PRIVACY ACT MATERIAL REM
OVED
April 9,
>
1975
e
Rongelap Island,
Dr. Robert Conard
Brookhaven National
Micronesia.
Laboratory
Upton, Long Island, New York
HOLPPG
11790
Dear Dr. Conard,
I'm sorry | was not at home when you visited my island.
Instead, | have spent the past few months travelling to Japan and
Fiji learning about treatment of atomic bomb victims and about
attempts to end the nuclear threat in the Pacific.
Since leaving Rongelap on the peace ship Fri, | have learned a
great deal and am writing to you to clarify some of my feelings regarding your continued use of us as research subjects.
Ol thriz C6f/9 78
Dr. Cevato
for your government's bomb research effort.
BOX No.
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{ realize now that your entire career is based on our illness.
We are far more valuable to you than you are to us.
You have never
really cared about us as people -- only as a group of guinea pigs
people on Rongelap,
facts and figures.
For me and for the other
it is life which matters most.
For you it
is
There is no question about your technical compe-
tence, but we often wonder about your humanity.
and your technological machinery.
We want to be free.
We don't need you
We want our life and our health.
In all the years you've come to our island, you've never treated
us as people. You've never sat down among us and really helped us
honestly with our problems. You have told people that the 'worst is
over'', then
died.
JI don't know yet how many new cases you'll
find during your current trip, but | am very worried that we will
suffer again and again.
1'1] never forget how you told a newspaper reporter that it was
our fault that
_ died because we wouldn't let you examine us in
early 1972.
You seem to forget that
you work for who murdered
As a result of my trip,
to know about.
it
is your country and the people
I've made some decisions that I want you
The main decision is that we do not want to see you
again. We want medical care from doctors who care about us, not about
collecting information for the U.S. government's war makers.
We want a doctor to Jive on our island permanently. We don't need
medical care only when it is convenient for you to visit. We want to
be able to see a doctor when we want to. America has been trying to
Amertcanize us by flying flags and using cast-off textbooks.
It's about
time America gave us the kind of medical care it provides its own citizens.
We've never really trusted you.
So we're going to invite doctors
from hospitals In Hiroshima to examine us In a caring way.
503301
PRIVACY ACT MATERIAL REMOVED
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