Toe
Volume V, Number 6
February 22,974
That Pires hiyerogan Death
ANOTHER
MICRONESIAN
FAME
NIE. I had lobar pneumonia, and Johr Glick had hooke:
me up to the familiar I.V. Two bottles of antibiotics drippec
alternately into my veins. This time, I had the privilege:
bed beside the window, and the bed near the door was oc
cupied by a muscular young man with brown skin, curl
black hair, and a huge grin.
His name was odd—Lekoj Anjain. He was, it turned ow
from the Marshall Islands. He had been a one-year-ol
baby in 1954, wher we Americans tested our first delive:
able hydrogen bomb on Bikini, one of the Marshalls.
As it happened, ] kuew a good deal about the Buikii
bomb. With the help of Dr. Ralph Lapp, an atomic scier
Further remembrances
tist who used to act as mv mentor ia such matters, T ha
donea Jot of reporting on it. So had brether Joe. As a resul
Joe and I werethe first to describe, in our joint column, tt
phenomenonof nuclear fallout.
The Bikiai borab was much more powerful than Edwar
Teller and the other scientists in charge had anticipate:
on the
great moundsof earth below the explosion point. The eart
2.
re
Bh:
CLAIM
TO
The next day I was back in the same room I had occupiec
more than a year before, when I had first been admitted t
Lekoj Anjain incident
by Stewart Alsop
Moreover, it had an unanticipated effect. It churned u
was turned into light dust by the force of the explosio
This heavily irradiated dust followed the wind patterns w
til it fell out of the skies. Sume of it fell on the Luck
Dragon, a Japanese trawler more than ninety miles fro
the explosion point. The meinbers of the crew all suffere
[CONTINUED PAGE NINE |