Chief Johannes will never forget the day in 1947 that the ship came ic take them awéy: A mantold us: "You cannot protest or fight. You are like the rabbit fish wriggling onthe end of a spear. You can struggle all you want, but there's nothing you can do to change this." Chief Johannes and his people left the Pacific atoll of Enewetak ~- quietly -~ in December of 1947. They were taken by the United States Navy to Ujelang, another atoll about 125 miles away. Over the next ten years, forty-three nuclear devices would be detonated at Enewetak -as part of the. United States weapons development program. * * *k * * * * * Enewetak atoll -- a ring of islands in which Enewetak is the largest -was first inhabited by the descendants of canoe voyagers who had ' chanced on it 1,000 years ago. The people of the atoll lived undisturbed until the early 16th century -- when a Spanish explorer briefly visited the atoll. Spain ruled the island until] 1886. Then the Germans came and signed an agreement with Chief Piter. They traded with the islanders for almost thirty years: foodstufis and tradegoods for Enewetakese copra. No Germans settled on the islands; only an occasional missionary lingered long enough to baptize the natives." In 1914 the Japanese wrested contro) of the tslands from the Germans. But the islands were too isolated, too far from the normal trade routes, too barren to support extensive plantations. For the next quarter-century, the Japanese maintained the sare desultory trade relations as the Germans hed -- and the same lack olf contact with the Enewetakans, The industrial revolution and the mercantile explosion that had reshaped the world had barely touched Enewetak atoll or its people. But by 1939, the nature of modern warfare had changed as well. And Enewe’ak island, just large enough to accommodate an airfield, became a key building block in the battle plans of the Japanese. They finally settled on the atoll, and rebuilt it into a fortress. The Enewetakans were confined to two smaller islands.