The long road to justice

At Issue: The decision by the US Claims Tribunal to award $341 million to the people of Enewetak.

Our View: The award is one thing; securing it from the federal government is yet another matter.

The resolution of the American Experiment in the Republic of the Marshall Islands some 33 years ago to determine the effects of the hydrogen bomb on human beings is far from over.

Although the U.S. Claims Tribunal has awarded some $341 million to the people of Enewetak, securing final payment of the total sum is another long and arduous process.

We find the second part of this long journey to justice the most difficult end of the current undertaking. We find it mind boggling that the victims must take their quest for justice to another level after more than 33 years. How could the federal government turn its head the other way when it is an integral part in an experiment to see the destructive effects of its hydrogen bomb on real human guinea pigs?

This negligence on the part of the federal government illustrates, time and again, that it has never been able to keep its end of the bargain. The US reneges on an agreement with respect to the subsequent return of the people of Enewetak to their homeland after the detonations and subsequent clean-up are done. That it decided to forego its end of the agreement is definitely morally unconscionable and breeds suspicion on all the whys it decided to shelf its end of the deal.

It boggles the mind too whether the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing weren’t sufficient to confirm beyond doubt the immediate and long-term genocidal effects of such destructive weaponry? Not only did it leave behind a displaced people, but vaporized several of their islands, not to mention the long-term illnesses the Enewetak people must endure all these years and all in the name of an experiment that is basically genocidal at best, a grand neglect at worse.

We hope that the federal government cleans up its own mess forthwith. It’s enough that it reneged on an agreement for more than three decades which we find morally despicable. The feds must make good on its end of the bargain by seeking for immediate compensation of the sum awarded the people of Enewetak by the U.S. Claims Tribunal. We hope it doesn’t take another 33 years before this long-standing neglect is resolved with finality. Si Yuus Maase`!