Hiroko Langinbelik
Rongelap Victim of the 1954 Bikini Hydrogen Bomb Test
Greeting from me to you and also from the people and our Mayor who sent me here to represent them to this meeting. Now I will tell you a true story of what was happened in the first Day of March.
I saw the flash all over the horizon and after, the strong wind. It was Monday in Rongelap and we went to school. After school my sister and three other girls and a boy and me went to Jabuaan and find some coconuts. When we came back we had something on our eyes, the powder of the bombs and the evening we were itching all our body and we could not sleep. The next morning we had vomiting and we did not want to eat and at the same day there was a plane came. The men in the plane went straight to the well, examined the well and didn't say anything but they went to Kwajalein. And early the next day early I the morning there was a plane and the big battleship who came and picked up all the people and went to Aelenae to take the people there. We went to Kwajalein. Every day in Kwajalein we go to the beach to soak us until noon. After lunch we got to went again to the beach until five o'lock. After Kwajalei we got to Ejit and spent two year there and go back to Rongelap. When we were there, they tested some more bombs. That is why we more cancers. We have brain cancer of tumors thyroid cancers, stomak cancers, leukemia cancers and so forth.
Now I will come to how they help the people with money. They give me 25000 dollars when they removed my thyroid. As for now under the Compact of Free Association, we are paid quarterly if we lucky 108$ for each. But sometime $85 for each person. Now our doctors are Marshallese and only 3-4 American doctors.
Well, before I close my speech I want to thank you once more for the
invitation from the Gensuikyo through the Senator and she also want me
to accompany here and want also to give my sincere thanks to Gensuikyo
to invite Nelson-san and the municipal of Rongelap sent to come to this
meeting on behalf of them with the invitation from Gensuikyo to Nelson
Anjain. I thank you million times.