Of Health and Home
by Jen Jackson
A community of people from three South Pacific Island nations is fighting to have their history, and their rights, recognized by gaining access to state-funded healthcare after decades of unacknowledgement by the U.S. government.
The following unpublished article, written by Jen Jackson in 2016, was a jumping off point for Acceptable Fallout. This article serves as a basis for understanding the many issues faced by Micronesians, who are seeking desperately-needed healthcare in America. These issues will be explored further in Acceptable Fallout.
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It’s early in the morning on March 1st, 1954, when the winds change direction over the Marshall Islands. From Rongelap, a small coral atoll of just over three square miles, a brilliant, colorful light fills the horizon. In the afternoon, snow begins to fall. Children are sent out to play in the soft, white powder that falls from the sky. Kids and adults alike stick out their tongues to taste the miracle they have only heard about. It covers the ground, in some places an inch and a half thick.
Approximately 100 miles west, in the Bikini Atoll, the United States military has executed the Castle Bravo test, detonating its most powerful hydrogen bomb ever. The over 15 megaton blast from Castle Bravo is three times larger than predicted and 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan to end World War II. The fiery explosion sends up a “snow” of irradiated coral dust and nuclear fallout, miles in each direction - over the evacuated Bikini Atoll, blanketing the still inhabited islands of Rongelap, and ultimately to the rest of the Marshall Islands and beyond.
It will forever be known to the people of Rongelap as the day the sun rose twice.
The United States continued its nuclear experiments in these South Pacific islands for four more years, reaching a total of 67 tests. While the three nations- the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Palau - finally became independent countries in 1986, the United States wasn’t ready to relinquish control of such valuable military real estate. Thus, the Compact of Free Association was born.
Through the Compact of Free Association, the United States has retained full military control over the island nations in return for military protection, assistance with infrastructure and health care, as well as free access to live and work in the United States (and vice verse.)
Under the compact, the Marshallese, Micronesians, and Palauans are neither citizens nor immigrants, but part of a special relationship with the states. They pay taxes and serve in the military at astoundingly high rates. Joe Enlet, from the state of Chuuk in Micronesia, is an Oregon resident and the president of the COFA Alliance National Network, a nonprofit that advocates for citizens of the three COFA nations.
“We, as COFA citizens, we really want people to know that we are here to contribute. To make Oregon a better place,” says Enlet.
In return the compact promises them access to vital resources like public education and Medicaid - healthcare desperately needed by a population still reeling from the effects of intense radiation exposure.
Kianna Juda-Angelo is Marshallese but was raised in Portland, Oregon. A child of adoption, her parents did not allow her to research or talk about her heritage.
“After I left as an adult,” says Juda-Angelo, “I was very curious.” As a young woman, Juda-Angelo sought out her biological family and ultimately found her way back to a Marshallese community that was in Oregon all along. “After reading up about the Marshallese people and where I came from, I noticed that they were really struggling.”
Oregon has the fifth largest population of COFA residents in the United States. David Anitok is a Marshallese activist with the COFA Assistance National Network, which was co-founded by Juda-Angelo. Anitok says the islanders are working hard to make a home in the state they love.
Making that home, however, has been made nearly impossible. In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, overhauling welfare in the United States, and breaking the promises made by the compact only ten years prior. Provisions in the bill specifically ban COFA residents from receiving Medicaid.
Even the five year waiting period enacted for immigrants to the states doesn’t apply to the islanders who are stuck in the ether of being legal residents but barred from benefits granted to citizens and immigrants.
“What the [Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act] did was reclassify COFA citizens,” says Enlet, “and gave us the category ‘unqualified aliens’... we we were barred from all safety-net programs. This is not just Medicaid, this is food stamps, welfare, even federal student loans.”
Being banned from Medicaid delivered a devastating blow to low-income members and families in this community, unable to afford expensive, private health insurance. Like salt in the wound, the effects of the radiation that the United States military exposed them to run rampant: from some of the highest levels of thyroid damage and cancer in the world, to drastically elevated rates of severe birth defects, stillborn births, and infertility. Thousands of people throughout the islands have been removed from their homes and countless more face the dangers of eating the plants and animals native to their islands, forcing them to rely heavily on preserved foods shipped from outside their countries.
Since the 1950s, the islanders have experienced an epidemic of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease thanks to drastic, forced changes in their diets and lifestyles.
When Juda-Angelo went looking for her heritage, she found a community that was struggling. “[People from the Bikini Atoll] were basically removed... The radiation has caused a lot of problems and relocating has been really difficult in these last fifty years,” she says, “They are used to home. They are used to knowing how to fish on their atoll. The radiation has caused a lot of illness and with inadequate hospitals and clinics back home they are suffering.”
While unprotected federally, The COFA Alliance National Network and its community are fighting for COFA citizens at the state level. The first bill CANN was able to get passed extended the validity of an Oregon driver’s license for COFA residents from only one year to eight years of a full-term license.
One main driver of the bill was Loyd Henion, a retired Oregon Department of Transportation economist. Henion knew little about Oregon’s Pacific Islander community, but was drawn to the cause when he got to know his elderly mother’s caretaker, a Marshallese woman named Camilla Tarkwon. Today, in front of the crowd, Henion encourages the islanders to see the strength in their numbers. “My country hasn’t done right by you,” He says,” And that hurts me.”
In 2015 CANN successfully passed Oregon House Bill 2522 which allowed low-income COFA residents to purchase health insurance through the health insurance exchange in Oregon. This March, HB 4071 for a COFA Premium Assistance Program was also passed. This means that as of January 1, 2017 Oregon will provide financial assistance with health care premiums and out-of-pocket costs for low-income Pacific Islanders, and after two decades of struggle, COFA residents in Oregon will finally have access to the health care they need and have fought for.
“This bill has brought together people who normally don’t talk,” says Enlet. In a rare show of bipartisanship, all three bills were passed unanimously in the Oregon House and Senate. “We have been developing real, good, close relationships with each of the legislators... you come with a real personal story and talk to them, and they talk about their stories too.”
About one year after HB 2522 went into effect in Oregon, Washington followed suit and became the second state to pass legislation that provides state-funded health care assistance to COFA residents living there. Similar efforts are also being made in other states that are home to COFA residents, including Arkansas, Hawaii and Texas.
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Two days after the Castle Bravo test, Rongelap is evacuated. Its people have spent days vomiting, are covered in burns and lesions, and their hair soon begins to fall out. Their drinking water has turned yellow.
Six days after the test, Project 4.1 is formed to study exposure to radiation in humans. Despite having already received critical doses of radiation, three years later Rongelap is declared safe to inhabit. Its people are moved back to their homes, and the study continues until 1985 when, responding to the pleas of Rongelap residents, Greenpeace evacuates all 300 people to a safer island. After decades of sickness, the islanders contacted Greenpeace when requests to the United States government were ignored.
In 1987 the Nuclear Claims Tribunal Court was established to award victims of US nuclear explosive testing with compensation. Within a year, the fund ran out of money, falling far short of dispensing the awarded amounts. The year before, in negotiations with the Marshall Islands over the Compact of Free Association, the United States agreed to give the Marshallese government $150 million dollars.
In exchange, the Marshallese government had to drop all civilian claims to compensation, which would have added up to billions. Of the compensation doled out by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal Court fund from 1987-2009, according to a Congressional Research Service report, “Over 40% of awardees died before receiving full compensation due to lack of funds and the pro-rated basis of making payments.”
In 2000, the Marshallese Government asked Congress for another $3 billion in compensation to set up health clinics, to work against environmental degradation, and to cover the outstanding balance of circa $2 billion in compensation awarded by the US instituted Nuclear Tribunal Claims Court. Congress denied the request.
On its website, the U.S. Embassy in Majuro, Marshall Islands now assures islanders that intentions were pure: “While international scientists did study the effects of that accident on the human population unintentionally affected, the United States never intended for Marshallese to be hurt by the tests.”
Yet, in 1989 the United States Nuclear Defense Agency released a full report of the Castle Bravo test. “For almost three decades, the Rongelap people had been told it was an accident,” said Senator Jeton Anjain of Rongelap in a hearing before the Committee for Interior and Insular Affairs in the House of Representatives, “We were told the Government did not know the winds would carry the near-fatal radioactive fallout to Rongelap.” The report includes the weather and wind updates, seen and acknowledged as potentially sending fallout to Rongelap Atoll, leading up to the decision to detonate.
Still, COFA residents serve our nation. Per capita, they enlist in the highest rate of any demographic. In 2008, Micronesian soldiers had the highest per capita rate of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan at five times the national average.
In the Salem-Keizer School District in Oregon, Marshallese is the third most common language spoken by student, but resources for these students are limited and the language barrier is a big one. Kathleen Jonathan, the Community School Outreach Coordinator for the Salem-Keizer School District, is the only Marshallese translator in the district.
Jonathan acts as an important liaison between the schools and Marshallese families, who don’t always understand each other. “The cultures are very, very different and sometimes they clash,” she says, but great strides have been made by both sides in the 14 years that she has worked for the district.
Another reason a COFA child can struggle in school is cultural misunderstanding. “Marshallese children, in their culture, are taught to never look an elder or an authority figure in the eye. To look them in the eye is considered extremely disrespectful,” says Anitok, “But here, when they try to show their teachers respect, it is seen as the opposite, or that they don’t care about learning.”
But Jonathan says Marshallese students have consistently become more and more involved in important extracurriculars like sports and music- and she knows the importance of keeping a student healthy. “I wouldn’t have thought when I first came here that we would have set foot in the Capitol building.”
The islanders are also working to introduce some of their own culture to the state. Living Islands, another Marshallese non profit founded by Juda-Angelo, introduced a year-long project in 2015 to build a traditional, 25 foot outrigger canoe. The boat is taking shape at Portland State University, where events are held to teach the community about the traditions, heritage, and history of the Marshall Islands and its people. Made by a Marshallese master craftsman, once complete the canoe will tour universities in Oregon and Washington.
“We are here to be members of the state and of the society and be given the same dignity,” says Enlet, “We are grateful for the privilege of living in this great state and we’ve made it our home. We cheer for the Oregon Ducks. We love the Blazers. We go to the parks and contribute to the economy. And yet to be treated this way because of certain policies or whatever- it takes away your humanity. It takes away your sense of being somebody, and that is a message I want people to hear.”