The Coming War on China Page #4

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and detonated the bomb, knowing full well

which way it was going to go.

They still had an opportunity to evacuate,

even on the day of the shot.

But these people were not evacuated,

we were not evacuated,

and the people in the

path were not evacuated.

So that only leaves one to believe that

number one, the United States

needed some guinea pigs

to study what the effects

of radiation would do.

And that's a pretty strong indication

that the United States knew that.

- It seems extraordinary, here we are,

this far into the 21st century,

talking to people still frightened

of all that nuclear

fallout, all those tests,

all those years ago.

The impression I get is that

there's so little trust among people.

- The US is trying to provide as much

information, as much good

information as we can.

And so I wouldn't accept

the characterization that

there've been lies and cover-ups.

- The word guinea pigs comes

up a lot from these survivors.

- I would refer you to our

embassy website on that.

- I've read it.

- And that question was looked at

during the Clinton administration

and that was not the

conclusion they came to.

- [John Narrating] The secret

of the Marshall Islands

is Project 4.1.

Declassified documents

reveal a scientific program

that began as a study of mice

and became a study of human

beings exposed to radiation.

- [Radio Announcer] Chicago

is where it all began.

And to the AEC Argonnne

Labs in Chicago last week

came seven men, natives

of the Marshall Islands.

Levin is from Omelek.

He and the rest were irradiated by our

March 19th '54 hydrogen bomb test.

John is mayor of Rongelap,

which is 100 miles from Bikini.

John, as we said, is a savage,

but a happy, amenable savage.

His grandfather ran almost

naked on his small atoll.

The white man brought money and religion

and a market for his copa.

John Reeds knows about God

and is a pretty good mayor.

The iron room is a radiation

detector for human beings.

Inside John the mayor,

whose first visit to

the white man's country

meant San Francisco cable

cars and Chicago skyscrapers

and streamlined trains,

whose first visit to

the white man's country

meant the iron room.

A savage governs his life by ritual

and he understands this because

he thinks of it as a new ritual.

Sitting alone inside the room,

outside, a strange kind of

priest in a long, white coat.

When the ritual of the iron

room was over for John,

it began for the others.

As each finished, he was told it was over

and he was given apples and

other good things to eat.

Then he took off the ritual clothing

and the seven men put on

the suits and top coats

they had been lent in Hawaii

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