On July 15, 2013 Stars and
Stripes reported that sailors onboard
the USS Ronald Reagan who
participated in the March 2011
humanitarian mission in Japan named
Operation Tomodachi were suing
TEPCO because of the damaging
health effects that resulted from their
exposure to the Fukushima fallout.14
Sailors reported hair falling out,
abnormal menstrual bleeding, highpitched noises, anxiety, tumors, and
cancer as a result of their exposure to
the fallout. 15 The Department of
Defense denies the sailors claims and
says the reported health problems are
not related to exposure to radiation
from Fukushima.15
In Hawaii where I lived for the
last four years I noticed abnormalities
in the plant life and health problems
among animals and humans alike that
may or may not be associated with
f a l l o u t f ro m F u k u s h i m a . T h o s e
abnormalities included white spots on
the plant life, dead birds, a dead cow,
and a dead cat with no visible wounds
or cuts, unusually large tumors on a
turtle at Leleiwi Park near Richardson
Beach, and the consistent clearing of
the throat by children and dry
persistent coughing among kids and
adults alike, to name a few. To be fair,
the turtles in Hilo have been showing
up by the dozens with tumors long
before the Fukushima meltdown, and
a recent study says the tumors are
being caused by high levels of
nitrogen in rainwater runoff, but there
have been very few studies on the
effects of radioactive fallout on turtles
or other sea life from nuclear testing or
accidents in the region. So it’s
Picture of a turtle found with multiple
tumors at Leleiwi Park Oct. 29, 2012.
possible, I believe, that radiation from
nuclear testing in the Pacific in the 50s
and 60s or depleted uranium used at
the U.S. Army’s Pohokuloa Training
Area could also be a potential cause
or contributing factor to the ill health of
the turtles. Also, the lifeguard I talked
to about the turtle I found October 29,
2012 said it was unusual to see them
with tumors in that exact location. He
said they usually show up further
north, where everybody surfs. It was
the first and only time I had spotted a
turtle with tumors, at least noticeable
ones, during the whole four years I
was in Hawaii. And I saw dozens of
different turtles while I was there, not
only near Richardson Beach, but at
beaches all over Hawaii.
While on the Big Island I
listened to public radio news
broadcasts every day and scanned the
local paper regularly, however there
was little discussion of the possible
environmental and health impacts that
could emerge on the islands from the
Fukushima fallout. In fact, it appeared
to me as though we were purposely
being denied information from the
local media in order to prevent panic
and to preserve the economic
relationship Hawaii has had with
Japan over the last couple of decades,
particularly within the fishing industry.
Having recently read Beverly Deepe
Keever’s News Zero: The New York
Times and the Bomb I realized just
how severe the ongoing misreporting
on Fukushima probably was. Keever
explains in her book that the U.S.
coverup of the environmental and
health effects of the 15-megaton
Castle Bravo nuclear test on March 1,
1954 was so immense that it took
decades to uncover just doses of the
truth, while some Pacific islanders are
still waiting for compensation due from
radiation sickness caused by nuclear
dusting and fallout.16 Keever writes in
a wagingpeace.org article titled
“Bravo: 60 Years of Suffering, CoverUps, Injustice” that:
“Within days after the Bravo
shot, the U.S. cover-up had secretly
taken a more menacing turn. In an
injustice exposing disregard for human
health, the Bravo-exposed islanders
[43]
were swept into a top-secret project in
which they were used as human
subjects to research the effects of
radioactive fallout. . . For this humansubject research, the islanders had
neither been asked nor gave their
informed consent - which was
established as an essential
international standard when the
Nuremberg code was written following
the war crimes convictions of German
medical officers.”17
When I realized the potential
consequences of a Fukushima coverup sometime in 2013 not only did my
wife and I decide that we should hold
off on some of the sushi and poke we
were eating, but that maybe we should
leave Hawaii all together, just in case.
After reading that 300 tons per day of
radioactive groundwater from the
Fukushima Daichi plant had been
leaking into the ocean since 2011 I
thought it was crazy to not think we
were at a higher risk of being exposed.
For comparison on the fallout
coverage area, Keever says fallout
from the one-time explosion of the 15
megaton Bravo shot covered a 7,000
square mile