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Lijong Eknilang tells the World Court about the impact of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands
"Not long after the light from Bravo, it began to 'snow' in Rongelap. We had heard about snow from the missionaries and other westerners who had come to our islands, but this was the first time we saw white particles fall from the sky and cover our village. Of course, in 1954, Marshallese children and their parents did not know that the snow was radioactive fall-out from the Bravo shot."
"My own health has suffered very much, as a result of radiation poisoning. I cannot have children. I have had miscarriages on seven occasions. On one of those occasions, I miscarried after four months. The child I miscarried was severely deformed; it had only one eye."
"Women have experienced many reproductive cancers and abnormal births. They give birth, not to children as we like to think of them, but to things we could only describe as "octopuses", "apples", "turtles", and other things in our experience. We do not have Marshallese words for these kinds of babies because they were never born before the radiation came..."
Excerpt from the testimony of Lijon Eknilang to the International Court of Justice in 1995.
Photo composite: Lijong Eknilang (left), New Zealand Attorney General entering the court to speak in the 1995 nuclear weapons case (right).
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