Marshall islanders work to build peace museum

Marshall islanders, supported by Japanese peace activists, are promoting a project to build the "Rongelap Peace Museum" in the Marshall Islands to provide a historical record of the U.S. H-Bomb tests at Bikini atoll in the South Pacific.

From 1946 to 1958, the Unites States conducted 67 nuclear test explosions near the Marshall Islands, which consist of 29 atolls, in the Pacific Ocean.

On March 1, 1954, the U.S. carried out a hydrogen bomb test explosion at Bikini atoll without any advance warnings. Residents of Rongelap atoll, as well as the crew of the Japanese tuna fishing boat Daigo Fukuryumaru ("Lucky Dragon No. 5") were exposed to massive dose of radiation.

Rongelap residents have experienced numerous stillbirths, the birth of premature or deformed babies, and suffered many kinds of diseases they had never experienced before. Since they cannot go back to their home island, they have had to live on other atolls in the Marshall Islands.

The Rongelap Peace Museum, which is to open on March 1, 2004, in Majuro, capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, is aimed at showing the islanders' suffering from the H-bomb and their struggles for a nuclear-free Pacific.

Japanese peace activists established an organization to assist in the museum project.

One of the initiators, Oishi Matashichi, who was one of the crew members of the Lucky Dragon No. 5, said, "As one of the victims of an H-bomb test explosion, I really want to make the Marshal Islanders' dream come true."
Museum Campaign Home Page
http://www9.plala.or.jp/jojoi/index.html
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