deaths from these ulcers, according to the memory of the individuals that I spoke to. Startingly, I was told repeatedly of deaths on Utric in the month following the bomb blasts. Several people from Utric told me of three in the month following the first blast, at least two of them being in children and one, to my memory, in a young woman. One suspects that this immediate type of response 1s due to direct radiation connected directly with the fallout, and probably not food-chain, although absolute certainty 1s not available. All of the people have consistently told me that the damage to the vegetation and the foods that they eat, -extremely Iimited to start with -- has been devastating. The Marshallese eat a limited diet consisting of fish, breadfruit, coconut, and arrowroot. The most sensitive to radiation of the plants proved to be arrowroot. But this was a highly inportant foodstuff on these small islands. As I understood from the Marshallese that I spoke to, before the blast the arrowroot grew as a tuber or rhizome on the root of a bushy type of plant. A healthy arrowroot plant would have six or so tubers, and would yield a good deal of nutritious food. After the blast, the arrowroot plants themselves started to diminish and the number of tubers on the roots decreased until the point came at which the arrowroot has almost been lost on some of the islands and no longer serves aes a staple in the diet. The Marshallese describe to me the tubers shrinking to two to three on a bush, and then to small tubers, and then to the plant just not growing at all, or growing in a deformed manner. Similar effects occurred in the coconut trees. The tops of the coconut trees .turned red or brown after the blasts, and many coconut trees have not borne as well since. The breedfruit trees have borne smaller fruit and often deformed fruit. of the trees themselves have become deformed. Seme I am also struck by the hich incidence of hypertension in the people of the Marshall Islands. The incidence of hypertension in the average white American male goes up to about five per cent depending on age. The frequency of hypertension however among the Marshallese far outnumbers that, and judging from the hospital records that I looked