The Devastating Effects of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report | Environmental & Health Impacts | For Researchers & Policy Makers

This outstanding work documents the suffering of the people of Rongalap in the Marshall Islands as the unwitting guinea pigs of the U.S. nuclear weapons testing program, is thorough and scholarly, yet compassionate and highly readable.It tells through the words of the survivors how they watched in terror as the sky was ripped apart and turned strange colors and how the fallout from Castle Bravo on Bikini atoll rained down on them; how they ate and drank the contaminated food and water; how their skin burned and hair fell out; how they died by the score from thyroid and other cancers, gave birth to unspeakably deformed children and were displaced from their homelands - only to be intentionally subjected to further radiation when they were returned. It describes how they were humiliated and subjected to painful procedures as medical study subjects, yet their symptoms and illnesses not treated. The report argues for fair compensation for the innocent and abused people of Rongelap whose permission was never sought for the U.S. to use their atolls to test their bombs and study the effects of radiation at a safe distance from their own lands. To this day they remain displaced and stigmatized.It is incomprehensible that Americans could callously and intentionally impose so much suffering on fellow human beings. It illustrates the moral failure of a mighty nation in its abuse of a weaker one.This is a sobering book and one that everyone should read.