To recognize more than 5 decades of strategic partnership between the United States and the people of the Marshall Islands in the pursuit of international peace and security, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I stand today in grateful support of this resolution, which I am proud to have cosponsored.

This resolution is about three things. First, re-acknowledgement of that region of our world in which the present and future of our Nation and so many others lie: the Pacific and Asia. Second, recognition of a proud people and culture whose future lies now not only in their home islands, but in our own country. Third, responsibility for our actions which, like the consequences of those actions, will extend down through the generations.

On re-acknowledgement, as a product of the Pacific, I confess to a Pacific-centric view of our world. But can anyone doubt that our own future is inextricably tied to that of the Pacific? And as we look to the Pacific, we cannot overlook its island nations, whose strategic value and loyalty to democratic principles are unquestioned.

Foremost among these nations is the Republic of the Marshall Islands, with a proud history and culture dating back thousands of years. We celebrate in this resolution the mutually beneficial relationship we have enjoyed for more than half a century.

We also celebrate its people, who at home are striving to build a modern and sustainable island nation. And the emigration of many to new lands and new opportunities, especially in our country, are strengthening communities beyond their homeland.

My own state has especially benefited, with a Marshallese community of some 5000 strong poised for a major breakthrough into the mainstream of political, economic and social participation in Hawaii's affairs.

And, of course, we cannot forget that the Marshallese and their counterpart Pacific nations today have their sons and daughters serving with our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and lying grievously wounded defending our joint freedoms in military hospitals.

And lastly, this is a resolution of remembrance, of the dire consequences to a whole people and their aina, or land, of 66 nuclear tests, virtually all open air, from 1946 through 1958, including, 50 years ago, BRAVO, the world's first hydrogen bomb. Few of us, even today, can imagine the force and devastation released by just one such device, much less 66.

I have my own recollection, as a boy of just six, sitting on my grandparents' porch on the Island of Kauai, on a dark night, watching the entire sky light up from a single explosion 2,300 miles away. But the Marshallese lived through it, and they are still living through it, and will live through it for generations to come.

These stories are being told elsewhere, by Beverly Keever, in a February 25, 2004 article in the ``Honolulu Weekly,'' and by James Matayoshi, Mayor of Rongselap, in recent remarks on BRAVO day. I append these for the Record and commend them to your attention.

But today, we simply remember what happened and recommit ourselves to remedy that which must be remedied.

Mr. Speaker, there are lots of people to be thanked for this resolution. Chair Pombo and Ranking Member Rahall, for their commitment, Chair Hyde and Ranking Member Lantos for bringing this to the floor, and Chair Leach and Ranking Member Faleomavaega for their advocacy. But mostly, we thank the people of the Marshall Islands, for their friendship and support. We will not forget.

Mr. Speaker, I submit the following articles for insertion into the Record in connection with H. Con. Res. 364.

Suffering, Secrecy, Exile: Bravo 50 Years Later

(By Beverly Deepe Keever)

[From Honolulu Weekly, Feb. 25, 2004]

Almira Ainri was 10 years old when she was catapulted into

the atomic age.

In June of 1946, as the U.S. Navy readied the first atomic

bomb in peacetime--just the fourth in history--Ainri and

about 100 other inhabitants of Rongelap Atoll, in the

Marshall Islands, were sent south by ship to Lae Atoll, where

it was thought they would be safe from the effects of the

explosion 100 miles away, at Bikini Atoll.

Eight years later, in 1954, Ainri and other Rongelapese

weren't as lucky.

Fifty years ago this week, on Bikini Atoll, the U.S.

detonated the Bravo shot, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb 1,000

times more powerful than the bomb it dropped on Hiroshima.

The most powerful bomb in U.S. nuclear history, Bravo had a

radioactive cloud that plumed over 7,000 square miles, an

area about the size of New Jersey. A hundred or so miles

downwind, near-lethal fallout powdered at least 236

inhabitants of the Rongelap and Utrik atolls, contaminating

their ancestral homelands. The Bravo-dusted islanders entered

history as unique examples of the effects of radioactive

fallout on humans.

Ainri, who now lives in Honolulu, is one of 118 survivors

of the Bravo shot. For her and other islanders, the bomb's

detonation set off a chain reaction of events over the last

half century. They became unwitting subjects in secret U.S.

research on the effects of nuclear fallout and ultimately

were forced to leave their idyllic homeland, which remains

uninhabitable to this day due to radioactivity.

Archeological finds on Bikini Atoll suggest that the first

Micronesians likely arrived in the Marshall Islands between

2,500 and 4,000 years ago. Germany annexed the islands in

1885. Japan captured them in 1914. Allied forces captured and

occupied them in World War II; the war's end left them in

U.S. hands. The U.S. began nuclear testing there the next

year.

The Marshall Islands were declared a Trust Territory by the

United Nations in 1947, with the U.S. as the administrator,

an arrangement that did not end until 1991. The following

treatment of the irradiated islanders raises doubts about the

behavior of the U.S. government:

U.S. officials failed to evacuate Ainri and other islanders

before the Bravo shot and then delayed their removal for more

than 50 hours after the fallout.

On March 7, 1954, six days after the Bravo shot, Project

4.1, ``Study of Response of Human Beings Exposed to

Significant Beta and Gamma Radiation due to Fallout from High

Yield Weapons,'' established a secret U.S. medical program to

monitor and evaluate islanders exposed to radiation, turning

them into experimental human subjects without their consent.

Ainri and other islanders were allowed to return to their

irradiated homeland in 1957. It was later deemed unsafe for

human habitation.

Marshall Islanders were injected with or fed radioactive

tracers without their consent, contrary to medical

recommendations made by U.S. medical officers six weeks after

the Bravo shot that the islanders should receive no more

exposure to radioactivity in their lifetimes.

The research projects arising from Bravo were begun just

seven years after war crimes tribunals convicted German

medical officers for their horrific experiments with

concentration camp inmates during World War II. Those

tribunals led to the Nuremberg Code, an international

standard for experiments involving human subjects, which

stipulated that the voluntary consent of the subject ``is

absolutely essential.'' The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission

established similar standards, requiring the consent of human

subjects and the expectation that an experiment would benefit

the subject, but they had little distribution or effect in

the U.S. bureaucracy.

Did U.S. bureaucratic bungling and operational obstacles

cause the mistreatment of the islanders or, as so many

islanders and others say, did U.S. officials make the

islanders guinea pigs to study the effects of radioactivity?

like needles over my whole body

At about 6 a.m. on March 1, 1954, Almira Ainri was awakened

by the brightness and noise of an inferno as hot as the core

of the sun. Ainri was 18 then, married, and pregnant with her

first child.

The island shook, she recalled. The air was gray. Snowlike

particles fell from the sky.

A day later, U.S. soldiers with Geiger counters arrived and

found people of Rongelap weak and vomiting. Fifty hours and

more after Bravo's detonation, the 236 inhabitants on or near

Rongelap and Utrik atolls were evacuated to the military

clinic at Kwajalein Atoll. There, they were scrubbed every

day with special soaps. The pressure of the water on Ainri's

blistered skin felt ``like needles over my whole body,'' she

said--``like I was burning.''

After the blast, Ainri gave birth to a son, Robert. His

thyroid glands were so damaged that he became dwarfed. The

glands were later removed, consigning him to a lifelong

regimen of medication. Ainri got pregnant again and gave

birth, she said, to ``a bunch of grapes, that had to be

pulled out of me.'' Twice more Ainri got pregnant, she said,

and gave birth to children who appeared normal but died

several days later. Another son, Alex, survived, but again

with damaged thyroid glands. Ainri herself has thyroid

problems; two new growths recently appeared there.

The suffering of Ainri and her family is hardly unique.

Within a decade of the Bravo shot, more than 90 percent of

the children who were under 12 years old at the time of the

explosion developed thyroid tumors. Today, Marshall Islanders

have one of the world's highest rates of abnormalities of the

thyroid, which often result in cases of retardation,

cretinism and stunted development.

For these and other conditions that the U.S. government

presumes were caused by its nuclear weapons testing, the U.S.

pays compensation. Those with leukemia or cancer of the

esophagus, stomach, small intestine, pancreas or bone are

awarded $125,000. Islanders with severe growth retardation

due to thyroid damage get $100,000.

By the end of 2002, a U.S. trust fund had paid about $79

million to 1,808 islanders, but because the trust fund could

not cover all its obligations, 46 percent of affected

islanders

died before they were fully paid for their injuries.

Rongelap Atoll comprises 61 islets with a combined land

mass of about three square miles and a lagoon of 388 square

miles. Because it is still too radioactive for humans, its

former residents are scattered. In Honolulu, Ainri lives in a

home where her pandanus floor mats mingle with a caller-I.D.

phone and a television set.

Under a 1996, $45-million agreement with the U.S., projects

are underway to prepare for the return of Rongelapese to the

five southernmost, least-contaminated islets of the atoll. A

glisteningly white church has been refurbished, complete with

striking lapis trim. An airstrip, desalinization plant, field

station, power plant and docks have been constructed or

installed. Phase 2 calls for the construction of 50 four-

bedroom homes, a dispensary and a hospital, school building,

residences for doctors and teachers, a library, a town hall

and a municipal building. All that is missing is a date when

the resettlement will occur.

the three surprises

Corporal Don Whitaker hardly could have imagined the

worldwide surprise his letter home would create. Writing to

his hometown newspaper, in Cincinnati, in March 1954,

Whitaker told of seeing distraught Marshall Islanders arrive

at a navy clinic on Kwajalein after the Bravo shot. It was

one of three surprises that shocked the world, and members of

President Eisenhower's administration.

The first surprise was the magnitude of the Bravo bomb's

blast. Its 15-megaton yield was more than twice what U.S.

officials had expected. Set off from Bikini Atoll, it

vaporized three of the atoll's 23 islets. The test was

expected, however.

Whitaker's letter was the next surprise. In it, he revealed

the evacuation of islanders that U.S. officials had tried to

keep secret. Published March 9, eight days after the blast,

Whitaker's letter prompted the Atomic Energy Commission to

issue a press release the next day, masking the magnitude of

the Bravo shot and its radioactive effects with a bland

announcement. But Bravo was hardly the ``routine atomic

test'' the release described, and the phrase ``some

radioactivity'' did not come close to describing the

islanders' dosage, which was the equivalent of the amount

received by Japanese citizens less than two miles from Ground

Zero at Hiroshima, lawyer-historian Jonathan M. Weisgall

writes.

Twenty-eight years later, the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency

would call the Bravo shot ``the worst single incident of

fallout exposures in all the U.S. atmospheric testing

program.''

The third surprise came just days after the AEC had assured

the public that the irradiated islanders were fine. A

Japanese tuna trawler, the No. 5 Fukuryu Maru (``Lucky

Dragon''), was 112 miles east of Bikini Atoll at the time of

the Bravo explosion, well outside the danger zone announced

by U.S. officials. Yet Bravo's staggering detonation powdered

the boat's 23 crew members with what is known in Japan as shi

no hai--``ashes of death.'' When the Fukuryu Maru reached its

home port of Yaizu, about 120 miles south of Tokyo, on March

14, the crew was suffering from a radiation sickness that

stunned the world.

The crewmen's sickness and the subsequent panic over

radioactive tuna in the U.S. and Japanese fish markets led to

an international furor. The Japanese government and people

dubbed it ``a second Hiroshima'' and it nearly led to

severing diplomatic relations. A U.S. government doctor

dispatched to Japan blamed the Japanese press for

exaggerating the condition of the fishermen, who, he

predicted, would recover completely in about a month.

Six months later, Aikichi Kuboyama, the 40-year-old radio

operator of the Fukuryu Maru, died. He was ``probably the

world's first hydrogen-bomb casualty,'' said The New York

Times.

It was this triple-play of surprises--Bravo's tremendous

force, Whitaker's letter and the plight of the Fukuryu Maru--

that chinked the U.S. government's usual policy of secrecy.

Instead, the word fallout entered the world's lexicon. For

the first time, people in Japan and Russia, London and Bonn,

New York and Milwaukee, were aware of a danger that could not

be smelled, seen, felt or heard.

the sun rising in the west

The Bravo shot was the first U.S. hydrogen device that

could be delivered by airplane. It was designed to catch up

with the Soviets who, in August 1953, had exploded their

first hydrogen bomb deliverable by aircraft.

The Bravo shot was so dangerous that it could not be

detonated in the continental United States. Nor could it be

set off at Enewetak Atoll, where the U.S. conducted nuclear

blast tests from 1948 to 1958, for fear it would wipe out the

extensive U.S. equipment and installations there. So it was

tested at Bikini Atoll.

Even before the Bravo shot, experts knew that the

radioactive dust of atmospheric nuclear weapons explosions

was invisibly and unknowingly powdering the continental

United States and touching others worldwide. The U.S.

government's failure to move the Rongelap and Utrik Islanders

in advance of the Bravo shot is painfully ironic because

Almira Ainri and other Rongelapese had been moved before the

first peacetime atomic test, in 1946--and Bravo was 1,000

times more powerful. Yet the islanders were not moved in 1954

because of ``the high cost and logistic problems . . . in

supporting such an operation,'' according to U.S. medical

officers.

Six hours before Bravo, U.S. officials knew that the winds

had shifted, putting Rongelap and Utrik Islanders in the path

of fallout, but they proceeded with the detonation anyway.

That knowledge, coupled with the lag of several days after

the detonation before islanders were evacuated, led to

speculation that the U.S. deliberately used the islanders as

guinea pigs.

A month after the Bravo shot, Atomic Energy Commission

chair Lewis Strauss told reporters that allegations that the

evacuation of the Marshall Islanders had been deliberately

delayed were ``utterly false, irresponsible and gravely

unjust to the men engaged in this patriotic service.'' He

also said that he had just visited the islanders at the

Kwajalein clinic and they ``appeared to me to be well and

happy.''

Bravo was detonated at 6 a.m. Within four hours, the 28

U.S. weathermen on Rongerik Atoll, in the Marshall Islands,

saw a mist from the blast. Seven hours later, the needle of

their radiation-measuring instrument went off the scale. They

were evacuated the next day.

Clouds of snowlike particles moved over Alinginae,

Rongelap, Utrik and Ailuk atolls. The clouds deposited

radioactive fallout on the people below and irradiated them

with doses of ``cloud shine,'' radiation produced by the

blast itself, which Rongelapese described as being like ``the

sun rising in the west.''

About two-thirds of the Rongelapese were nauseated for two

days, according to a U.S. medical officer who examined them a

week after Bravo. Roughly one in ten were vomiting and had

diarrhea. Some had itching, burning skin that turned into

black-pigmented areas and lesions, some of which became

ulcerated and infected. Hair fell out. Blood counts fell.

The Bravo-dusted islanders disappeared from the news for

the next year, because of the AEC's clampdown on information.

But if they were not making news, they were making medical

history.

guinea pigs

Within days of the Bravo shot, irradiated islanders were

unwittingly swept into a top-secret effort to research the

effects of radioactive fallout on humans. ``Never before in

history had an isolated human population been subjected to

high but sub-lethal amounts of radioactivity without the

physical and psychological complexities associated with

nuclear explosion,'' said scientist Neal O. Hines. Islanders

would not learn the true nature of the experiment for 40

years, until 1994, when President Clinton ordered thousands

of documents declassified in the wake of a national scandal

involving human radiation experiments.

Four months before the Bravo shot, a then-secret U.S.

document listed research Project 4.1 among 48 tests to be

conducted during and after the explosion. ``(D)ue to possible

adverse publicity reaction, you will specifically instruct

all personnel in this project to be particularly careful not

to discuss the purposes of this project and its background or

its findings with any except those who have a specific `need

to know,' '' the document said.

The purpose of Project 4.1 was to study the effects of

fallout radiation on human beings.

Three days after Bravo, Project 4.1 began to unfold in

Washington, D.C., where top medical officials decided that

the victims of its hazardous debris would be appropriate

research subjects. A week after the blast, 25 officials of

the AEC's medical program arrived at Kwajalein Atoll. Six

weeks after the blast, Project 4.1 workers recommended a

lifelong study of the affected islanders. After thyroid

nodules began to appear on Rongelapese and Utrik islanders in

1963, they were studied every year.

They began to complain that they were being treated like

guinea pigs rather than sick humans needing treatment. A

doctor who evaluated them annually came close to agreeing

when he wrote, 38 years after Bravo, ``In retrospect, it was

unfortunate that the AEC, because it was a research

organization, did not include support of basic health care of

populations under study.''

return to rongelap

In 1957, U.S. officials assured Rongelapese that their

homeland was safe and returned them there. Upon their return,

U.S. medical officers shifted the emphasis of their study to

what researchers who studied the documents released in the

1990s described as ``the formation of an integrated long-term

human environmental research program to document the

bioaccumulation of fallout and the human effects of this

exposure.'' In sum, U.S. officials knew they were placing the

Rongelapese in a radioactive environment, even though the

islanders had already sustained more than a lifetime's worth

of radiation.

A 1982 U.S. Department of Energy report indicated that some

inhabited areas of Rongelap were as contaminated as the parts

forbidden to humans. It was the first report prepared for the

Rongelapese in their own language and it shocked them. ``All

we needed to see was the center fold-out and our worst fears

were confirmed!'' Marshall Islands Senator Jeton Anjain told

the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in

1991.

Rongelap, their principal island of residence since their

1957 return, had been assigned a level ``3'' of

contamination, meaning it was unsafe for human habitation.

In 1984, Rongelapese representatives asked the U.S. to

evacuate them. The U.S. refused.

The next year, the Rongelapese left anyway. ``It was by no

means an easy decision, for our people knew that it might

mean they and their children would never again know life on

their ancestral homeland of the last 4,000 years,'' Anjain

told the U.S. Senate committee.

``But the safety of our children and the unborn was more

important.''

After living on radioactive Rongelap for 28 years, 70

islanders were moved by Greenpeace to Majetto Island, 100

miles away. Confirming their fears, a 1988 study authorized

by the U.S. government and subsequent official testimony

recommended that part of Rongelap Atoll be considered

``forbidden'' territory and that the remaining part would be

safe only if inhabitants ate imported food for the next 30 to

50 years.

the only thing I could think of was nazi germany

Residents of Rongelap and Enewetak atolls were also used in

human radiation experiments involving radioactive tracers of

tritiated water and chromium-51 injections, Marshall Islands

Foreign Minister Phillip Muller told the U.S. Senate

Committee on Governmental Affairs in 1996.

The U.S. Department of Energy withheld critical information

about the adverse effects of U.S. weapons tests from the U.S.

Congress and Marshallese officials, Muller said, and medical

research without the consent of Marshallese subjects

continued.

Marshallese Senator Tony de Brum told the committee that

U.S. doctors 50 years ago pulled healthy as well as unhealthy

teeth of islanders without their consent, for use in

cesium, strontium or plutonium studies. Even in the mid-

1990s, islanders were unsure whether they were being cared

for or studied by U.S. medical personnel, de Brum said.

In 1999, Muller's allegations of human radiation

experiments were confirmed by the Department of Energy, the

successor agency of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Declassified documents showed that U.S. officials included

the irradiated islanders under the umbrella of its extensive

biological program. Its worst known cases included x-raying

the male organs of Oregon and Washington state prisoners,

feeding radioactive fallout materials to university students,

giving small doses of radioactive iron to pregnant women and

feeding Quaker Oats laced with radioactive traces of iron and

calcium to supposedly mentally retarded boys in a

Massachusetts state home. Upon first learning about these

kinds of experiments in 1993, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary

said, ``The only thing I could think of was Nazi Germany.''

who will pay?

Under the U.N. Trusteeship, the U.S. government was to

prepare the people of the Marshall Islands for self-

government. In 1986, President Reagan signed the Compact of

Free Association after its ratification by the Marshall

Islands government and Congress. Its provisions expired in

2001. New provisions for the compact were agreed upon earlier

this year, but they are silent on U.S. funding that has since

become inadequate to cover the spiraling claims of those

harmed by U.S. nuclear weapons testing, including Bravo's

fallout.

There may be a ray of hope for the Marshallese, however.

The compacts say that nuclear testing damages to persons or

property discovered after the original 1986 agreement can be

covered in a new request to the U.S. Congress with

documentation that circumstances have changed.

One changed circumstance is that the U.S. government did

not disclose to the Marshallese government the yield of 44 of

the 66 U.S. nuclear weapons tests detonated in its republic

until 1993. The next year, a comprehensive list of 1,054 U.S.

nuclear weapons tests worldwide and their yields was made

public by the Department of Energy. It shows that the yield

of 82 tests in the U.S.-administered Bikini, Enewetak and

Johnston Atolls and Pacific waters from 1946 to 1962 was at

least 128,704 kilotons. That's the equivalent of 8,580

Hiroshima-sized bombs, or 1.47 such bombs per day for 16

years.

A second changed circumstance is that the personal-injury

and property claims arising from nuclear weapons testing have

exceeded the capacity of the $150 million trust fund

established to pay them.

The people of Enewetak and Bikini have been awarded just

over $1 billion for property damages, radiological cleanup,

loss of use and hardship and suffering, but as of the end of

2002, less than one percent of that money could be paid. And

class-action damage claims for the people of Rongelap and

Utrik are still pending.

About 5,000 claims seeking a combined $5.75 billion for

radiation-related damages arising from U.S. weapons testing

in the Pacific have been pressed. The U.S. has paid $759

million.

In 2000, invoking the ``changed circumstances'' provision

of the compact, the Marshallese government asked the U.S.

Congress for more funds and services to meet health costs and

property damages. (Its petition can be viewed online at

www.rmiembassyus.org_click ``nuclear'' and then

``petition.'')

In November 2001, the Marshallese government's petition was

resubmitted to a new U.S. Congress and President Bush. As of

early this month, the U.S. has yet to take any action.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House Concurrent Resolution 364 which recognizes more than 5 decades of strategic partnership between the United States and the people of the Marshall Islands in the pursuit of international peace and security.

During World War II, the Marshall Islands were a strategic battleground. In 1944 and as a result of the heroic efforts of U.S. Armed Forces as well as the courageous assistance of the people of the Marshall Islands, the islands were successfully liberated from Japan's oppressive regime and a new cooperative partnership between the United States and the Marshalls was forged.

By 1947, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) became one of six entities in the

Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) established by the United Nations and administered by the United States. This alliance obligated the United States to foster the development of self-governance and promote economic, social, and educational advancement of the people of the RMI.

However, on March 1, 1954, at 6:45 a.m., at the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the United States detonated the Bravo shot, a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Acknowledged as the greatest nuclear explosion ever detonated, the Bravo test vaporized 6 islands and created a mushroom cloud 25 miles in diameter.

While U.S. servicemen on Rongerik Atoll were evacuated within hours of the blast, Marshallese residents of Utirik and Rongelap were left behind for at least a day, resulting in their exposure to significant radiation. At the time of their removal, the people of these atolls were already suffering burns and loss of hair.

Also returned prematurely to their atolls, the people of Rongelap and Utirik received additional exposure causing many to believe that they were used to study the effects of radiation on human beings. Recently declassified information contains strong indications that human experimentation using the people of the exposed atolls was indeed part of the nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands.

These tests exposed the people of the Marshalls to severe health problems and genetic anomalies for generations to come. Yet the United States has not made good on its promise to compensate citizens of the Marshall Islands for loss or damage to property and person resulting from the nuclear testing program which the Government of the United States conducted in the Marshall Islands between June 30, 1946 and August 18, 1958.

From 1946 to 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, representing nearly 80 percent of all atmospheric tests ever conducted by the United States. If one were to calculate the net yield of these tests, it would be equivalent to the detonation of 1.7 Hiroshima bombs every day for 12 years.

Conducted in peacetime, the effects of the U.S. nuclear testing program in the Marshall Islands continues to be devastating and funds provided by the United States under the Compact of Free Association are grossly inadequate to provide for health care, environmental monitoring, personal injury claims, or land and property damage. I believe the survivors of U.S. atomic tests conducted in the Marshall Islands deserve just compensation and I am pleased that at a minimum H. Con. Res. 364 recognizes the historic contribution the people of the Marshall Islands have made in the cold-war struggle to preserve international peace and promote nuclear disarmament.

Today, the RMI provides use of its islands for the United States to develop a deployable missile defense system to reduce the risks of nuclear missile attacks and this is just another example of the RMI's unmatched record of working in conjunction with the leadership of the United States in pursuit of international peace and security. I commend the people of the Marshalls for their commitment to the rights and well-being of the peoples of the world and I recognize with solemn regard the sacrifices they have made so that you and I and future generations may live in peace.

I commend Chairman Richard Pombo of the House Resources Committee for introducing this legislation of which I am an original cosponsor. I thank my good friend for his leadership and for recently leading a congressional delegation to the Pacific Territories where we met with island leaders, including those from the Marshall Islands. Chairman Pombo invited Secretary Gale Norton to accompany us on this visit and I commend both the Secretary and the chairman for traveling to the Pacific Territories to see firsthand the difficulties we are facing in the region.

As the ranking member of the House International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, I also want to thank Chairman Jim Leach of the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific for sponsoring this legislation and for working with Chairman Pombo and me to move this legislation to the International Relations Committee for mark-up. I also thank Chairman Henry Hyde and Ranking Member Tom Lantos of the International Relations Committee for their support.

Finally, on behalf of the people of American Samoa, I again recognize with solemn regard the sacrifices our Pacific Island cousins have made in pursuit of international peace and I am hopeful that one day the U.S. Congress will declare March 1 as a national day of remembrance for the survivors of U.S. nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of House Concurrent Resolution 364, which I introduced recently to formally recognize a political, social, and strategic relationship that is very unique to the history of the United States. The House Committee on Resources has witnessed this relationship over the years and has a unique understanding of the issues that affect the insular areas, having oversight over all of the former United Nations trust territories.

Today we consider this legislation in light of both the strong history between the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the United States as well as the common ties that will keep our nations closely connected for decades to come. For over 50 years, the United States has enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the citizens of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan proposed a new status for the trust territories of the Pacific through negotiated Compacts of Free Association. After having status as a United Nations trust territory for many years, in 1986 these islands chose to become sovereign states. Starting in 1986 when Congress passed the Compact Act, we made the agreement to strive to continue to maintain both economic and political stability in this region, including working to advance economic self-reliance in these islands. Congress also strongly endorsed the continuation of this relationship when we passed H.J. Res. 63, the new Compact of Free Association, by a strong bipartisan vote last year with the help of the House Committee on International Relations and numerous other House committees.

About 2 weeks ago, the citizens of the Marshall Islands, as well as many others, recognized a moment in time that was significant in American history and was a part of the daily lives of Marshallese citizens from 1946 to 1958. During this period, the United States was performing nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands that would prove primary to the success of our country during the Cold War. The contributions of the Marshall Islanders during these years further helped bring a positive and peaceful end to the Cold War that saw true democracies established across the globe.

In particular, H. Con. Res. 364 points to the significance of the nuclear weapons test that was code-named Bravo and its role in the half-century relationship that still exists between our countries. On March 1, 1954, the United States tested this weapon at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It was the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated by our country. Its explosive power was nearly 1,000 times greater than the weapon used in 1945 in our attack on Hiroshima, Japan. This event and the success that came from our nuclear testing program will forever link the United States in history with the Marshall Islands. But the Marshallese continue to show their support for our country, as seen in 80 of their citizens serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. Our common pursuit of peace through working closely together through political, diplomatic, and strategic ties continues to this day.

I was fortunate to have recently been able to travel to the Marshall Islands with Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton, as well as other members of the House Committee on Resources. The openness and kindness with which we were received will not be forgotten, as we were able to talk to some of the survivors of these nuclear tests and comprehend better the level of understanding that remains between the Marshallese and our government to this day. In fact, two Bikini citizens are here with us today to see this legislation move to the House floor: the Mayor of Bikini, Mr. Eldon Note, and Senator Juda from Bikini as well.

This bond should not be understated. I hope that other Members of this body will also show their recognition of this alliance in supporting H. Con. Res. 364 today. We continue to work with the Marshallese in both a socioeconomic and national defense standpoint. Be it the new schools being built with Compact of Free Association moneys or the critical work being done at the Ronald Reagan ballistic missile defense test site, our mutual ties founded in democracy and freedom can, with this legislation, be properly acknowledged.

I would like to thank the House Committee on International Relations for their help in bringing this legislation to the floor of the House in such an expeditious manner and look forward to the strong bipartisan support of this concurrent resolution by my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, over 7,000 miles due west from our Nation's Capitol at a location roughly 2,700 miles southwest from the Hawaiian Islands and 2,000 miles southwest from Guam lies a nation of more than 50,000 people. The Republic of the Marshall Islands comprises 30 atolls and 1,152 islands, an area that in total land mass represents roughly the equivalent in size of Washington, D.C. but straddles an area of about 770,000 square miles of the western Pacific Ocean.

Today the people of the Marshall Islands, their culture, their history, their special relationship with the United States, which this resolution seeks to appropriately recognize, is largely unknown and overlooked by most Americans. Their special relationship with the United States is embodied in a Compact of Free Association and the unique partnership the compact establishes between our two nations.

Last year, we as a Congress renewed this compact with the Marshalls for another 20 years, and we take this opportunity today to recognize the beginning of a new era in our strategic partnership. I am proud to have taken part in the compact's renewal and in the work on this legislation as a Member of this House. As our colleagues from Hawaii stated last year when the compact legislation was brought to this floor, this may be an issue of little note for many of the Members of the House. It would be easy, he said, to say that the compact represents an area of forgotten people, of the never noticed, perhaps lost in the vastness of the world's largest ocean, a people, a culture, an area that was undiscovered by the Western World until the Spaniards arrived in 1529 seeking a western route for trade. Over the centuries, their culture has flourished and the world has now taken notice.

The United States' relationship with the Marshallese began 5 decades ago during World War II. Allied forces, led by the U.S. Navy and Marines, drove the Japanese Imperial forces from their islands. Following the war, U.S. naval bases were established on the atolls of Kwajalein and Majuro. In 1946, Bikini Atoll was the site for Operation Crossroads, the first postwar atomic weapons tests. Fifty years ago this month, the United States detonated the historic Bravo shot, a 15- megaton hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. For 12 years, the United States detonated more than 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshalls during the development of our Nation's strategic arsenal. The testing in the Marshalls left a legacy that we continue to address to this day. We recognize the important contributions of the Marshalls in our national security programs, and we know that the Free World owes a debt of gratitude to them for their role in the development of our national strategic deterrent. I am hopeful that we will soon address all these issues that the testing era brought for the benefit of our strategic partnership and special relationship.

In January, I was fortunate to have participated in a congressional delegation led by the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo). I was very grateful that he decided to visit the Marshalls as well as other Pacific islands. While in Majuro, we met with President Kessai Note and elected officials from other islands, as well as with the Nuclear Claims Tribunal. This visit was important given the recent renewal of the compact, the anniversary of the Bravo blast, and the security issues facing our world today.

The people of the Marshall Islands have made tremendous sacrifices and contributions on behalf of the United States in the pursuit of peace and freedom around the world. Today, the Marshall Islands are among the United States' greatest friends and most reliable allies. I want to recognize and congratulate the Marshalls' Ambassador to the United States for his efforts in strengthening the relationship between our governments, the Honorable Banny de Brum. I also again want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall), and the Secretary of Interior, Mrs. Norton, for their leadership in recognizing the value of the strategic partnership with this resolution. Mr. Speaker, I urge its unanimous adoption by this House.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in my capacity as the ranking Democrat of the Committee on Resources to support H. Con. Res. 364; recognizing more than five decades of strategic partnership between the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the United States.

Historically, the Committee on Resources held oversight jurisdiction of the former Trust Territory of the Marshall Islands when the United States first took responsibility for the islands and her people shortly after World War II as part of a United Nations trusteeship agreement.

Though we prevailed in war, our country was still healing from the pain and suffering associated with battle. Yet we were mindful that the security of our Nation, and that of the world, depended on our understanding of the destructive nature of our nuclear arsenal.

It is within this context that the people of the Marshall Islands made a sacrifice that is unimaginable for us Americans. On islands where their ancestry could be traced back thousands of years; where their culture flourished, and where they lived in relative peace; the people having been convinced it was ``for the good of mankind'' voluntarily left their homes.

On military ships we loaded their canoes and personal belongings and moved them hundreds of miles away to other islands, safe from nuclear fallout.

Our nuclear testing program commenced and lasted for twelve years, between 1946 and 1958. Within that time, we detonated 67 nuclear devices. One of the 67, detonated on March 1, 1954, in the Bikini Atoll, was the largest ever explosion to occur. Code-named BRAVO, the hydrogen bomb was 1,000 times greater than the weapon used against Japan in 1945.

Shifting winds in the Marshall Islands caused those that were placed out of harm's way to be exposed to nuclear fallout. We have continuing responsibilities for their care and rehabilitation. We continue to work with the Marshall Islands government to resolve issues of healthcare, environmental remediation, and eventual resettlement of atolls still contaminated by nuclear fallout.

After the U.S. nuclear testing program, we continued to assist the trust territory in their political, economic, and social development, consistent with the United Nations trusteeship agreement.

In the mid-1980's, in an act of self-determination, the Marshall Islands chose to become a sovereign nation in free association with the United States. This political partnership fulfilled the U.N. trusteeship agreement and built upon the relationship established during the trust territory period. It continues to this day.

In November of last year, Congress continued our Nation's relationship with the Marshall Islands by approving amendments to our existing Compact relationship. The term of the amended Compacts is for the next 20 years. However, given our history, I imagine that our political partnership will outlive such timeline.

We may never fully understand the personal hardships our nuclear testing program caused to the people of the Marshall Islands, and more specifically those directly affected communities from the atolls of Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap, and Utrok.

And we should always remember the sacrifices made by the good people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands to strengthen our Nation and make the world more secure.

I thank Chairman Pombo for working with me to recognize the U.S. relationship with the Marshall Islands and to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the BRAVO test with this resolution. I also thank the Committee on International Relations for expediting this resolution so that it could be considered by the House.

I urge all my colleagues to support H. Con. Res. 364.