- © Mme a a % . ? - a é, “Elf v4 pal aot 7a : 9 eee ae ou sl ‘ug , ae t mala gt . a * a ‘ we weit be WD. Nas! a oktoe ee ee very end of the earth. Even now “the cians during the heyday of nuclear weapons development at Enewetak. Jerry Pate ."ow a Civilian artist assigned to th Air Force Command lang Atoli, 125 miles to the south- and didn’t have to worry about redoing yesterday," recalled Pate. Then an Air Force staff sergeant west, the people of Enewetak (or dri Enewetak as they prefer to be called) have waited patiently for 30 years to return to their ancestral home. It is to that end that a DNA Joint Task Group of Army, Navy, and Air Force personnel, supported by the Departments of Energy and Interior, are working. It's not an easy job. Hundreds of tons of debris are scattered like confetti over many of the northern islands, and traces of radioactive fallout from the past bii- lowing nuclear clouds can still be detected in much of the soil. Aground on lagoon beachesare the decaying hulks of countless landing craft fike those that first .carried American troops ashore here in 1944 during a surprise attack on the Japanese. But these were used much later by the AEC to move men and equipment between islands. And on the atoll's southern rim stand rusting metal ghost towns, once alive with ‘- . nearly 10,000 scientists and techni- best part of an assignment here is going home,” said TSgt. Dana 8B. Hutchens, a tanned Air Force member who has spent much of his time hacking through the atoll’s overgrowthinsearch of radioactive debris. Buttosome 450 gentle Marshallese, Enewetak Atolf is their home. Moved because of the tests to smaller Uje- ~ Post at the Pentagon, remembers that time. It was a time of pioneers and progress. ‘You were working an something that had never been done “You were working on something that had never been done before. Every morning you got up and didn’t have to worry about redoing yesterday.” before. Every morning you got up and illustrator, he worked closely with the scientific community on Medren (then Parry) island. And he was there on November 1, 1952, when “ivy/Mike,”” the world’s first hydrogen bomb, put America a giant Stride ahead, if only temporarily, in the nuclear arms race. “td never seen anything like it,” recalled the veteran of countless previous atomic tests. Even now he remembers the blinding flash, the blast of heat, and the shock wave sweeping toward him with a force powerful enough to upend an unprepared spectator. His mind’s eye can still see the gigantic rising fireball, hot as the center of the sun. “You saw forms turned, as if in slow motion, inside the fireball. It seemed to last forever. “The first tinge of fear came when you began to realize just how much bigger it was than anything you had ever seen before. It was miles wide,” Pate said, “and you wondered if it would ever stop buiiding and crow- ing.’ By the time it did, its mushroom cloud towered nearly 25 miles above the atoll and, beneath it, Euklab ts land was gone—forever. - “There was shouting. handshak ing and clasping of shoulders.” re members Pate. ‘We were happy | had worked, yet mindful of its sober ing significance. And ! thought 'Whoever has this is king of the hill.’ Now ail is silent there. Gnarlec vines entangle the collapsing an: collapsed skeletons of Medren’ and colors. You were fascinated, “weapons fabricaton complex wher many bombslike "Big Mike” wer awed, and maybe even a little born. A rickety guard shack, cor scared," he related. Blues, reds, plete with telephone, marks an entr oranges, and greens seethed and AIRMA oe