Se VWWarniedl tic ROGER W:. GALE Mr. Gale teaches a course on Micronesia at the University of California Extension, Berkeley; he is West Coast director of the Friends of Micronesia. When the first postwar atomic bomb was to be tested on Bikini in the summer of 1946, the people of Rongelap ‘atoll, about 100 miles away, were evacuated as a precaution. But on March 1, 1954, when Bravo, the first deliverable thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb)—750 times more powerful and much dirtier than the earlier bombs —was detonated on Bikini, the people of Rongclap were left there as sitting ducks, Winds aloft carried radioactivity castward, heavily contaminating the cighty-two people on Rongelap as well as the twenty-three Japanese fishermen aboard the Lucky Dragon; 154 other. Marshallese and twenty-eight Americans were also doused with fallout. The nightmare of that day is still with the Ronge- lapese. The latest victim is 19-year-old who died recently of acute myclogenous leukemia, Now that American rule of Micronesia, derived from a Trustec- ship Agreement with the United Nations, may be about to end, the Marshallese are no longer willing to be used as guinca pigs by researchers from the U.S. Atomic En- ergy Commission. Last year, when AEC doctors arrived * to conduct their annual survey the Marshallese victims ° refused to submit to examination. Early on that first day of March the people of Rongclap saw a’brilliant flash in the western sky. Running out of their houses to the beach they saw an enormous pillar of yellowish fire rising in the sky. Soon the weather seemed to change; the sky darkened and a storm appeared imminent. Several hours after the explosion, the atoll was suddenly enveloped in a heavy mist and particles of highly radioactive coral ash which had been sucked up from Bikini and suspended 100,000 fect in the air, beganto fall like snow. There was no immediate sickness but by nightfall, a few hours after the storm ended, people's skin began to itch and sting; some of them had burning cyes and almost all of them were nauseated. They were very tired, lost their appetites and soon had diarrhea, Burn lesions began to appear on their bodies the next day and mest. of them started losing clumps of hair, some of them becoming temporarily bald, - The people of Utirik, farther from the Bravo blast, did not sec any ash but developed similar symptoms al- though they did not receive anywhere near the 175 rads of whole body radiation which penetrated the Rongelapese. The twenty-eight Americans on an island near Rongelap had been bricfed on what to do. Phey put on extra clothing and took cover when the blast went off; consequently they were not seriously injured. No one had warned the Micronestans. ‘Two days after the test, the people were evacuated by Navy ship to Kwajalein where they received medical attention; the day before, a ship had by-passed Ronge166 5013232 SLICPOING SUAS lap to evacuate the twenty-eight Americans. The first public announcement about the blast, issued by the Atomic Energy Commission on March 11, bore little resemblance to the facts of the tragedy. During the course of a routine atomic test in the Marshall Istands 28° United States personnel and 236 residents were transported from neighboring atolls to Kwajalein Island according to a plan as a precautionary measure, These individuals were unexpectedly exposed to somes radioactivity. There were no burns. All reported well. After the completion of the atomic tests, the natives will be returned to their homes. In fact, the test was not routine. Bravo was the first of ils kind, the first of a scries and the first to have been detonated on Bikini in cight years. The people had not been moved before the rest and there were beta burns. The Rongelapese did not return home after the tests, they spent three and a half years in exile waiting for their island to “cool off? to a point where it was even minimally safe for rehabitation, Robert Conard, the Brookhaven National Laboratory's expert on Rongelap and Utink, said that unexposed Rongelapese who returned with the contaminated population in 1957 made an “ideal comparison population” ‘for studying radiation effects. They have been convenient ‘guinea pigs for AEC research, being the only population to have been exposed to high-level, whole-body radiation without also suffering physical and psychological trauma from the nuclear blast itself as had been the case in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Other than the crew of the Lucky Dragon, they remain the only people to have been heavily contaminated by fallout from an FEl-bomb with its exceptionally complex patierns of radioactive dispersion. Was the exposure of the Marshallese reaily an accident? Micronesian Congressman Ataji Balos charges that the Marshallese were deliberately contaminated, Paul Jacobs has published evidence that the AEC may have deliberately contaminated American soldiers during nuclear weapons tests in Nevada. There was a great deal of carelessness in the Marshalls and a willingness to take risks with the brown-skinned Marshallese that would not normally have been acceptable "in Nevada, where most other nuclear tests have-occurred. All of the large nuclear blasts were detonated on cither Bikini or Eniwetok because these sites arc 500 miles or more from busy air and sea routes. But, as in Nevada, there were small _ population centers within the danger area of ihe blasts. In fact, there are probably more isolated locations in Nevada than there are in the Marshalls. The danger zone around Bikini was enlarged eight times after the Bravo test, but its castward boundary conveniently excluded populated islands. One island, Ailinginae, was geographically within the prohibited zone but not so included on AEC maps. The twenty-cipht Americans who were con- laminated, as well as:cighteen of the Rongelapese, were on Ailinginae on March 1, 1954, N THE NATION/february 5, 1973 PRIVACY ACT MATERIAL REMOVED ceta Same peabe Tad ae a ee IN@ eee) ate te adioseB OUR RADIOACTIVE WARDS 401926 PRIVACY ACT MATERIAL REMOVED