{"id":764757,"date":"2021-09-05T08:30:52","date_gmt":"2021-09-05T12:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=764757"},"modified":"2021-09-05T08:49:31","modified_gmt":"2021-09-05T12:49:31","slug":"history-is-the-present-on-the-unspeakable-history-of-animal-cruelty-at-the-hunters-point-naval-shipyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=764757","title":{"rendered":"HISTORY IS THE PRESENT: On the unspeakable history of animal cruelty at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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According to the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) Briefing Book, over 5,600 goats, pigs, guinea pigs and rodents were placed in compartments and strapped onto ship decks to evaluate the biological effects of the bomb.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

AHIMSA PORTER SUMCHAI:<\/strong> If spirits haunt the shoreline of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, they most certainly include the spirits of animals. The history of the federal Superfund site is replete with the mass killing of animals. This is not a happy story \u2013 it saddens me to tell it. This is a story about the human impact of the loss of animal companions on shipyard shoreline workers and neighbors. It begins in the City of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals…<\/p>\n

Chemist Glenn T. Seaburg, longest serving chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, called Shot Baker \u201cthe world\u2019s first nuclear disaster.\u201d Over 42,000 military and civilian personnel participated in Operation Crossroads conducted in the Bikini Atoll in July of 1946…<\/p>\n

Plans to expose live animals to radioactivity generated protest letters from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. According to the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) Briefing Book, over 5,600 goats, pigs, guinea pigs and rodents were placed in compartments and strapped onto ship decks to evaluate the biological effects of the bomb…<\/p>\n

Shot Baker turned the assembled ships into \u201cradioactive stoves that burned all living things aboard with invisible and painless but deadly radiation\u201d wrote a Navy official in a classified cable sent to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to the National Security Archive, Shot Baker created a radiological disaster. Military personnel assigned to salvage the contaminated test ships were exposed to dangerous levels of ionizing radiation.<\/p>\n

Mangled but still afloat, six target vessels were hauled back to the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. In the months following Operation Crossroads, an additional 18 target ships and 61 support ships were towed to Hunters Point for futile decontamination efforts.<\/p>\n

According to investigative journalists Jason Fagone and Cynthia Dizikes: \u201cAfter the A-bomb tests, Navy leaders realized a special facility was needed to wash the contaminated clothing of sailors at Hunters Point,\u201d and a \u201cradioactive laundry\u201d was installed inside Building 503…<\/p>\n

Each wash cycle flushed over 100 gallons of radiation-contaminated water into pipes and drains. That building was demolished, its footprint covered with five feet of soil. Building 606 was constructed in 1986 on top of it. Building 606 is located at the border between radiation-contaminated Parcel D and Parcel E.<\/p>\n

On Feb. 13, 1996, Mayor Willie Brown and Navy officials announced the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency would lease Building 606 to the Police Department for $18,000 a month… K-9 officers ran their dogs through the \u201ckilling fields\u201d of the shipyard\u2019s most dangerously contaminated regions. According to the Chronicle investigation, a K-9 officer stationed at Building 606 expressed concern over the shipyard\u2019s history of nuclear testing as the K-9 dogs started getting sick.<\/p>\n

A sable-colored German shepherd named Crocker ran into a glass door at high speed. At surgery his spleen was found to be full of tumors. \u201cThese buildings were \u2018hot\u2019 chemistry and biology labs, kennels for animals given lethal doses of radiation and storage vaults for radioactive elements used in experiments. The Navy stashed drums of radioactive waste in temporary shacks in the area”…<\/p>\n

The Biological and Medical Sciences Division of NRDL, headquartered in Building 815 on the shipyard\u2019s southern shoreline, conducted cruel animal experiments \u201cto assess, evaluate and prevent radiation injury in humans.\u201d Scientists measured the biological effects of exposure from different sources of radiation including gamma rays, neutron radiation and beta particles at varying doses, rates and exposure pathways causing skin burns, gastrointestinal bleeding and central nervous system damage…<\/p>\n

A 55-year-old woman,… who lived 250 feet from the… western fence line that separates the shipyard\u2019s chemical and radiation-contaminated shoreline from \u201cThree Street,\u201d the heart of the Bayview Hunters Point community \u2013 less than a mile away,…. has suffered the loss of six animal companions \u2013 dogs and cats \u2013 from what she has witnessed to be primarily cancers of the head and neck. She recalls a cat with a bulging tumor of the right eye, a beautiful dog Apollo with visible tumors of the neck, animals with symptoms of nerve damage who \u201cwent out there [to the shipyard] to die\u201d and a cat who bled to death from feline leukemia…<\/p>\n

The Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program is detecting thallium in about 50 percent of screenings conducted on shipyard residents and workers… Thallium is a highly toxic cumulative poison to humans with effects most severe in the nervous system and was banned from wide use in rat poisons and insecticides. Thallium compounds are colorless, odorless and tasteless…<\/p>\n

The radioactive metals cesium, uranium, strontium, rubidium and manganese together form a toxic \u201cstew\u201d made even more dangerous when \u201cflavored\u201d with cancer-causing heavy metals like nickel, platinum, chromium and cadmium. The Hunters Point Community Biomonitoring Program has mapped a cluster of cancers proven to be induced by exposure to radiation in shipyard neighbors. (The black pins correspond to animals verified to have died of cancer)…<\/p>\n

Ahimsa means lover of animals. Ahimsa Animal Welfare is the philosophy of nonviolence, respect and care for all living things. In Jainism, Ahimsa means to be without harm, to be utterly harmless, not only towards oneself and others, but to all forms of life, from the largest mammals to the smallest bacteria… Ahimsa is invoked in the Mahabharata to condemn cruel practices, the futile destructiveness of worldly existence and to proclaim the sanctity and dignity of life. Peace be with you. SOURCE…<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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