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PRIVAGY ACT MATERIAL remoRST H YDROGEN VICTIM...
fromradiation sickness, but none of them, so far as is known,
died from leukemia.
The fallout also filtered down on others of the Marshall
Islands, including the island of Rongelap more than onc
hundred miles from Bikini. Iuhabitants of these islands
also took a dose of radiation. Rongelap was
native island.
as a cheer1 aistill haunted by a mental image of
trees of
palin
the
under
sand
the
in
ful brown baby playing
ongelap, as the sky lit up above him from the great explosion on Bikini, and playing still, fecling no harm, as the
dust of the fallout settled around him. The cheerful brown
baby was now my roommate, ninetcen-year-old
and he had, John Glick told me, a particularly vicious variety of acute myclogenous leukemia.
There was no doubt at all that the bomb andthe leu-
kemia were cause and effect. The Nagasaki and Hiroshima
bombs had induced leukemia in a good imany Japanese.
Several inhabitants of the Marshall Islands had developed
suspiciots lymph nodes as a result of the Bikini test But
Lekoj was the first case of leukemia from the fallout of a
hydrogen homb test.
The Atomic Energy Commission had flown his fatherout
from Rongclap to be with him. His father was a toughlooking little man, much smaller than
For hours at |
atime he would sit by
= ——_—s bedside, saying nothiny at
all. Once in a long while he would reach out and touch
hand, and sometimes
would mutter something, in Marshallese, and grin.
spokes hardly any English, so there was nat much
communication bebvecn us. Every morning 1 would smile,
and he would grin. back—his teeth were perfect—and I
would ask, “How you feel?”
Usually he would reply, “Fine. Fine.” But toward the end
of the twelve days we spent together, he would be more
likely to say, still with a grin, “No good. Feel deezy.” He
was being given very powerful chemicals, in an attempt to
induce a remission, and he was nauseated. But he remained
remarkably cheerful. I wondered if he knew howsick he’
was,
He was a heavily built young man, and his muscles rippledunderhis skin. But there was a curiously gentle quality
xbout him, a sofmess, a kind of endearing childishness—it
was very easy to imagine him as that baby in the sand under the sudden glare of light.
Despite the lack of a common tongue, we had our com-
S0luoau
Oels at eS au ee
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