RESETTLEMENT OF PEOPLE 1961 continued zone" for incoming Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles shot from California. the 750 acre island, or about $10 per acre a year, and provides that the U.S. will “improve the economic and social conditions of the Marshallese people, “,..at is the conviction or the United States that it has the reSponsibility not only to its people but to all the peoples of the free world to maintain at a maximum its capacity to deter aggression and preserve peace. Thus it believes that...further tests are...absodutely necessary for the eventual well being of all the people of this world.” U.S. statement to U.N. Trustee- ship Council in response to a petition from Marshall Islands ee@aders (April, 2956). 1963 Kwajalein: A case of polio in the American population on Kwajalein starts an epidemic in the northern Marshall Islands. Although the polio vaccine was discovered 8 years earlier, no one had been given shots. 212 cases of severe residual paralysis resuitring from polio are recorded among the 18,000 inhabirants of the Marshall Islands. The rate in the U. S. is about one patient with severe residual paralysis per 1,000 cases of polio. particularly at Ebeye..." Kwajalein: The central two-thirds of Kwajalein's lagoon becomes a new "impact area'' for missiles. Faced with several hundred inhabitants on the islands bounding this area, known as the "Mid-Corridor,'’ the Defense and Interior Departments decide the "most practical and economic solution to the range safety problem’ is to relocate the people to Ebeye Island. The Amny begins an “Ebeye Improvement Project,” which includes the construction of 78 cement block units each containing four one-room apartments, and also a sewer system, fresh and salt water distribution systems, and a power plant. No funding, however, is budgetced for maintenance and upkeep of these faciiities. DECEMBER Kwajalein: The first 28 apartment units are completed and asSigned to the Mid-Corridor people. "We cannot make enough copra. The reason :s that the people have to eat it, and the rats also eat 2t...We also need sail cloth and "Land means a great deal to the Marshallese. It means more than just a place where you can plant your food crops and build your houses; or a place where you can . bury your dead. It is the very life of the people. Take away their dand and their spirits go also." Petition from Marshall Islands j@aders to United Nations, March 1956. 1964 Kwajalein: A 99 year lease for Kwajalein Island (the command base of the Pacific Missile Range) is signed by the Kwajalein landowners and the U. S. Government. The. lease provides $750,000, in <qppensation for use of JUUEtELUU other materials to equip our ca~ noes...The conditions on Ujelang are worse now...there are more people now, especially children who are too young to work or to work hard, but who must also eat. We did not complain when the Navy told us we had to leave our atoll of Enewetak...We cooperated with the Americans...Now we need help badly, we ask America for help in our suffering. Help us, or send us home," Enewetak leader on Ujelang,1969. 1965 JANUARY Kwajalein: Marshallese from the 13 inhabited Mid-Corridor islands (continued on page 17)