SESSION If 135 AYRES: In that we do not differ from our ancestors who went West with guns. We still believe we can change the Vietnamese, and that somehow we're going to make democrats out of them. We wouldn't be here if we didn't believe we can have some effect on our own country. But the Marshallese don't believe they can have any influence on their surroundinss, and that's probably why they accept things like this. These are just Deus ex machina. \ CONARD: As Staff pointed out, these people do show some of the characteristics of stoicism and the rigors of a hard previous life. They never celebrate a birthday, for instance, until a child is one year old because they're so used to the:n Jying before they reach that age. They don't accept them as human beings before that. WARREN: That would save them some trouble, wouldn't it? CONARD: And the older people are all set aside. "You're old now. We'll give you some rice or something and you take care of yourself,’ But they love the children, MILLER: Isn't there another feature? They are in an iecolated place under American control and no one can reach them to inflame them or to pattern their thinking as in Hiroshima, DUNHAM: People go down there from time to time and try to stir them up but they don't get very far. CONARD: They got stirred up as far as to institute a suit against the United States Government. They tried to sue the American Government for something like $40 million. There were several lawyers that got into the case and tried to push the thing for thembut that fell through. EISENBUD: They've had several missionaries down there. UPTON: Do they wonder why you're coming back every year? CONARD: Yes. Fora long time, for the first six or eight years, they were puzzied because we would teli them at the end of the examination, "Well, we find that everything is fine, that you're doing fine,"' Then they would say, ‘Well, why do you have to come oack and take our blood and examine us again if everything is fine?'' This is very difficult to explain to a naive group of people like that. But we did the best we could. We told them that we wanted to be sure that something might not develop. They accepted it gradually and over the years now