3: THE DISPLACED

  1. U.S. Embassy London, telegram to Secretary of State, February 27, 1964, Naval History and Heritage Command Archives: 00 Files, 1964, Box 20, 11000/1B, 1–2. Parts of this chapter stem from my Island of Shame and “Forty Years of Heartbreak: Let the People of Diego Garcia Return to Their Homeland,” Huffington Post, May 28, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-vine/forty-years-of-heartbreak_b_3344190.html. I began my research about Diego Garcia and the Chagossians when lawyers for the Chagossians invited me in 2001 to conduct research for lawsuits they were bringing against the U.S. and British governments. I wrote three expert reports based on this research. I was never employed by the lawyers but had some of my research expenses reimbursed during 2001–2004.

  2. Horacio Rivero, enclosure to memorandum to Chief of Naval Operations, May 21, 1960, Naval History and Heritage Command Archives: 00 Files, 1960, Box 8, 5710, 2. Rivero credited Barber with doing most of the writing for the Long Range Objectives Group, which produced this document.

  3. Rivero, enclosure, May 21, 1960, 2.

  4. Horacio Rivero, enclosure to memorandum to Chief of Naval Operations, July 11, 1960, Naval History and Heritage Command Archives: 00 Files, 1960, Box 8, 5710; Rivero, “Long Range Requirements.”

  5. Rivero, enclosure, July 11, 1960.

  6. Ibid.

  7. U.S. Embassy London, telegram to RUEHCR/Secretary of State, May 10, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library: NSF, Country File, Box 207, UK Memos vol. IV 5/65–6/65.

  8. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, “Availability of Certain Indian Ocean Islands for Defense Purposes,” exchange of notes, December 30, 1966, 1–2.

  9. Alun A. G. J. Chalfont, letter to David K. E. Bruce, December 30, 1966, National Archives and Records Administration: RG 59/150/64–65, Subject-Numeric Files 1964–1966, Box 1552.

10. Roy L. Johnson, memorandum for Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Plans and Policy), July 21, 1958, Naval History and Heritage Command Archives: 00 Files, 1958, Box 4, A4-2 Status of Shore Stations, 2–3. See also, Vine, Island of Shame, introduction, chapter 3.

11. CIA Board of National Estimates, “Strategic and Political Interests in the Western Indian Ocean,” special memorandum, April 11, 1967, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library: NSF, Country File, India, Box 133, India, Indian Ocean Task Force, vol. II; Horacio Rivero, “Assuring a Future Base Structure in the African-Indian Ocean Area,” enclosure, memorandum to Chief of Naval Operations, July 11, 1960, Naval History and Heritage Command Archives: 00 Files, 1960, Box 8, 5710.

12. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, vol. XXIV, Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula, 1969–1972; Jordan, September 1970, Document 39, Paper Prepared in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (Moorer), Washington, DC, February 11, 1970.

13. Stuart B. Barber, letter to Paul B. Ryan, April 26, 1982, 3. My thanks to Richard Barber for providing this and other invaluable documents.

14. John Pilger, Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire (New York: Nation Books, 2007), 25.

15. Rob Evans and Richard Norton-Taylor, “WikiLeaks: Foreign Office Accused of Misleading Public over Diego Garcia,” Guardian, December 3, 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-cables-diego-garcia-uk.

16. Robert A. Frosch, memorandum for the Deputy Secretary of Defense, February 27, 1970, Naval History and Heritage Command Archives: 00 Files, 1970, Box 111, 11000; John H. Chafee, memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, January 31, 1970, Naval History and Heritage Command Archives: 00 Files, 1970, Box 111, 11000.

17. Attachment to E. L. Cochrane Jr., memorandum for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Plans and Policy), March 24, 1971, NHC: 00 Files, 1971, Box 174, 11000, 2.

18. See e.g. Stealing a Nation: A Special Report by John Pilger, directed by John Pilger and Christopher Martin (2004; London: Granada Television); Pilger, Freedom Next Time, 28.

19. David Ottaway, “Islanders Were Evicted for U.S. Base,” Washington Post, September 9, 1975, A1; Washington Post, “The Diego Garcians,” editorial, September 11, 1975.

20. Jonathan Weisgall, Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994), 32.

21. Ibid., 106–7.

22. Ibid., 107–8.

23. Ibid., 308–9.

24. Ibid., 309–14.

25. See e.g. Barbara Rose Johnston and Holly M. Barker, The Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2008); Holly M. Barker, Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World, 2nd ed. (Independence, KY: Cengage Learning, 2012).

26. U.S. Naval Institute, “Reminiscences of Admiral Horacio Rivero, Jr.,” 302–3.

27. Cheryl Lewis, “Kaho‘olawe and the Military,” ICE case study, Washington, DC, Spring 2001, http://www.american.edu/ted/ice/hawaiibombs.htm.

28. Lindsay-Poland, Emperors in the Jungle, 28–29, 42–43, 193.

29. Katherine T. McCaffrey, Military Power and Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 9.

30. Congressional Research Service, “Bill Summary and Status, 100th Congress (1987–1988), H.R.442,” CRS Summary, 1987.

31. Leevin Camacho, “Resisting the Proposed Military Buildup on Guam,” in Daniel Broudy, Peter Simpson, and Makoto Arakaki, eds., Under Occupation: Resistance and Struggle in a Militarised Asia-Pacific (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 186. Some quote a figure as high as 82 percent. See LisaLinda Natividad and Victoria Lola Leon-Guerrero, “The Explosive Growth of U.S. Military Power on Guam Confronts People Power: Experience of an Island People Under Spanish, Japanese and American Colonial Rule,” Asia-Pacific Journal 49, issue 3, no. 10 (2010).

32. C. Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 50–53, 200; C. Johnson, Blowback, 11; Kensei Yoshida, Democracy Betrayed: Okinawa Under U.S. Occupation (Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University, n.d. [2001]); Kozy K. Amemiya, “The Bolivian Connection: U.S. Bases and Okinawan Emigration,” in Okinawa: Cold War Island, edited by Chalmers Johnson (n.p.: Japan Policy Research Institute, 1999), 63.

33. Quoted in Michiyo Yonamine, “Economic Crisis Shakes US Forces Overseas: The Price of Base Expansion in Okinawa and Guam,” Asia-Pacific Journal 9, no. 9/2 (2011).

34. Eiichiro Azuma, “Brief Historical Overview of Japanese Emigration, 1868–1998,” Japanese American National Museum, http://www.janm.org/projects/inrp/english/overview.htm.

35. C. Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 50–53, 200; C. Johnson, Blowback, 11; Yoshida, Democracy Betrayed; Amemiya, “The Bolivian Connection, 63; Cooley, Base Politics, 146.

36. Aqqaluk Lynge, The Right to Return: Fifty Years of Struggle by Relocated Inughuit in Greenland (n.p: Atuagkat Publishers, 2002); D. L. Brown, “Trail of Frozen Tears,” Washington Post, October 22, 2002, C1; J. M. Olsen, “US Agrees to Return to Denmark Unused Area near Greenland Military Base,” Associated Press Worldstream, September 24, 2002.

37. Lynge, Right to Return, 10, 27, 32–36.

38. David Hanlon, Remaking Micronesia: Discourses over Development in a Pacific Territory 1944–1982 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998), 189–91, 201–2.

39. Ibid., 193; Peter Marks, “Paradise Lost; The Americanization of the Pacific,” Newsday, January 12, 1986, 10.

40. PCRC, “The Kwajalein Atoll and the New Arms Race: The US Anti-Ballistic Weapons System and Consequences for the Marshall Islands of the Pacific,” Indigenous Affairs 2 (2001): 38–43; City Mayors, “The Largest Cities in the World,” n.d., accessed December 18, 2014, http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html; Republic of the Marshall Islands Economic Policy, Planning, and Statistics Office, “Census of Population and Housing: Summary and Highlights Only,” report, February 14, 2012, 7.

41. Hanlon, Remaking Micronesia, 201.

42. Robert C. Kiste, The Bikinians: A Study in Forced Migration (Menlo Park, CA: Cummings Publishing, 1974), 198.

43. McCaffrey, Military Power, 9–10.

44. Gillem, America Town, 37.

45. Catherine Lutz, “A U.S. ‘Invasion’ of Korea,” Boston Globe, October 8, 2006; KCTP English News, “When You Grow Up, You Must Take the Village Back,” http://www.antigizi.or.kr/zboard/zboard.php?id=english_news&page=1&sn1=&divpage=1&sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=headnum&desc=asc&no=204.

46. Anders Riel Müller, “One Island Village’s Struggle for Land, Life and Peace,” Save Jeju Now, blog, April 19, 2011, http://savejejunow.org/history; Christine Ahn, “Naval Base Tears Apart Korean Village,” Foreign Policy in Focus, blog, August 19, 2011, http://fpif.org/naval_base_tears_apart_korean_village.

47. Anthropologists have shown that race is not biologically real and that it is not a valid or useful biological concept even if it is a very real social phenomenon having powerful social effects on people’s lives and life chances.

48. A. M. Jackson, memorandum for the Chief of Naval Operations, December 7, 1964, Naval History and Heritage Command Archives: 00 Files, 1965, Box 26, 11000/1B, 3<n->4.

49. Ibid.

50. See e.g. John Madeley, “Diego Garcia: A Contrast to the Falklands,” Minority Rights Group Report 54 (1985); Vine, Island of Shame.

51. See Laura Jeffery’s writing, esp. Chagos Islanders in Mauritius and the UK (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).

52. Barber, unpublished letter to the editor of the Washington Post, March 9, 1991.

53. Barber, letter to Senator Ted Stevens, October 3, 1975.