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