i love 5. uh huh. i live in paradise. the largest and southern most i live in the marianas archipelago, while han is dotted with blush, palm trees, and miles and miles of soft white and surrounded by turquoise squatters of the pacific ocean. but our paradise has the toxic legacy. swamp shares the history of contamination with many us and overseas military base community. it is common knowledge that the us military use is highly toxic substances and we are experiencing contamination of our land and waters by the agent orange p. fast pcp is petroleum fuels heavy metals, fonts, high organic compounds, all the military reward time cocktails. so you can imagine from being carpet bomb during world war 2. we're an island is been referred to by veterans as one big superfund site. a history of military dumping impacts the health of many families.

here are 212 square mile island. it only takes 2 hours to drive from one end to the other. that's how small we are. and we're inundated with environmental contamination. in this episode, i'm sharing real stories of community members whose homes are located by known military toxic dump sites, and how their families are among countless others in the communities suffering from clusters of rare cancers in chronic illness. while it's difficult to definitively connect their health issues, but the environment, the correlation is enough for them to question why their family members are di, doctor least, and that's have it on a professor at university of bombs and primary convenor, a big long coalition for peace and justice sat down to me and shared just how much this topic legacy left by the us military affects us today. when we talk about the impact of the transition on the health of tomorrows of us as an indigenous

population. um then we see is that the toxicity that comes from military activities from war preparation, military exercises, it really is manifested in our physical bodies and we see this in cancer rates, for example. and so one such evidence of this is the study that was done by novel and had it which was published in 1997. and in their study, what they did was they looked and surveyed a 25 year period of cancer death certificates. and so, and looking at those death certificates they identified and you know, computed what was the incidence of, of death of cancer on, on go on. and they were able to establish that tomorrow's or the highest risk for cancer. and that the incidence of cancer was increasing and this is after they

used different calculations from the world health organization to standardize that across populations. and the 3rd finding which for me is, was the most significant was that they were able to glean and 1997 that the villages of santa rita and you go where the ones with the highest incidence rates. and they, in their article and particularly point out that those are the villages with the largest military base presence. and so you see this, this can grow and see in terms of military activities and the very direct impact on the bodies of tomorrow's. i met up with rudy polco mirror municipality at the heart of while i'm calling moma to to might see where he was born and raised. this municipality is commonly known as mtm and m. c. m. is home of the largest flatland area, and juan called the gun. yes, one more than 70 years ago, run off from

a navy operated power plant in milan. drained into a portion of the, a gun, you swamp, contaminating the residential area. it was totally coordinated by fennel's or p c. b, which or industrial chemicals thing to cancer, run out from the power plant. when to ran into the yard of paco's childhood home. to the 19 ninety's alco challenged the federal government to test for p. c. bees. not only on the swamp and surrounding soil and but on residents whose health may have been effected by chemicals. but all i asked the federal government was to do a physics for the community of mtm at nice every quarter. but that never happens. there's a family right over there in that house, every one of those and stroke cancer and look up where they live right across from the parks. i met up with the know so speak a little hon. pick her up in the home,

directly across the navy power plants. she and 5 of her siblings, that old nasal french heal cancer. tragically, all 5 passed away of cancer and she is the soul cancer survivor. we, we for karen from care and the government testers, right. right, the here's to be of fans. why are you for this case when we were young, i'm sorry we go through the swamp. my net or this can of the navy risk and. c and go down there and would put in the most we put your hands inside. we've got to so many, they're huge and they're very good to find that class and they're in the area. uh, those 2 are from area in the rent to my dad.

and then then farms and same name is my grand kids. and my mom to the brothers and sisters leave around the area to they say yeah, missing there is also from the great there's. uh huh. there are 6 during there was that for me it's hardly because, i mean, i haven't been directly affected, but i've had to like grow up my whole life. i have these memories watching my grandma, like very her siblings. and that hurts. losing family members is quite okay. i feel like they could have had more years on this earth that my baby brother to. yeah. so yeah, my brother really has his cancer from

these are very new and then he was a new bid. and then you know they can to these boom. and that's what i'm very fortunate, i think, right around the origin of my exercises a good way from, you know, like i really selfish to because i'm thankful that my grandma was the one that survived. i like how many, how many those times is did you lose or 5 or vice of moving around my mom to brother, right before the end user, 52019. and then my sister, my older sister, and she has a native in your dentist and she had a 5 set of treatment,

but she never ran out of it. and then i'd love to years later, i have nice uh, uh, native ranger cancer. so huge street in ryan same as me when i ran in 1997 doctor was saying that there is no. so cancer is not really the, and as of right, something is not right, or there is a flat cancer in the same time for lunch going on around the area, which is, oh, these kind of immunizations. less around my dad fish. we see a plan and not by then,

right. we're not going to. there weren't just pcp use in the nearby waters and figured victoria low, low younger arrows, childhood home sections of the top. so at this world, guard to dumpsite were found to be contaminated with hazardous levels of mercury, but arsenic pesticides. and pcp is the property was formerly of the location of military supply warehouses, a military vehicle base yard and a shooting range. the department of defense did a partial cleanup and never came back. oh yes, found that metal fee for this is the metal roofing selected and just collecting. so those even um the rest of the day on that i think a year. yeah. some of the metal center that really belong to the military. these are all,

i don't know what all these are pipes. so blue cross carts and is there might be a couple in there, but you know, i just threw them all in there. so i know every time the bus, the guys comedy kind of fly all over the place. yeah. when i was a kid, i would play in this with martha and bully me and i would like play in the jungle. and then i find like little pieces of metal guns, how her hand creaming the land that i grew up and talked to is my mother's land. and she inherited it from her mom. and they started living there after world war 2 and wednesday, and that had belonged to the family and was mostly used for farming before the war . and then after the war for both my grandmother and her brother built homes in the app on the property. as um, in western and so we had always known that there was

a military waste from the war buried in the property because when we were kids, we went by the playing in the dirt and there was a gun powder or like once my brother found a bon buried in the yard and had to, you know, they had to bring the light bomb squad and everything and it was a bigger deal. but we had been really aware that the property itself had been used as a jump side after the war. but we had never been informed to what extent or what was buried in the property. and so, in 2008, the army corps of engineers had contracted team. they came and they had asked permission from our family and from my uncle ben's family. my problem is brother and his children to sort of dig it up and, and really study what was there and the degree of contamination that had occurred. and so they and said that in 2008 in 2010, they invited our families to long since 90 community center and have like

a public hearing just for our families about what they had found. and so it was the site power point. and all bullet points, and they were, you know, basically saying that it had been both the water and the soil had been so heavily contaminated that the mediation they suggested was excavation and off site removal . which was only which only happened in cases where the contamination was so severe . their member of the town hall meetings. what that experience was like hearing finally in details about contamination and what was in your property for me, it was kind of a almost a shock because nobody ever said we never had any clean up or anything like that. when we, even when they were thinking for the house, it was you jogging, build your house and that was it, right? but it was kind of scary. this is the fact. and now i have grandkids. and how much

pile of dirt do i have to have in the bath so that they can be able to play back there? for how much dirt do i have to put a good, clean dirt so that i can plan something back there and eat off land? i'm not cancer, because that's not a guarantee for me. is the launch of a special military operation mold in $13000.00 far less than the race of joining the ukrainian military. we william slot for you are good enough to still go to end up giving you a need for 2 of us doing the with any of them. surely because it was trustworthy which my friend build for the fine you is fine. yeah. but yeah, the at the, at the end of the was it is i didn't know that you know for your state of great

mental breakdown skills to the doctor. so his anymore, this time you made a couple of dining from the fonts who was the, to sean, your music on some of the. so the just find out of the if cisco on top of the field of worship means it is us, let me go see and use that as a beautiful supervisor of good or should it for you my florida. she knew i was like, you strong enough was instead of the physical not the i think one of the biggest obstacle is we all feel since the lack of accountability and the lack of information. and so i think the 1st thing for our family is like being fully informed. like when we were requesting information about what went

through these particular counseling office, what are some of the house uh, conditions that are connected to you know, this, this doubled up since combination and the water and soil and we were never provided that information, but we requested that as a public hearing number, if you need anything for us to biggest issue is of you know, as part of the community of how bad you know, how badly it's been contaminated and then what does have name for our bodies. what does that mean for our overall house and then come in, cleaning it up. don't just about that. and you know what they had found in the property? was that the soil high level as a lead pcb? arsenic and a ton of other chemicals? i cannot name and that even the water has degrees of contamination that were higher than other areas on the island. and in the public hearing, there were family members from other parts of talked to in monroe who had come

because in their properties there was military come, you know, waste that they had found over the years just like we had. but they weren't told that the public hearing was only dealing with the monte cavalry banners properties because we were like, i guess, considered one of the super fun in science. and so any other properties in the village, they weren't even going to investigate that. it wasn't on their list to come that this was all that they were there to discuss. so like one guy came and was like, you know, i found like tanks buried in my yard. right. and they're like, oh that's, it's not on our list of properties that needed to be cleaned up. so where we can discuss that. i had followed up because of that there. the same year i had lost my 1st child to a rare birth dfcs called in on file a solid square. his intestines had formed outside his body in

a sack and so abdominal wall defects are pretty rare, but are very common here in guam. and so when i had been doing research, you know, instead i've just because i was, as a mother, really trying to understand like, how did this happen? you know, i had found like a connection. i found an article, a scientific article linking the presence of an invalid ssl, or like high incidences of abdominal wall dfacs and a community that had like rocket fuel in the water. and so i was like, well, if there's like a mean it wasn't directly caught and caused, but there was this correlation rates on like could then this environmental contamination have impacted my child. then they did show up a year later with like a construction for most of the contamination was in my uncle ben's property, which is right below my mom's property. and so what they had signed ways of,

i dug into the soil like these long rectangles and they had filled like shipping container as full of the soil. and then midway through the project, they ran out of money and they buried everything back and they have not shown up sense. so this one is around 2011. and now more than 10 years later they never came to finish the clean up. so they, you know, they investigated who was there, they informed us, but was there, they began to clean up, and then they ran out of money and never finished the job. and my uncle ben's family, you know, my mc norma recently died of cancer. i know that you know, a couple of his funds have also had cancer and you know, who knows us what other health conditions may be connected to this. um, but you know, a lot of the chemicals on that list are chemicals that are connected to high cancer

rates and other communities. um, but yeah, for me like growing up in psych we were never growing up. we didn't drink water from the time, like it was just always a given that the water is not safe to drink period whether or not we knew how the land was contaminated, there is always just this way in which i think we're aware as a community of like the fact that we don't have clean drinking water, and that is a risk to drink the water coming out of our top. and then when we finally, you know, heard about our specific property. it was confirmed for when i think about what happened to our property. i mean, think about like just this idea that we like build our whole lives on the contaminated land and you know, with no accountability from the department of defense or not even like,

i'm just thinking like there are people who live here. sometimes i wonder and say, when you hear about the way guam is depicted to the rest of the world as the military base, it's like no one ever thinks about the people who actually live here. they only see one as a military installation, not as a island nation with such a rich history and families who call this place home and have done so for thousands of years freight and that is really terrifying to only the state to not be seen as the people because what it means is that our actual health and wellbeing our lives, they don't matter, and the military mission is what matters. the defend, as of the continental united states has what matters, and what sacrifice is our own house and well be i think we need to go back

to back to the table and discuss some more and it invite more families in. and even if i don't have a major clean up this way, a test to test the dirt in the ground. because i'm never going to find anything in the back pc. these aren't just a problem in mtm, presidents in the southern village of read. so are still being advised to avoid eating fish from the co goes to do because the level of pcp contamination and sampled fish remains of bugs federal standards for steve consumption. for it says the closest village should compass island. the farmers site of the us coast star is long range, navigation for a bar and stations. from 1944. to 1963. pcp is from electrical equipment use at the coast guards. lauren stations such as transformers and capacitors were improperly discarded on corpus island. and in co goes in

2005. the coast guard removes sources of pcb contamination in around co cause island. but it's 2015. follow up. sampling showed some spikes and pcp levels. and levels of toxic pesticide d, d t and the water is around kobus island including fish when us. so we just took a boat out to this is cocos island. it's right up the coast of guam. 9 right back there is the village of molest due to the military shut down the navigation station in 1965, but we're still feeling the effects of the p. c. b contamination. up until today. these are lasting decades long impacts of historical can termination done by the us military that our people are still feeling. and a lot of what activists have been saying all these years is that we can't be

building up the, you know, the, the military expansion in this region is called the military buildup. and we can't be building up while we're still trying to clean up. there's so much toxicities still in this area and so we have to do what we can as a community to continue to raise awareness so that our families are not affected. so that. c we're not suffering from cancer and other chronic illnesses, from the toxicity across our island. and my name is ronna fi, g to melissa is a born and raised there. i just recently moved up. but my father and all generations before me of all lived in my life with where from there and i live in this, the more northern side of mother. so which is in b b, b. but we fish there all the time and focus on insurance. so it was a big thing and municipal, my youngest cousin, my cousin at my age at that time,

and in his thirty's, dido cancer. and my other cousin who is, was younger than and his brother died at age of 40 a dido capture. and all that i think is because of what they, what, what they left in the ocean for us. and luckily, i didn't made it a habit to, to go they all the time. but they did because that was whenever there was a party we were sent out to go out and do fishing all the time. every time, every day, whenever we needed to, we had to know was the place we went to. so i think the military has not done the due diligence show, and if not really help the people to control what, what is there? i'm sure others feel the same way that the pcp is not, is, is still there. and is that the position we think is affected us. i think the federal government needs to continue to do their part not just on the,

on the ocean, but also to even us use on our people in the british. very so mere ernest, char gloss says the community has been left in the dark about water quality rather sash too, as far as information because i know they did studies online, they should be cleared up. some other sam, it will show your samples on shar, nurse your nurse on, in atlanta, as well as the waters in the immediate area and then instead of the moon and those studies and then whatever scientific things that they were doing in the water were never given the community, as far as the research where i wanted to find it for so to me is the stair step. when the science dash single, our issue may be and the coast guard, they should collaborate with their information to disseminate the appropriate information so that you may know people knowledgeable of what's going on and you keep them updated on one of your findings are on, on, on one basis as some read. so residents whose family has subsisted off the land and

waters of my last to for generations. charge to off express, concerned about the health impacts of pcp exposure. i was there. i was there, the trash grab, blank drum and toner crap. and i was led to fish as well. so the fish in the wrong, they are in the dish affected a catch the fish on there. so i'm concerned that, you know, i don't know if i ever, i may have been just it or those that in dollars with the fish that i taught in the area may have been just it. and then a hasn't bearing under health from shark las perspective, the federal government should continue to conduct regular testing and exhaust all remedies to restore the health of the co goes with good response to move to sure to be on the federal government. they're the ones that created by re, so those transformers there. and they should know that you don't dispose of it then

appropriately. use a portion of how to dispose of pcp containing elements, you know, the transformers or anything. then as talk she materials. you have to discard them, i'm just partial them accordingly. according to chime, think they ways of onto the scorching or properly dysfunctional or whatever we are page today. is something alternative and have to worry about tomorrow. fun. who can, that will not be in the, the, to not fun. who do we have to do? not fun who to see her as look them done on to the

with the end of world war one. the movement for indian independence from the british empire flared up with renewed vigor. the british responded to the growth of the national liberation movement with arrest and brutal violence. repression cause active resistance. in march 1919 at the call of mahatma gandhi, a peaceful strike began in the country. but the british responded with a new round of violence and far bade the indians to gather more than 4 people. on the day of the seat, they sachi festivals, a huge crowd of civilians gathered in the center of the city of i'm gonna start in northern india seeing base as outright defiance. general reginald dyer gave the

order to open fire on the on, on the boat. the barbaric execution claimed the lives of at least 379 indians, including 40 children, the youngest of who was 6 weeks old. the indian national congress considered the official figures to be underestimated and announced the death of more than $1000.00 civilians. the well known greatest newspaper, the morning post called dyre. the man who saved india gave him a sword and 26000 pounds sterling as a token of gratitude for the massacre. the amorous star massacre went down in history as one of the most brutal crimes of the british invaders, and only escalated the affair. struggle of the indians for liberation from the colonial yoke. the

the good, good. i think goes on there. that's good. you're good. yeah. i think we took the same glass that the biggest truck to hit right the yeah, i was like, they're gonna see a baby if you can see the best crowds. that's why i bet nato offices who made.