DOE ARCHIVES
Evacuation of Bikini l
Early in 1946 it was decided that Bikini Atoll was the most
suitable location for the testing of atomic weapons.
The Bikini
people were asked to leave and, as might have been expected of a
people of their historical conditioning to obedience,
especially
after more tnan a quarter of a century of autocratic Japanese
rule, agreed to leave their ancestral home.
The possibilities
of resettlement in the Marshalls were very limited because land
is scarce (only about 74 square miles) and very little of it is
available for settlement.
The Marshallese jealously guard their
jand rights and will not willingiy part with them.
r
ProblemsofResettlement
The 166 Bikinians were offered the chotce of moving to
elther Ujae,
Marshalls.
Lae,
or Rongerix,
all
atolls
in the
northwestern
Ujae and Lae were already regularly inhabited, but
Rongerik was only exploited by the people of neighboring Rongelap,
who had land rights on the atoll.
to make copra,
reason,
to fish,
presumably,
to Bikini,
as
These people visited Rongerik
and to gather other foods.
well
as
the fact
that
it
was
For this
the
closest
the Bixini people opted to go to Rongerik rather than
Ujae or Lae.
A village was built on Rongerik by Navy Seabees and a group
tes
or Bikini men,
and ail of the Bikini people were moved to that
For a Getailed report of the movements of the Bikini people
from Bikini to Rongerik and to Kili, see Mason, Leonard ‘The
Bikinians A Transplanted Population, Human Organization,
Vol.
9,
No.
1,
Spring 1950,
pp.
5-15.