Datelines
al., Greg Mitchell et.
The Boy with the Raw Back NAGASAKI Fifteen years ago, the U.S. Army caused a sensation in Japan when it sent over the official photographs taken in Hiroshima and Nagasaki right after the atomic...
...The air was always thick with smoke and fumes...
...In this building are bottles melted by the Nagasaki bomb, pipes that were twisted, tiles that were blackened, and now a man's back...
...Taniguchi has done more than survive...
...It was only one piece of Operation Buckshot, a statewide effort that in one week rounded up 700 people the INS believes to be 'undocumented aliens...
...Probable cause is determined after the fact, at least with the INS...
...That provided the the final momentum the campaign needed, and the ordinance sailed through the city council...
...Catholic churches on the southwest side held signature drives at Sunday mass and then took the the petitions to influential alderman Eddie Burke and demanded his support...
...The INS claims they were after a "gang" of illegal aliens whose "members are required to have and carry weapons...
...The Environmental Protection Agency issued a national warning about cutting oils in September 1984, cautioning machinists on the suspected cancer link...
...Anglos tend not to want to do that...
...These are the allegations of a lawsuit filed in Federal district court in Salt Lake City, based on forty sworn affidavits that recount the experiences of seventy-one plaintiffs...
...His back, while scarred, is straight...
...But plaintiffs' lawyer Gary L. Barnett points out that police found no weapons in their raids...
...Depending on the weather, the back door would be propped open for ventilation...
...Efforts in churches and synagogues throughout the area led to a strong network of religious nuclear-free zones...
...Sumiteru Taniguchi, the boy who couldn't possibly survive, went back to work at the post office and now has two grown children of his own...
...It was in his clothes and his hair, and it wouldn't come out in the wash...
...Many were forced to wait in long lines as Austin police officers, who had not been notified in advance of the raid, removed cars and regulated traffic through the intersection where INS agents were working...
...The ordinance bans the design, production, deployment, launching, maintenance, or storage of nuclear weapons, establishes the Peace Conversion Commission to "prepare a detailed plan for the conversion of resources and physical plants to peaceful and productive uses," and prohibits Chicago's participation in civil defense for nuclear war...
...In the museum," he says offhandedly, "you probably saw burned pipes and stones exposed to the bomb...
...Guerrero received a telephone call that morning from a constituent complaining about "a roadblock, intimidating uniformed officers, and a helicopter hovering above her house...
...People were afraid...
...Other factors enter the picture in a determination of alienage, such as clothing, shoes, and hair style...
...Virtually everybody of Hispanic origin was stopped and interrogated," says TCLU attorney Jim Harrington...
...I hope that you will report the truth and that my hopes are realized—that all nuclear weapons are abolished so that human beings can live like human beings on this Earth, soon...
...In some cases, the INS called the prisoners' employers to deliver their final payout of which the agency deducted the cost of deporting them to Mexico...
...and a Sweep in Utah WENDOVER, UTAH "I've never seen war conditions, but this I imagine was close to it," says Armando Diaz of the Catholic Community Services Office in Salt Lake City...
...Mine is just an ordinary story...
...Delivering the mail that day I was blown off my bicycle by the same wind that blew off the roofs of factories...
...Employees developed lung, skin, testicular, and other cancers after exposure to toxic chemicals used at the tractor plant, according to John Matta, another of the plaintiffs' attorneys...
...He refers not to some exotic foreign trouble-spot but to this tiny casino town straddling the Utah-Nevada state line, so much more convenient than Las Vegas to Utah's gamblers...
...I was exposed to the same bomb...
...They are suing sixty-eight defendants from the INS and the involved state and local agencies...
...I've lost a lot of respect for the local police," says Lou Martinez, manager of the Pep-permill Casino, "because of the way they roughed people up...
...An official report, developed with CALC's help, estimated that only $2 million worth of contracts and sixty-three jobs might be affected—figures representing only 0.0023 per cent of Chicago's gross domestic product—and it concluded that "a ban on direct nuclear-weapons work will not harm the city economy nor impede future high-tech development and job opportunities...
...The Friday-morning "traffic check" may have galvanized the Hispanic community against the INS...
...The economic issues were critical, and CALC had done its homework on the weapons industry in the city...
...The skin stretches in several directions, a patchwork quilt of flesh in which no two patches look alike...
...Every couple of years he undergoes a serious operation to remove a bizarre weblike growth on his back, but he does not carry himself like a victim...
...If asked gently, in the right way, stressing the potential political effect, he will take off his shirt and expose his back to a camera...
...He lay on his stomach for twenty-one months without standing up or rolling over...
...The employees' families charge them with fraud and negligence for failing to warn workers of the need to wear special protective equipment...
...Houghton, one of the chemical manufacturers named in the suit, says, "At the first sign of Government health advisories we warned our clients...
...The Texas Civil Liberties Union (TCLU) is preparing to file suit against the Government agency, compiling lists of possible plaintiffs...
...he is active in the campaign for multilateral disarmament...
...We run ads all the time," he says...
...INS spokesman Gary Ren-ick tried to defend the action, claiming that agents are well-trained in court-tested criteria for challenging a person's nationality...
...The plaintiffs can't see Wendover as a center for organized criminal groups...
...We have a clear conscience," responds one of the defendants, James Harden, who is regional head of the INS in Denver...
...Most Hispanic people who appeared were detained for questioning about their places of birth...
...On May 22, 1984, he died of cancer...
...In the middle of a working day, more than a hundred supporters jammed the small hearing room...
...I know who's calling my office," she says...
...As I walked down the streets, people were closing their lights and locking their doors...
...Matta says the company issued the machinists only flimsy paper masks that quickly clogged with metallic grit and toxic oils...
...The company refuses to comment on the lawsuits while litigation is in process, but an attorney for E.F...
...This is not Russia or Cuba, but I kept waiting for the gas truck to drive up so they could gas them...
...In a letter to the newspaper, INS district director Richard M. Casillas elaborated: "While we cannot detain a person solely because a person looks Mexican, ethnicity is certainly a factor that can be considered...
...They threw up a roadblock and stopped cars and a city bus...
...But beyond that, I just can't say...
...The Bomb's ability to sear human flesh was there on paper...
...Police jailed small children without diapers and food, deported a four-year-old without notifying his parents, assaulted a woman trying to provide her husband's documentation, kicked in doors at midnight while shouting racist obscenities, pointed guns at children, and demanded identification from people on the street solely because they looked Hispanic...
...I would like others all over the world to know what the bomb does," he says...
...I knew immediately that it was me," he says...
...I'm unhappy about the humiliation and indignation that people of brown skin have to endure because the INS chooses to come into our neighborhood and violate the Fourth Amendment in the very places where we live...
...CALC arranged for speakers from many different constituencies: Business leaders, economists, representatives from academic, religious, and community organizations took their turns at the microphone...
...Local peace groups took on a petition drive as a short-term project and collected 10,000 signatures...
...We've had raids here for years," says plaintiff Richard Dixon, who owns the S&D Market and has lived here for twenty-six years...
...But they were treated like they were...
...the same people who joined petition drives also called on city council members to lobby for the law...
...The suits charge that Caterpillar failed to provide adequate ventilation to keep the plant free from toxic fumes...
...Casino owner Martinez just sees people looking for jobs...
...On the Caterpillar Trail SAN LEANDRO, CALIFORNIA When Caterpillar Tractor Company closed down its plant here in April, it left behind not only unemployed workers but also a trail of illness and wrongful-death lawsuits...
...The relatives of ten former plant employees who died of cancer between 1971 and 1985 have filed suit against Caterpillar...
...Just a bunch of big guys with badges lording it over the Mexicans...
...They're just not very good at informing people of their rights...
...INS agents, says TCLU director Gara LaMarche, are "very cursory" in observing due process...
...Since it netted 200 illegal aliens in forty-five minutes, that "proves" there is a large concentration of illegals in the area, the INS contends...
...Working closely with North Side alderman David Orr, CALC staff began drafting the law in the summer of 1985...
...Tell those people they're on notice...
...INS spokesmen claim they were in the community because of complaints from Mexican-Americans about undocumented Mexican nationals living and working among them...
...Its isolation and small size made it a manageable target, says Clark Knowlton, a University of Utah professor who studies Mexican-American affairs...
...After the raids we had lots of openings...
...Yet the boy continued to suffer...
...Their attorneys charge that exposure to industrial lubricants called cutting oils have caused a string of fatal cancers among Caterpillar employees...
...The committee that helped get the lawsuit off the ground sees dark portents...
...In early June, INS agents descended on largely Hispanic southeast Austin during the early-morning hours when most day laborers are on their way to work...
...The idea of small-scale nuclear-free zones has been popular with Chicago's activist religious community since 1982, when a nuclear-weapons-freeze referendum swept the city...
...It began with careful planning by Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC), a long-time voice for human rights and disarmament that coordinated the campaign to turn Chicago into a nuclear-free zone...
...The unemployed are machinists, and the trail may have profound implications for the 1.3 million other Americans who share their occupation...
...No one who sees it today wishes anything but that the boy's suffering ended in merciful death within minutes of the camera's click...
...An anonymous source speaks of pressure from Washington on the INS to boost its arrest numbers...
...But nothing like this last one...
...Richard Bruno, a thirty-seven-year-old man who worked at the plant, "would come home from work covered with the oils," says his wife Frances...
...That means me, and I'm sixth-generation American...
...Jon Brockopp and Ron Freund (Jon Brockopp and Ron Freund coordinate the Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone project for Metro Chicago Clergy and Laity Concerned...
...They depict victims—some badly burned, others afflicted with radiation disease—posing with impossible dignity for the American military photographers...
...Unlike the sweep in Austin, four local Utah and Nevada law enforcement agencies did the work for the INS, interrogating and sometimes arresting persons in parking lots, homes, supermarkets, the kitchens and pits of casinos, and in their cars...
...It is no different, except that flesh burns, and people experience pain—and can remember...
...The room I worked in was so smoky you couldn't see twenty feet," says former machinist Anne Weils...
...People participating know many of the officers who conducted the sweeps, and the most commonly expressed feeling here is shock at the gusto with which local police helped the INS...
...Both Richard Bruno and Thelma Kimbrough left testimony for the court record that Caterpillar never warned them about possible health hazards on the job...
...Looking at the picture I remembered anew the pain of those days...
...These people are not hurting anyone, they're not criminals...
...Austin is 250 miles from the Rio Grande...
...Army caused a sensation in Japan when it sent over the official photographs taken in Hiroshima and Nagasaki right after the atomic bombings of August 1945...
...Four decades after the bombing, he is gaunt and frail...
...Jeffrey Swimmer (Jeffrey Swimmer is an associate of the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco...
...citizen...
...But they also managed to move into the political arena...
...Thelma Kimbrough, another former Caterpillar worker, died of lung cancer two months earlier...
...Wendover was recently the scene of two raids by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that netted 127 Hispanics, about a quarter of its Hispanic population...
...Local law enforcement is largely untrained in immigration procedures and usually cannot speak Spanish," says Earl Spafford, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys...
...The agency disagrees, calling the "traffic check" a normal operation...
...Many cutting oils contain ni-trosamines, a chemical proven to cause cancer in animals...
...Taken at Ohmura Naval Hospital outside Nagasaki, it shows an unidentified youth lying on his stomach, his chin on a pillow, his back unbelievably raw, crimson, glistening with liquid penicillin...
...CALC wanted an ordinance that would be politically viable and also hold up in court...
...But the agency will never tell us who is complaining...
...We got letters complaining about illegals in Wendover and had to respond...
...The criteria, he told the Austin American Statesman, "could include modes of dress, mode of hair, the ethnic background, even the smell of a person...
...No one rushed from Salt Lake to fill them...
...No Nukes in the Windy City CHICAGO The nation's third largest city has taken a long-term option on a future free of nuclear weapons by banning their production within its limits, and the way local peace activists pulled off their coup has lessons for their fellows elsewhere...
...We think there's ample medical and historical evidence to prove it...
...When he coughs deeply from a cold, one of his stunted ribs is likely to break...
...Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has cracked down on Texas with something called "Operation Buckshot" and seems to have hit a hornet's nest in the state capital...
...Forty-three are children...
...One picture in particular attracted attention...
...By the time hearings on the ordinance began in February, several votes were already promised...
...AUSTIN, TEXAS The U.S...
...A walking ghost, given up for dead but here among the living, he sits in the conference room of the hall in Nagasaki that houses the city's atomic-bomb museum, smoking a cigarette...
...The workers' attorneys have internal company documents that suggest Caterpillar knew about the health risks of some of the plant's chemicals as early as 1978...
...A Texas Roundup...
...And we'll be back...
...Guerrero is skeptical, though, since her office frequently receives constituent complaints about INS activity in the district...
...Says INS officer David A. Ser-vello, a defendant in the lawsuit, "We understand that private citizens were assaulted on the street...
...I think what we're looking at," says committee member Bob Gal-legos, "is the possibility in the near future of everybody who isn't white having to carry a card saying he is a U.S...
...Taniguchi first saw the famous color photograph, which has been widely reprinted, in 1975 when it was part of an exhibition in Japan...
...Starting last September, many of these same people worked in the wards to build a base of support for a city-wide ordinance...
...He points out that the courts have allowed the INS to conduct this sort of broad sweep within what they take as the "functional equivalent of the border," a 100-mile limit...
...A symbol of both the savagery of the Bomb and the will to outlive it, he is not in good health but he's alive...
...People from some parts of the world have tribal marks...
...No one who sees that picture forgets it or thinks for a minute that the fourteen-year-old boy with the raw back might have lived...
...Anybody age eighteen to twenty-five can get work here any time if they're willing to start low...
...Harrington videotaped part of the raid and accuses the agency of selective application of the law and unreasonable search and seizure...
...Then he stands and walks to a corner where the light is soft and bright, unbuttons his shirt, lays it on a chair, and turns his back to the camera...
...They carefully emphasized local effects and benefits to Chicago residents...
...Wendover was a quiet gambling outpost in the middle of nowhere, but now, says Diaz, the town is tense and disturbed...
...We're forced to submit to a color-check," complains State Representative Lena Guerrero, who represents the heavily Hispanic district where the raid occurred...
...He had little choice but to agree...
...Ron Dionne (Ron Dionne is a free-lance writer in Salt Lake City...
...Three companies that manufactured the oils are also defendants in the wrongful-death suits...
...Greg Mitchell (Greg Mitchell is the editor of Nuclear Times...
...There was a ceiling fan, but half the time it wasn't even working...
...The substances include acids and hazardous solvents such as trichloroethylene (TCE), as well as the lubricants used in the grinding of tractor parts...
...It, like other objects, happened, on August 9, 1945, to face a plutonium sun...
...Some employees used homemade screens to protect themselves from the toxic fumes, says Jerry Standridge, a former Caterpillar worker who has scarred lungs and had a benign tumor removed from his neck...
...Lou Dubose (Lou Dubose is a free-lance writer in Austin...
...They've really alienated themselves from the community...
...There is clear evidence of wrongdoing," says Wynne Herron, an attorney at Herron and Herron, the San Francisco law firm that is handling the case...
...More than 200 who were not carrying adequate proof of citizenship or legal residence were apprehended...
...If Wendover, tiny, isolated, and uneventful, is in fact not a haven for hardened alien criminals, why the raids...
Vol. 50 • August 1986 • No. 8
