director wanted to procure another one, so we procured another
Speaker 6: one with our own funds. So it's on its way
Speaker 6: and it should be here very shortly to do some
Speaker 6: real testing. Nice, but we wanted we also partnered with
Speaker 6: WAM because of that just pilot project. We saw the
Speaker 6: need to build more of the similar kind canoe, so
Speaker 6: we we ask another donor if we can use their
Speaker 6: funding to fund the second phase of that project. So
Speaker 6: right now they've been approved and they're building an additional
Speaker 6: eighteen more canoes for each each island. And so the
Speaker 6: process is they bring in these boat builders from the
Speaker 6: outer islands, they train them how they build these new
Speaker 6: style canoes with modern technology, and then they ship it
Speaker 6: back out. One success story without the motor is in
Speaker 6: the atoll of Linkyap. They completely stop using their motorized
Speaker 6: boat because they're one hundred percent using the canoe, and
Speaker 6: the canoe can carry up to a ton. So they've
Speaker 6: been carrying copra from one island to another, back and
Speaker 6: forth with the canoe, and they said they'd save so
Speaker 6: much money that they decided to do a fishing tournament
Speaker 6: at their outer island from.
Speaker 13: The money they save.
Speaker 2: You he's right talking about how he sees his role
Speaker 2: in combating climate change.
Speaker 18: Oh.
Speaker 5: I don't enjoy being helpless. I don't believe that the
Speaker 5: impacts of others, should you know, impact me. I make
Speaker 5: the changes where I can. I try to behave in
Speaker 5: a manner that is not detrimental to the earth. And
Speaker 5: I preach that to my kids and hopefully the compounding
Speaker 5: effect or you know, it will grow exponentially from them
Speaker 5: to other ambassadors to spread the word that you know,
Speaker 5: we need to do something. It's not about politics and
Speaker 5: it's about you know, the your overhead or how much
Speaker 5: profit you gain at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 5: about how you gain those by, you know, being a
Speaker 5: good ambassador to preserving the earth and the climate, you know,
Speaker 5: all the all the other inhabitants, not just humans.
Speaker 2: Wherever we went in the Republic of the Marshall Islands,
Speaker 2: it was hard to find dooming gloom with regards to
Speaker 2: climate change. What we found everywhere was people adapting and
Speaker 2: making changes, both the kind of changes that reduce their
Speaker 2: carbon emissions and the kind that made their homes more
Speaker 2: defensible because the rest of the world is not making
Speaker 2: that first kind of changes. Resilience doesn't just mean sea
Speaker 2: walls and houses on stilts that can withstand flood. Those
Speaker 2: are important. It also means making hard choices and forming
Speaker 2: strong communities. Here's Mariana again.
Speaker 10: There's a lot of attention on us as frontline countries,
Speaker 10: you know, in the face of climate change, and we
Speaker 10: get a lot of reporters come in asking us questions.
Speaker 10: We get a lot of consultants that come in and
Speaker 10: out and collect data.
Speaker 21: You know.
Speaker 10: Of course we're seen as sort of the said country
Speaker 10: trees that will eventually face the reality of having no
Speaker 10: land to live on, right, so forced relocation, displacement. I
Speaker 10: don't want to say migration, because that's not exactly a migration.
Speaker 10: If you have to leave, you're you're you're being displaced.
Speaker 10: Our concern is that.
Speaker 6: We're not We.
Speaker 27: Don't have all the capabilities in the science at our
Speaker 27: fingertip to help inform the government or you know, everyone
Speaker 27: interested donors about how much is changing, how much is
Speaker 27: going to change, and especially.
Speaker 10: How that change is going to change us.
Speaker 9: You know, it's.
Speaker 10: It's overwhelming. We we have a national adaptation Plan.
Speaker 28: I hope that you will get into that.
Speaker 27: When you get the chance to h that's the survival plan.
Speaker 27: In that survival plan, there is you know, there is
Speaker 27: very scary reality that we may need to take down
Speaker 27: some islands to elevate some islands, you know, and every
Speaker 27: island have their landowners and what happens to those people.
Speaker 27: Marshalis are connected to their land so much culturally, and
Speaker 27: so how do we adapt to that when it comes
Speaker 27: so quickly?
Speaker 10: That's scary.
Speaker 2: Everywhere you go in the Marshall Islands you see the
Speaker 2: impact of climate change and rising sea levels but you
Speaker 2: also see the community responding and supporting itself through the
Speaker 2: existential threat. The Rami isn't a sad place, quite the opposite.
Speaker 2: It's a tremendously happy and beautiful place, and I had
Speaker 2: one of the most enjoyable weeks I can remember there.
Speaker 2: I'd go back in a heartbeat. But the joy with
Speaker 2: which people approach every day doesn't mean they aren't concerned,
Speaker 2: and it certainly doesn't mean they're not worthy of our concern. Tomorrow,
Speaker 2: we're going to discuss how the people of the Republic
Speaker 2: of Marshall Lions, and in particular the women of the
Speaker 2: Republic of Marshall Lions, and making sure that marshal Lei's
Speaker 2: people have a safe and healthy future.
Speaker 13: This is for all you guys, so you get there.
Speaker 2: Twice in the week I spent on Marjorro, I didn't
Speaker 2: get to sleep until after midnight because the hotel's event
Speaker 2: space was about eight feet from my pillow and someone
Speaker 2: in that event space was having an absolute rageo. Before
Speaker 2: trying and failing to go to sleep, a chatter with
Speaker 2: some folks who were at the party to see what
Speaker 2: was going on. The first night was a first birthday party,
Speaker 2: infant mortality has been so high in this area in
Speaker 2: the past that children making it through the first year
Speaker 2: of their life was a cause for massive celebration. It
Speaker 2: was rather sweet to see adults enjoying such a good
Speaker 2: time around a one year old who had no idea
Speaker 2: what was going on. The next party a few days
Speaker 2: later was no less festive, but for a much more
Speaker 2: somber reason. It was a celebration to remember an eight
Speaker 2: year old girl who died exactly one year before. People
Speaker 2: showed me her photo, and despite my condolences, they assured
Speaker 2: me that it wasn't a sad affair. I don't want
Speaker 2: to make this series a sad affair either, because despite
Speaker 2: the incredible challenges they have faced, Marshally's people have persevered,
Speaker 2: and they clearly have a great pride in their islands,
Speaker 2: and I don't think they would want to be seen
Speaker 2: as helpless and acted upon by global forces beyond their control. Instead,
Speaker 2: they should be seen as a strong community that has
Speaker 2: withstood some of the worst things a history can thriller
Speaker 2: community and continue to thrive. As we spoke about yesterday,
Speaker 2: they're taking huge steps to ensure that they lead the
Speaker 2: way on sustainable development they're also ensuring their future in
Speaker 2: other ways. Some of those might not be as shiny
Speaker 2: and glitzy as solar power grids or canoes powered by
Speaker 2: the sun, but which have made a huge difference to
Speaker 2: the residents of the country, particularly in the outer atolls.
Speaker 2: What I want to talk about today is one of
Speaker 2: those projects. It's a project imagined, implemented and executed by
Speaker 2: the women of Korra Inokrane. The name means women who
Speaker 2: rise at dawn, and it's very appropriate every interview you've
Speaker 2: heard so far and every place we went to thanks
Speaker 2: to the women of Kio. The trip I was part
Speaker 2: of was there to witness the installation of the final
Speaker 2: water filters on the island of Wrong Room that will
Speaker 2: bring to a successful conclusion a five year project to
Speaker 2: ensure that every single person in the Marshall Islands had
Speaker 2: access to clean water. I'll let them introduce themselves to
Speaker 2: you as it did to us.
Speaker 10: My name is Francine wasase Jacklick, but most people around
Speaker 10: town called me, so if you hear Francine, they're not
Speaker 10: going to go to this. I am a QUEU member,
Speaker 10: I'm one of the officers as the secretary.
Speaker 9: And I've been a queue member of gosh.
Speaker 10: I can't remember when, but you know we've got we've
Speaker 10: come along when Q is about seventeen years old, right now, wow, seventeen.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's been a very fund right.
Speaker 10: It's my fun job outside from Kio. As my fun work,
Speaker 10: I work at the Ministry of Health and Human Services.
Speaker 10: My permanent position is the Deputy Secretary overseeing Office of
Speaker 10: Health Planning, Policy, Preparedness, Personnel and epidem analogy. And three
Speaker 10: months ago I was also given the authority rule as
Speaker 10: the acting Secretary of Health because the secretary was not
Speaker 10: the new politics. So yeah, Q is Q Corina Rani
Speaker 10: and we're very happy because our founder is here and
Speaker 10: it's money.
Speaker 9: So we'll do introduction and then we'll go into the agenda.
Speaker 9: Is that okay?
Speaker 21: Okay?
Speaker 9: So I will hand it to the back, which is
Speaker 9: our founder money. Somebody go ahead, Hello everyone, Hi, welcome money.
Speaker 9: I am the home founder. But enough, we're really happy
Speaker 9: that you've made it.
Speaker 29: You know, your flight wasn't canceled last week, so many
Speaker 29: flights are canceled.
Speaker 9: So were but welcome. In our language we say yahwey
Speaker 9: yeah means rainbow and quays you. So you are a
Speaker 9: rainbow to us.
Speaker 18: I am.
Speaker 9: A mother for now, I don't I don't work. Most
Speaker 9: of us have their work, but I'm a full time
Speaker 9: mother and this is.
Speaker 19: My baby.
Speaker 9: Actually, Kiyo started sixteen years ago. Myself and a friend.
Speaker 9: We were in school in the East Coast and graduated
Speaker 9: and we all came back. And you know, we were
Speaker 9: raised with this mentality that get back. We have lots
Speaker 9: of Marshalis proverbs and what bagayo means to turn the tides.
Speaker 9: So it was our time to turn the tides.
Speaker 23: So we bended together always like mine name Smart Ladies
Speaker 23: and created Q and it's a volunteer organization.
Speaker 9: We do this in our sleep.
Speaker 29: Basically all volunteer, yes, so we do various work from
Speaker 29: small projects like you know, reading with the kids and.
Speaker 9: Just some big projects like waters water culture project. My
Speaker 9: name is Kathleen.
Speaker 10: I work for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Commerce
Speaker 10: with the Fisheries.
Speaker 9: Memora and I've been in film members since.
Speaker 10: To push here were sixteen years old.
Speaker 9: Then it is like moving said, it's.
Speaker 10: It's an honor and we are very humble. When you visited, Uh,
Speaker 10: welcome you all and hope you have a great visitor.
Speaker 9: Thank you okay, thanks. Yeah, but my name is Samantha.
Speaker 22: I work at the Ministry of Finances as accountant and
Speaker 22: I'm cure of treasure.
Speaker 10: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 30: Yeah, hey everyone, and welcome to our shore. My name
Speaker 30: is Raised, but everyone call me Kuma, So.
Speaker 9: I'm very pleased to meet all of you.
Speaker 10: When they say we have uh all these media, you know,
Speaker 10: big news media, I was just coming from the state.
Speaker 10: I was kind of nervous.
Speaker 30: But anyways, uh, I've been up to member since two
Speaker 30: thousand fourteen and I was told me, is why all
Speaker 30: the work that these names have been doing for the
Speaker 30: Marshall Islands. I'm they're probably be part of Quete Club.
Speaker 30: I work at ROMA at All local government and I'm
Speaker 30: not sure you know, but rongav is one of those
Speaker 30: it's all that was affected by the nuclear testing, so again, welcome.
Speaker 2: Kure worked with Sawyer, the people who make the Ubiquitous
Speaker 2: water filter, which is a favorite for through hikers and
Speaker 2: other outdoors people, to provide a water filtration system that
Speaker 2: allows Marshal's people to filter the rain water they collect
Speaker 2: and remove harmful bacteria that can cause diarrhea and vomiting. Well,
Speaker 2: these might seem undesirable listeners in the US, they can
Speaker 2: be fatal in other settings. Twenty nineteen, around one point
Speaker 2: five million people died from diarrheal diseases. That's more than
Speaker 2: all violent deaths combined. Around half a million of those
Speaker 2: deaths were children. One thing that's remarkable about the project
Speaker 2: is the way it was realized. Curee began just to
Speaker 2: should in the most remote and hard to reach a tolls,
Speaker 2: taking tiny boats across choppy seas for days at a
Speaker 2: time to get to remote islands, and then working with
Speaker 2: traditional women leaders to ensure that everyone on the islands
Speaker 2: knew how to use the filters. Then they began working
Speaker 2: towards Marjora, the capitol. I've seen lots of ENDO projects
Speaker 2: in dozens of countries I've worked with someone, but I've
Speaker 2: rarely seen a model that prioritizes need this well. In
Speaker 2: far too many cases, proximity to power ensures access to resources.
Speaker 2: This is a global problem. Just look at how the
Speaker 2: US distributed masks and COVID resources to reservations last or
Speaker 2: if I step outside, they can see how the lowest
Speaker 2: income parts of San Diego, the city I live in,
Speaker 2: have the worst roads and get the least infrastructure spending.
Speaker 2: The fact that Keio do things differently is a testament
Speaker 2: to the strength of their commitment to their community. In fact,
Speaker 2: the project finished distribution during my trip to Marshall Islands,
Speaker 2: completing the last island on Major Atoll in early July,
Speaker 2: but a few days later than that, when KEO invited
Speaker 2: myself and some other journalists to a goodbye breakfast, they
Speaker 2: presented a filter to the former president of the Republic
Speaker 2: of Marshall Islands, Hilde Hind Despite being the last person
Speaker 2: to get one. She was very grateful and it served
Speaker 2: as the great illustration of the priorities of the group.
Speaker 2: They wanted to go to the hardest places first because
Speaker 2: they knew people there needed help the most. His president
Speaker 2: Hilde Heine, after receiving her filter, I.
Speaker 18: Was telling morning that we don't drink from our tab
Speaker 18: water ours. We have our own system, but we don't
Speaker 18: know if it's clean, so we buy our drinking water
Speaker 18: all the time. So with this one I probably will
Speaker 18: stop bang for.
Speaker 2: To be pure water. I joined Kio and several other
Speaker 2: journalists for the final leg of their project, which involves
Speaker 2: installing the water filters. This doesn't really take long they're
Speaker 2: basically a soil filter attached to a five gallon bucket
Speaker 2: with a length of flexible hoe, and then explaining their
Speaker 2: value and upkeep to the community. As we heard yesterday,
Speaker 2: ground water is harder and harder to come by in
Speaker 2: the Marshall Islands thanks to climate change, and so people
Speaker 2: rely almost exclusively on rainwater. They collect rainwater in giant
Speaker 2: plastic tanks. They've only recently replaced a hodgepodge of different
Speaker 2: collection vessels. Incidentally, a visiting scientist from the CDC told
Speaker 2: me that the installation of these tanks has increased a
Speaker 2: safe disposal of waste because people no longer need to
Speaker 2: take their bins to collect rainwater when it rains. Once
Speaker 2: water is in the tanks, the residents can draw it
Speaker 2: out into their five gallon bucket and then filter it
Speaker 2: for safe drinking. The soil filter system may seem very simple,
Speaker 2: and it is, but that's what makes it a perfect
Speaker 2: solution here. A complicated electric filter, or one that relied
Speaker 2: on pipe water pressure or had a ton of moving
Speaker 2: parts would require constant maintenance, which is hard given a
Speaker 2: long journey to the outer Islands. In my career in
Speaker 2: journalism and in nonprofit. I've seen countless well intentioned aid
Speaker 2: projects completely failed to consider the need for sustainability and
Speaker 2: become useless odities. In a few years. Cargo bikes made
Speaker 2: a huge different coffee farmers in Rwanda until they needed
Speaker 2: new brake pads and there wasn't an importer for them.
Speaker 2: The same goes for countless glucometers I've seen distributed to
Speaker 2: people who can't access the batteries they use or the
Speaker 2: test strips they rely on. This won't happen in the
Speaker 2: Marshall Islands in part because the project was led by
Speaker 2: the community itself and not by outside nonprofits looking to
Speaker 2: maximize donation dollars or media opportunities, and in part because
Speaker 2: the only maintenance or sor filter needs is a backflush
Speaker 2: of the filtered water that it makes. Yesterday we had
Speaker 2: a little from the Marshal Lee's Environmental Protection Agency about
Speaker 2: how they grapple with climate change. Today, I want to
Speaker 2: explain how they're working alongside Kio to ensure that even
Speaker 2: as sea levels rise, Marshali's people will have access to
Speaker 2: safe water. The Marshal lyse Epa works to ensure that
Speaker 2: the water in people's tanks isn't contaminated, and the filters
Speaker 2: that Kio provided were to make sure that even if
Speaker 2: it is, people won't get sick. They often travel to
Speaker 2: the outer isons together to reduce the cost sharing a
Speaker 2: small boat. It's a rare example of a nonprofit in
Speaker 2: the government working together without competing or doing the same
Speaker 2: thing twice. At first, Marianna explained, people weren't sure that
Speaker 2: such a tiny filter could make such a big difference,
Speaker 2: so Kio worked with the EPA to use a visual
Speaker 2: test for microbial activity to show people how effective it was.
Speaker 2: He She is explaining how the EPA helped Kio build
Speaker 2: trust in the efficacy of the soil filters.
Speaker 27: When Sires and Kio approached us with the filters, before.
Speaker 10: That, a lot of people were already asking us, so,
Speaker 10: can we can we trust this? You know, can you
Speaker 10: do a test in your lab to tell us and
Speaker 10: confirm that this is, you know, as good as they
Speaker 10: claim it to be.
Speaker 2: Doing the test allowed the EPA to help Ko get
Speaker 2: greater uptake for their filters and allowed Kio to help
Speaker 2: the EPA achieve one of its mandated goals.
Speaker 9: And so when we.
Speaker 27: Produce these very visual like Quanta quanta or quanti trays.
Speaker 21: The the.
Speaker 10: Experts will get into it.
Speaker 27: But when we produce them and show a visual contrast
Speaker 27: between the water before the filter and then the water
Speaker 27: before the after the filter filtration, it was you know, amazing,
Speaker 27: like it's it's so clean, and you know, we make
Speaker 27: decisions based on science, and that science right there, and
Speaker 27: so we use that visual photograph outside of that that
Speaker 27: that meeting to show people.
Speaker 10: You know, we're not going to get into the microbils
Speaker 10: of whatever. This is the difference the water before the
Speaker 10: filter and then after.
Speaker 29: And so.
Speaker 10: We're just really happy that Kiyo was able to include us.
Speaker 27: This is one of our mandates, but we're never resourced
Speaker 27: that way to you know, do all of the things
Speaker 27: that we want to do to address water quality issues.
Speaker 2: Of course, it's impossible to deal with the water issue
Speaker 2: in isolation. Everything in the Marshall Islands are really anywhere
Speaker 2: else where you're paying attention has to take into account
Speaker 2: the impact of climate change and how communities are going
Speaker 2: to survive when faced with an increasingly hostile home planet.
Speaker 2: Now yain't explained how access to clean water helps make
Speaker 2: the community in the Marshall Islands even more resilient.
Speaker 10: Well, if you're.
Speaker 27: Trying to survive, the last thing you want to worry
Speaker 27: about is an outbreak of diarrhea or apatitis or.
Speaker 10: You know, water born diseases that are.
Speaker 27: Preventable and so clean water, you know you're much much
Speaker 27: more better as a community if you can thrive and.
Speaker 10: On clean water. It's as simple as that water is life.
Speaker 2: One night during my trip to the Marshall Islands, I
Speaker 2: was able to join Kia for a dinner that celebrated
Speaker 2: the completion of their water project, meaning that everyone in
Speaker 2: the Marshall Islands had access to water that won't make
Speaker 2: them sick. To get a better sense of what this
Speaker 2: really means, I wanted to talk to some families who
Speaker 2: had received those filters and to see what the clean
Speaker 2: water access meant to them. We've all heard that water
Speaker 2: is life, and that was a slogan news for Kio's project,
Speaker 2: but it's difficult to appreciate that if you live in
Speaker 2: a place where you can just turn on a tap
Speaker 2: and have access to clean, safe water whenever you want.
Speaker 2: When Kio made their posters for that dinner, they included
Speaker 2: a photo of a girl on Arno Island who had
Speaker 2: been one of the first to receive their filters, happily
Speaker 2: drinking from a jar of clean water. That was back
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen. Since then, they thought they'd heard the
Speaker 2: terrible news that she died, but just before the dinner
Speaker 2: they found out she hadn't, and so they invited her
Speaker 2: to join the celebration. I was able to sit down
Speaker 2: with her, her mother, and other recipients of the filters
Speaker 2: for a quick interview via translator on the tiny island
Speaker 2: of Boken Boat.
Speaker 21: So they never filtered the water before. They would drink
Speaker 21: straight in the water wells or the water catchments.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, she said, people would get sick. We also spoke
Speaker 2: to Aneedi, a resident of Wrong Wrong, on the day
Speaker 2: that she got her filter. Frontine helped to translate her responses.
Speaker 30: Yeah, what are they in?
Speaker 13: Nine?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 10: What she had heard about that there was going to
Speaker 10: be filter is coming through the island. When she first heard,
Speaker 10: she thought the filters were going to go directly to
Speaker 10: the water tanks. And now that it's more accessible, it's
Speaker 10: like she saw this bucket. She's happy. It's better, it's better, okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Recently there have been an outbreak of diary around the atoll,
Speaker 2: so this was a welcome relief.
Speaker 10: So she had heard that there was optic of cases
Speaker 10: in major the capital and when she had first learned
Speaker 10: about her she was scared and worried.
Speaker 9: But to hear that there's.
Speaker 10: Folks coming here to the island to check on the water,
Speaker 10: it made them feel a little bit more.
Speaker 19: You know.
Speaker 2: Add EA's the family from Ana who traveled a long
Speaker 2: way on a small boat to meet us. We're looking
Speaker 2: forward to getting back to their home. Life on the
Speaker 2: outer Atolls isn't easy, but it's not one they want
Speaker 2: to walk away from. With the threat of climate change
Speaker 2: already putting their home in peril, having access to clean
Speaker 2: water must be a welcome relief. I asked to say,
Speaker 2: preferred life here on the capitol at all or back home?
Speaker 21: Yeah, she says life in the outer islands is better.
Speaker 21: There's more space, more freedom to move around.
Speaker 10: For the kids.
Speaker 2: There are things she'd like to change the course, but
Speaker 2: mostly her concern was preserving their little piece of paradise
Speaker 2: for future generations.
Speaker 21: She'd like her kids to be able to enjoy access
Speaker 21: to clean water, whether it be through more water catchments
Speaker 21: that are being available to the family, and also the
Speaker 21: electric city, as you mentioned, perhaps with the generator stuff
Speaker 21: like that to make life more easier in the outer lands.
Speaker 21: She'd like to, you know, like in the future, be
Speaker 21: able to see the fishing grounds preserved as well as
Speaker 21: the land for their farming needs.
Speaker 2: The way KIR works with local communities, because they're from
Speaker 2: local communities, enables them to be much more effective than
Speaker 2: a nonprofit which comes from outside the community. On wrong
Speaker 2: wrong they joke to laugh at local women Whenik's husband
Speaker 2: comes from the island, so they were already welcome, and
Speaker 2: then after some time bantering, they explained the way to
Speaker 2: water filters work. In Marshal Leeds families, they're still a
Speaker 2: fairly gender division of labor in many cases, and it
Speaker 2: seemed to be that the women on the island were
Speaker 2: the ones who stayed to learn about the filters, so
Speaker 2: it was appropriate that it was women who were teaching them.
Speaker 2: Preservation doesn't mean there can't be change. The Marshall Islands
Speaker 2: have seen a huge change in the last few years,
Speaker 2: and much of that is down to the dedicated work
Speaker 2: of a large number of women who have formed community
Speaker 2: groups to empower each other and address social, ecological and
Speaker 2: public health issues that are facing their communities. The umbrella
Speaker 2: organization that works with these women's groups it's called with Me.
Speaker 2: I let Maria from Whitey explain what that means and
Speaker 2: why they started the group in the first place.
Speaker 16: First of all, welcome. As you know, with ME stands
Speaker 16: for women in edited together, marshal allance. It also means
Speaker 16: in marshalise your flower, and that's how we wanted the
Speaker 16: acronym to be to mean both English and marshalist. And
Speaker 16: as this is said, it was established in nineteen eighty
Speaker 16: seven to fill a gap with respect to the advancement
Speaker 16: of women. In nineteen seventy five there was the Decade
Speaker 16: for Women en Decade for Women, and there were two
Speaker 16: countriences that took place and there were a lot of
Speaker 16: issues that came about in those two meetings. They were
Speaker 16: dealing with domestic violence, alcohol abuse, suicide, the youth, other problems,
Speaker 16: child abuse and neglect. So from those women started to meet,
Speaker 16: at least some women started to talk about this was
Speaker 16: there were no representatives of women in the decision making bodies,
Speaker 16: whether at the local government levels or at the national level.
Speaker 10: So that's.
Speaker 16: And we got the support of our traditional women leaders.
Speaker 2: Woman Works alongside traditional leaders are not around them. The
Speaker 2: same was true of all the programs that have been
Speaker 2: successful on the islands. On our last day, we visited WHAM,
Speaker 2: the program that builds the canoes we heard about. Although
Speaker 2: the programs founded to preserve the cultural heritage of the
Speaker 2: islands and their unique seafaring technologies, some of which are
Speaker 2: only just being replicated in modern craft in Europe and
Speaker 2: the USA, it also responded to a need that the
Speaker 2: community had. In this case, that need was education.
Speaker 31: So we are training program for at risk young men
Speaker 31: and women of the martial arts who It started out
Speaker 31: as a project back in the eighties. One of our
Speaker 31: twenty found uh, co founder of this program.
Speaker 21: UH.
Speaker 31: The museum contracted him to go through various islands within
Speaker 31: the Republic, And you're talking about back in the eighties
Speaker 31: and we were losing our designs fasts. People were coming
Speaker 31: to Magro or going to the States, which is going
Speaker 31: off islands to the many reasons, and because of that,
Speaker 31: they wanted to capture that uniqueness of these design But
Speaker 31: when he was going through from one actual to another,
Speaker 31: he noticed that there were a lot of young kids
Speaker 31: not going to school.
Speaker 13: So I'm not sure if you're aware of it.
Speaker 31: But throughout the republic there's only about four or five
Speaker 31: high schools and most of them are boarding school So,
Speaker 31: for example, I grew up in Jeluity, and in that
Speaker 31: at all there's a high school, boarding high school and
Speaker 31: then it gators to about six or seven other app pilings.
Speaker 31: So parents have no choice but to send their kids.
Speaker 31: If they want to go beyond ad grade, you have
Speaker 31: to leave home and go to the boarding schools.
Speaker 2: In addition to offering a skill set and an education,
Speaker 2: the program has counselors in mental health and addiction. They
Speaker 2: teach young men and women maths, literacy and how to
Speaker 2: build the canoes, but they also empower them in creating
Speaker 2: the sustainable alternative transport method that will be vital in
Speaker 2: building a sustainable future for their home. Likewise would meet
Speaker 2: the approach. It's based on listening to people.
Speaker 32: Women chiefs you know, will let them know what we'll
Speaker 32: be doing and what what would they want us to do,
Speaker 32: and we ask them to talk with their you know,
Speaker 32: like because these women chiefs are owning some of the
Speaker 32: neighboring islands and they know their people and do need
Speaker 32: assessments so they can really understand what their needs are,
Speaker 32: because all they need greenhalents.
Speaker 9: Are different means.
Speaker 2: They make an effort to tie their efforts to traditional
Speaker 2: Marshalist principles and in doing so they keep their culture alive.
Speaker 16: So being together and getting this the other thing that
Speaker 16: would be done, which is connect our our being to
Speaker 16: our culture. Being a materlineal society, we have different sayings
Speaker 16: or traditional traditional roles of women. Yeah, and then we
Speaker 16: have the domestic balance when it's called whether in mellor
Speaker 16: weather meaning it's a land parcel, MA mean to be alive,
Speaker 16: to live and not to be killed.
Speaker 10: As opposed to being abused.
Speaker 16: So whether in is somewhere you go to and you're
Speaker 16: able to live freely or in being I mean you're
Speaker 16: well protected. So in all our conferences we we do
Speaker 16: use these traditional so it's something that it's not new,
Speaker 16: it's traditional, so they cannot say, you know, you cannot
Speaker 16: do that because it's a tradition, and we keep the
Speaker 16: culture alive through that way as well.
Speaker 2: Almost everyone you've heard from in this series, aside from
Speaker 2: the Men, is a member of Kio or Whitney or both.
Speaker 2: Keo is one of the chapters of Whitney and many
Speaker 2: of the Keo leaders as the daughters of Whitman's leadership.
Speaker 2: Whitney have implemented parent as teacher, early childhood education programs,
Speaker 2: domestic violence prevention programs, and many other social, economic and
Speaker 2: political programs across the islands. The results are easy to see.
Speaker 2: All over the Marshall Islands, government officers and NGOs are
Speaker 2: run by women. Now, the Marshall Islands had the first
Speaker 2: woman president in the whole Pacific, and she was elected
Speaker 2: in January twenty sixteen, a year when rampant misogyny was
Speaker 2: more evident than ever in the United States presidential election.
Speaker 2: Of course, many marshal Lea's women go to the United
Speaker 2: States and what these members are no exception.
Speaker 16: One of the major challenges has been to make sure
Speaker 16: that that we keep the organization intact because it's especially
Speaker 16: at present time because there's a lot about migration that
Speaker 16: we have to constantly work, especially with women in the
Speaker 16: islands where they're they come and then they'll stay long
Speaker 16: in the urban areas, they just migrate out. So now
Speaker 16: there are so many of them that they're trying to
Speaker 16: form women's groups in the in the United States as well,
Speaker 16: so they come and visit us and we communicate with
Speaker 16: them occasionally share in sharing information or other issues because
Speaker 16: what issues they experience here, they also experience in the
Speaker 16: United States, and so they need to be aware of
Speaker 16: how we're trying to deal with those.
Speaker 2: But many women also go to the US for their
Speaker 2: education and then return to be part of their community
Speaker 2: and help lift their community up. Now, thanks to whipm's
Speaker 2: hard work and the government's efforts, women don't have to
Speaker 2: leave to get these skills. The Energy Department has trained
Speaker 2: women on outer islands, for example, to fix their own
Speaker 2: power grades.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so we're kind of all over the place.
Speaker 2: At one time we went and.
Speaker 12: Actually uh train a community of all women, like we
Speaker 12: had to include men to allow women to be part
Speaker 12: of the training. And we have nine women that graduated
Speaker 12: certified trainers and we awarded them with tools and everything
Speaker 12: so when there's a power outages and their solar home
Speaker 12: systems and they can address it. And Grace who's in
Speaker 12: the middle, that that's the island where she's from where
Speaker 12: we train the woman to become trainers. And it's our
Speaker 12: first ever. So when we found that it was successful,
Speaker 12: we try to extend it out to the other islands.
Speaker 12: So I think that's one of the reasons why it's
Speaker 12: difficult for countries such as US where we've been colonized
Speaker 12: and trying to find a balance between a modern day
Speaker 12: government form of democracy where you're taught that individualism is
Speaker 12: important and your rights are important, and then you have
Speaker 12: your traditional structure when where you when you're grow up,
Speaker 12: you're taught that it's a collective society. You your piety
Speaker 12: is important, respecting it's your thoughts are not worth it,
Speaker 12: your elders and your you know, your chiefs in so
Speaker 12: I think that's where we have to find the balance.
Speaker 2: This comment that Angeline made in our chat after her
Speaker 2: excellent presentation on energy sovereignty really got me thinking about
Speaker 2: the post colony future of the Marshall Islands. Today, they're
Speaker 2: empowered as an independent nation, but they still have to
Speaker 2: exist within a framework where corporations and more powerful governments
Speaker 2: don't have to pay for the consequences of their actions.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, the US unsealed indictment of a
Speaker 2: Chinese couple who bribe five Marshalise members of parliament and
Speaker 2: attempted to bribe a six in order to help them
Speaker 2: carve out a kind of mini state, a so called
Speaker 2: special economic zone as a tax haven or Wrongolappatol. This
Speaker 2: is one of the places heavily impacted by the nuclear
Speaker 2: testing we spoke about earlier. Hildehein, among others, opposed this.
Speaker 2: She said economic development is and should be encouraged, but
Speaker 2: not at the expense of money laundering and other similarly
Speaker 2: ill activities that are usually a part of money laundering.
Speaker 2: As was obvious in the wrongol Appatol Special Administrative Region legislation,
Speaker 2: the people of wrong alapp deserved better standards of living
Speaker 2: and economic development. Well, there's no evidence of CCP involvement
Speaker 2: in the scheme. It came as part of a larger
Speaker 2: panic about Beijing's influence in the region. Twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: the Solomon Islands signed a pact with China to help
Speaker 2: improve their internal security, and China has already provided the
Speaker 2: Solomons with police training and donated replica guns and riot
Speaker 2: control equipment such as water canon vehicles. The Solomon Islands
Speaker 2: are still covered in bombs from the US and Japan's
Speaker 2: fighting in the Pacific, but instead of helping dispose of these,
Speaker 2: this form of investment is sending more weapons to the government,
Speaker 2: not help to the people there. According to a recent
Speaker 2: published study in the journal Science, the world's corporations produce
Speaker 2: so much climate change causing pollution that it would eat
Speaker 2: up forty four percent of their profits if they had
Speaker 2: to pay damages for the impact of their activity. Your
Speaker 2: reusable straw might help, and it's good that you're using it.
Speaker 2: But until the world and giant corporations especially listen to
Speaker 2: the voices of people impacted by our choices, things won't change.
Speaker 2: I want to end by talking about the future of
Speaker 2: the Marshall Islands and how Marshallese people are determining that
Speaker 2: in the last century they've been let down by the
Speaker 2: League of Nations who reallocated the islands to the Japanese
Speaker 2: under Southeast Mandate, then let down by the US and
Speaker 2: the UN after the war, and they're still being let
Speaker 2: down by international institutions today when their demands for climate
Speaker 2: fairless are ignored. But this doesn't mean they can't benefit
Speaker 2: from international solidarity. It was American made water filters and
Speaker 2: a significant donation from a company better known for hiking
Speaker 2: that helped every single person in the Marshall Island to
Speaker 2: get clean water. It was Greenpeace who relocated people when
Speaker 2: the US government wouldn't, and it was Marshally's women who
Speaker 2: took week long norse or inducing boat rides across dangerous
Speaker 2: seas to distribute those water filters that save lives in
Speaker 2: places where there's less access to care. With access to
Speaker 2: the right resources and international solidarity and goodwill, the possibilities
Speaker 2: for the Marshall Islands seem endless. They've endured World War,
Speaker 2: survived the dropping of the atom bond, and they're adapting
Speaker 2: to climate change by centering community and their obligations to
Speaker 2: each other rather than trying to each take what they
Speaker 2: can and get out. With access to clean water and
Speaker 2: homes free of smoke, their children will be healthier, and
Speaker 2: every child I met on the island seem to have
Speaker 2: bright hopes for the future. I met one kid who
Speaker 2: wanted to be a basketball player and another who aspired
Speaker 2: to apparently be as tall as I am. People in
Speaker 2: the Islands don't focus on their past, but on their future,
Speaker 2: and with a little solidarity and decency from the rest
Speaker 2: of the world, they have a very bright one. I
Speaker 2: wonder finish this series with the explanation we got from
Speaker 2: Whitney of the Marshally's flag. It's a great flag, by
Speaker 2: the way, and you should look it up if you
Speaker 2: haven't seen it. It's one of the most common flags
Speaker 2: of convenience for merchant vessels all over the world. I've
Speaker 2: seen it in several continents, but never really knew what
Speaker 2: it meant. At least for now, it seems to mean
Speaker 2: that these tirely islands, which have been through so much,
Speaker 2: still have great hopes for the future.
Speaker 16: The Marshalis flair there's two the orange other white light,
Speaker 16: and they represent that the relic chain and the rather chain,
Speaker 16: the sunrise chain of island and the sunset chain of
Speaker 16: violent which form the martial alum. So those two lines.
Speaker 16: But those lines, there's one orange and one whit. Orange
Speaker 16: is for courage to start, it's called Kio, and the
Speaker 16: white is for peace. But these lines are not parallel.
Speaker 16: I mean they become larger as they move up, and
Speaker 16: they don't start from the corner. They start from a
Speaker 16: little bit over the corner of the flag, meaning that
Speaker 16: we have a past. We didn't start from the beginning
Speaker 16: when we started this milk government in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 16: And then it moves out. It doesn't go all the
Speaker 16: way to the corner at the top. Because we're always growing.
Speaker 16: There's so you know, we're always growing.
Speaker 13: We need to grow.
Speaker 16: It's very important.
Speaker 1: Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 2: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 27: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 4: Thanks for listening.