Ceaths from these ulcers, individuals that I according to the memory of the 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, them being in children and one, at least two of to my memory, in a young woman. One suspects that this immediate type of response is due to direct radiation connected directly with the fallout, and probably not food-chain, although absolute certainty is not available. All of the people have consistently told me that the damage to the vegetation and the foods that they eat, -- extremely IJimited 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 important 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 as a staple in the diet. The Marshallese describe to me the tubers shrinking to two to three on a bush, tubers, growing in a deformed manner. in the and then to small and then to the plant just not growing at all, coconut trees. The Similar effects occurred tops of the coconut trees turned red or brown after the blasts, trees have not borne as well since. and many coconut The breaedfruit trees have borne smaller fruit and cften deformed fruit. of the trees or themselves have become ceformed. Sceme 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 frecuency of hypertension however among the Narshallese far cutnumbers that, and judging from the hospital records that I looked