- aa _“ Clee Meee Uretid Sites Denartment of the Interior Teo . TIICE O: THE SECRETARY baoavd VU: come. WASEDIOSTION D.C 202K AOeB27 DRAFT ADVANCE TO oMG Way Honorable Thomas P. O'Neill Speaker of the House of Representatives Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. 20515 Speaker: Enclosed is a draft bill "to amend section 106 of the Act of October 15, 1977, as amended, concerning health care in the Marshall Islands, and for other purposes." We recommend that the bill be introduced and enacted. The draft bill results from the nuclear testing program conducted by the Unired States in the Marshall Islands, Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, from 1946 to 1958. Atmospheric tests were then performed in the Marshalls, 42 at the Enewetak Atoll and 25 at the Bikini Atoll, with consequences that have become well-known: -- The Bikini people who were moved off their island in 1946 cannot now be permitted to return, because it has been concluded that Bikini Island remains unsafe for human habitation; --The Enewetak people, as a result of a major rehabilitation program recently completed by the United States, are now able to return and reside on the southern islands of Enewetak atoll; --The people of Rongelap and Utirik, who were subject to a particularly serious and unexpected exposure that occurred on March l, 1954, have received some monetary compensation from the United States and are receiving continued medical care provided by the United States. Public Law 96-205 provides, in section 102, for a program of medical care and treatment for such people of the Marshalls "as may be found to be or to have been exposed to radiation from the nuclear weapons testing program.” That statute directed the Secretary of the Interior to submit to the Congress by January 1, 1981, a plan for doing so. The former Secretary of the Interior submitted on January 7, 1981, a preliminary report on the subject. He acknowledged that the preliminary report did not constitute the "plan" contemplated by the statute, but he described some of the difficulties created by the statute and encountered by the interested Federal agencies and by the interested Marshallese people as they worked with it. Chief among those difficulties was and is the uncertainty as to who was intended by the Congress to be the beneficiaries of the special medical progran. BEST COPY AVAILABLE