13/08/2026
No to Nuclear!
THE PACIFIC IS NOT A NUCLEAR DUMPING GROUND.
Japan has begun formally studying Minamitorishima, a tiny Pacific island east of the Marianas, as a possible final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste.
This is material requiring isolation on geological timescales. Putting it on a remote Pacific island also raises questions about maritime transportation, accidents, contamination, fragile ocean ecosystems, and the cumulative burden already being placed on our region.
And Guam has been here before.
In 1980, Japan proposed dumping approximately 10,000 drums of low-level radioactive waste in deep waters north of the Marianas.
Our leaders fought back.
Governor Paul Calvo and the Guam Legislature formally opposed the plan. Tinian Mayor Felipe Mendiola and Guam activist David Rosario helped build the Mariana Alliance Opposing Nuclear Waste Dumping. Ogasawara fishermen resisted. Hawaiโi, Palau, Yap, Samoa and other Pacific communities joined them. Japanese citizens organized alongside us.
That coalition stopped the plan.
Forty-six years later, we should remember what they understood:
โRemoteโ from Tokyo does not mean remote from us.
The Pacific is not empty space where powerful nations can place the things they do not want near their own population centers. Our ocean is our food source, our environment, our economy, our culture and our inheritance.
We can respect Japan, value our friendship with the Japanese people, and still say unequivocally:
Do not make the Pacific bear a nuclear burden it did not create.
Our predecessors stood together in 1980 and won.
Guam stood up then. The Marianas must stand up again.
![Basahin]https://heyzine.com/flip-book/c50f27c864.htmlMaraming Salamat The Guilds](https://img5.ngos1.com/634/341/1032581476343412.jpg)
