By Ben Pangelinan
For Variety

THE United States Army taught Robert Celestial to take orders and not question authority. This blind obedience keeps order and mission in focus in the United States military.
Today, no less patriotic than when he shoveled radioactive debris into an enormous cement vault on Runit island in the Enewetak Atoll, he takes no orders from military superiors and continues to ask questions of the highest authorities in our local and federal government.
Robert, along with many others like his fellow Guam soldier Edward Blas, who saw duty in Enewetak, became sick and were stricken with one illness after another that has robbed them of a normal healthy life. They watched and learned of the many who had seen duty in the clean-up in the Marshall Islands fall ill prematurely, suffering from lung cancer, tumors and other terminal diseases, 20, 30, and even 40 years preceding the time such diseases usually come upon in old age.
Robert survived his battle with the sicknesses and returned home to Guam to find the same ailments befalling his friends, neighbors and family. And he began to question, study and research. He presented a four-page report to the Legislature in 2001 that tied the sickness and deaths of many on Guam to what happens to people who are exposed to radiation. Many in the community scoffed at the idea. The United States has never exposed the people of Guam to radiation. The wind patterns were wrong and there was no way that radiation could have traveled over 1500 miles in the atmosphere and reached Guam.
If in fact Guam received radiation fall-out from the atomic tests in the Marshalls, then the United States would have told the people. The United States never admitted a thing and continued its policy of denial. The official line toed by the powers was, “we would have told you if we did this.” Skepticism was putting mildly the reaction he received.
He did not quit. The 2001 four-page document became the 97-page Blue Ribbon Panel Committee Action Report on Radiation Contamination on Guam 1946-1958 by the legislatively established committee in 2002. He gathered evidence from military personnel stationed on Guam that provided direct knowledge testimony of radiation fallout measured by Geiger counters on Guam. He pored over declassified documents and found proof of ships contaminated with radiation pulling into Guam, which were decontaminated and washed down in our waters.
Scientific reports of radioactive elements measured on Guam were uncovered. He petitioned the Board on Radiation Effects Research and presented testimony arguing for Guam’s inclusion in programs for persons exposed to and affected by radiation fallout. All the while, the United States never freely gave up information or admitting to the truth they knew. It maintained its policy of denial.
In April 29 2005, the National Research Committee’s report to Congress cited the National Research Council of the National Academies Assessments of the Scientific Information for the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program, which stated: “The committee initiated an independent assessment of the radiological consequences related to the weapons tests in the Pacific to people living on Guam.”
As a result of its analysis, the committee concludes that Guam received measurable fallout from the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the Pacific. Residents of Guam during the period should be eligible for compensation under RECA in a way similar to that of persons considered to be downwinders.”
Robert and the Pacific Association for Radiation Survivors-1, Windmills -0.
Much work remains ahead, but there is reason for real hope.
Ben Pangelinan is a senator in the 29th Guam Legislature and a former speaker now serving in his seventh term in the Guam Legislature. E-mail comments or suggestions to senbenp@guam.net or ctzenben@ite.net.