http:\/\/kauaieclectic.blogspot.com\/2009\/07\/musings-toxic-shadows.html<\/a><\/p>\nSaturday, July 4, 2009<\/p>\n
Musings: Toxic Shadows<\/h2>\n
The high-pitched whine of aerials last night and a couple of pre-dawn
\nfirecrackers this morning served as warning of the fireworks free-for-all in
\nstore tonight. Koko isn’t keen on snap, crackle, ka-boom and pop, so we\u00b9ll
\ndig out of here before things get too wild and she turns into a trembling,
\nslinking, miserable little pup.<\/p>\n
Then come tomorrow, we\u00b9ll see the remains of the frenzy in the red paper,
\npieces of wire and other debris littering the roads, yards and beaches,
\nwashing into the ocean, settling on the reef.<\/p>\n
It seems that everything connected with the military, even the observance of
\nour nation\u00b9s independence, has its toxic residue.<\/p>\n
Kyle Kajihiro, program director of the American Friends Service Committee
\nand DMZ Hawaii, and Bob Nichols, a journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area,
\noutlined the extent of the military’s dirty footprint on Hawaii on the
\nrecent KKCR show that Jimmy Trujillo and I hosted.<\/p>\n
The U.S. has some 161 military facilities throughout the Hawaiian Islands,
\nand as Kyle noted, they create “a toxic shadow that affects the surrounding
\ncommunities.” Hawaii has 800 to 1,000 military-contaminated sites, many of
\nthem around Pearl Harbor.<\/p>\n
While the contaminants at these sites all have environmental and human
\nhealth implications – none of them good – what I found especially alarming
\nwas the revelation that the military also has introduced so-called “depleted
\nuranium,” or DU, to the Islands.<\/p>\n
For a more thorough understanding of just what this is all about, check out
\nBob’s article on the radioactive uranium that American weapons have
\nunleashed in Iraq. The piece won a 2005 Project Censored award.<\/p>\n
When weapons made with uranium components are shot or exploded, they create
\nUranium Oxide Dust (UOD). And as Bob explained on the radio show, the
\nparticles are so tiny, they can penetrate our skin and clothing, even
\nprotective gear that is intended to prevent radiation exposure.<\/p>\n
Kyle said that documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and
\nthrough litigation indicate the military engaged in classified weapons
\ntesting in Hawaii, including the Davy Crockett, one of the smallest nuclear
\nweapons ever built.<\/p>\n
These weapons were possibly used at the Army’s training facilities at Makua
\non Oahu, the island of Kahoolawe (which served as a bombing target for some
\n50 years) and the Big Island’s Pohakuloa, where “DU” has been detected.
\nAdditionally, Kyle said, evidence has come to light that the Army used
\nweapons with uranium components at Schofield, also on Oahu.<\/p>\n
“This goes against what the Army has said for many years,” he said. In other
\nwords, the military has consistently denied using these materials in Hawaii
\n– until it got busted and the truth was revealed.<\/p>\n
But just because the military’s dirty little secret is now public doesn’t
\nmean that anything has changed. Kyle has attempted to learn more about the
\nextent of radioactive contamination by filing numerous FOIA requests.
\nThey’ve all been ignored by the military, which is meanwhile seeking permits
\nto avoid cleaning up its radioactive mess.<\/p>\n
And that raises a key question: can microscopic particles that are easily
\nblown about by the wind ever be cleaned up? And even if they could be, how
\nmuch is being re-introduced by the troops and equipment returning from Iraq,
\nwhere we know this stuff has been used?<\/p>\n
That leads to another question: what is UOD doing to the health of American
\ntroops, the people of Iraq and the citizens and visitors of Hawaii? Bob said
\nthese particles cause cancer wherever they settle in the body, and other
\nmaladies as well.<\/p>\n
But the military is using the same strategy of denial it followed when
\nconfronted with veterans sickened by Agent Orange – tested years ago in
\nWailua and used extensively in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – and suffering
\nfrom Gulf War syndrome.<\/p>\n
What\u00b9s more, Kyle said Hawaii’s Congressional delegation has expressed
\nabsolutely no interest in the DU issue, and a bill that would have called
\nfor DU monitoring in areas around military installations died quietly in the
\nstate Legislature.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, even though the military has made numerous messes in Hawaii, most
\nof which have never been cleaned and likely never will, it is still seeking
\nto expand its presence in the Islands, especially on Kauai, which I wrote
\nabout for the Honolulu Weekly.<\/p>\n
And why? Who is the big enemy we\u00b9re facing? It’s not Russia any more, and
\nChina could bring us to our knees simply by refusing to buy any more of our
\nbonds.<\/p>\n
Our huge standing military, and the activities it’s carrying out all around
\nthe world, is costing taxpayers a fortune. It\u00b9s also taking a huge toll on
\nhuman lives, both our own soldiers, who are killed and maimed in combat and
\ncommitting suicide at unprecedented rates, and the civilian populations that
\nare increasingly being targeted.<\/p>\n
So on this, the day set aside to celebrate America’s freedom from the
\ntyranny of the British colonial power, it seems appropriate to re-examine
\nthe true price we’re paying for having the world’s largest military and
\nremember the words of John Quincy Adams:<\/p>\n
“We are friends of freedom everywhere, defenders only of our own.”
\nPosted by Joan at 1:02 PM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mahalo to Joan Conrow and Jimmy Trujillo for having me on their KKCR radio program “Out of the Box” to discuss military environmental contamination in Hawai’i.\u00a0\u00a0 Joan wrote a post on her blog about the conversation. >><< http:\/\/kauaieclectic.blogspot.com\/2009\/07\/musings-toxic-shadows.html Saturday, July 4, 2009 Musings: Toxic Shadows The high-pitched whine of aerials last night and a couple … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Conrow: Toxic Shadows”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2771"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2771"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2773,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2771\/revisions\/2773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}