the team left without examining anyone, but returned in September with consultants from Japan, the ‘U.S. Public Health Service and the World Health Organization. Each of the consultants is writing a critique of AEC procedures In addition, under pressure from the Congress of Micronesia, an AEC physician will be stavioned on Kwajalein next year and will make periodic visits to Rongelap and Utrik. But this does not come anywhere near solving the problem of twenty years of insensitive, inadequate treatment. The Marshallese fear for the future, especially now that leukemia has developed and now that bomb- for human rights, the Bikinians were repeatedly displaced with almost no notice and with no right to legal appeal, and vice they were Icft to starve. In the recent past, with carefully timed political announcements, the Americans ofhcially returned Bikini and Hniwetok to the people. Three of the islands in the Enisetok atoll were vaporized by the first H-bomb; on the others it is still necesSary to wear a radiation badge. A large portion of one island in Ennvetok is covered by a mantle of highly toxic berylhum, left behind by NASA experimenters. Neither Bikini nor Eniwetok has any palm inducedillnesses are on the increase among second-generation victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. trees left, or much other edible food: it will take at Icast eipht to ten years for the islanders to become self-sufhcient, Nevertheless, the people are cager to return home. It is a wreat irony that these people, who are After the official announcement that) Eniwetok among the ‘most isolated in the world, should be the first to preview World War IT. Although nuclear bombs was to be returned to its owners at the end of 1973, are no longer tested in the Marshalls, their delivery systems are. ICBMs from Vandenburg Air Force Base in California are atmed at the Marshalls where, after became known that the Air Force planned a series of tremendously destructive “Pacific Atoll Cratering Experiments” designed to simulate the effect of an H-bomb a 5,000-mile flight across the Pacific, they are fired on by Spartan and Sprint missiles launched from Kwajalein. ‘lo make room for U.S. missile facilities, the people of Kwaja- explosion on land. The biggest of the twenty-one TNT tests would alone dig a crater 300 feet in diameter and 50 fect deep. An Air Force spokesman suggested that lein were shunted to Ebeye, an overcrowded, vermin- infested island with the highest disease rate In Micronesia. The people of Bikini and Eniwetok, the old bomb sites, have been in exile since the late 1940s. In both cases public announcements of the impending weapons tests were made in the United States weeks betore the islanders themselves were told of their coming evictions. The Bikinjans were wiven two weeks’ notice that, 3 ? in the Navy's words, they were like the children of Israel, to be “saved from their enemy and led into the Promised feand.” “Vhey were gathered together after church and mistiucted to titk among themselves and take a vote on whether or not to leave their island. In the meantime, ine Navy was preparing to blast channels and build test facilities, and cameramen were aruving to film the historic event What would have happened if they nad voted not to move? Seven years later they did just that when the U.S. Government sought to take away their lepal tide to Bikini forever, Sume of the Bikinians were coerced into signing. but seon renounced their agreement; the Navy then had a traditional chief of the Marshalls, whose power was no lonper recognized, sign the island away for them, They were removed first to an uninhabitable island where for two years they lived on a starvauion dict. When it became clear that they were dying and that “native indotence’ was not to blame, they were packed up again and after a couple of abortive moves finally setled on Kili, an almost inaccessible island in the southern Marshalls. The ecology was amazingly different from Bikini, where subsistence was based largely on fishing. On Kili, fishing was often impossible and peaple had to lean for themselves how to survive in an agriculturally based ceonomy Asia result, they suffered periodic matnutrition for many years. At one point in 1948, the Likinians were ready to be redisplaced to Ujelang, another inhospitable aooll, but at the fast minute the Navy decided to move Ihe Fniwetokese there instead, despite the fact that Biki- nian workinen bad aleeady been building new homes for themselves on the island. In an extraordinary disregard 168 Perera . the craters would make ideal harbors for the Eniwetokese. Testing was stopped, however, in October by Federal District Court in Honolulu because the Air Force had bepun preparation for the tests and canducted some of them without filing a proper Environmental Impact statement and without consulting the Eniwetokese. Two other classified activities, known only as “Colonel Russel’s Project” and “Senior Girl” are under way on the island. The United States has refused to reveal how long these projects will take to complete. The order restraining the Air Force from making tests on Eniwetok was the first occasion that a U.S. court accepted a case brought by Micronesian plainuffs. Under US. administration, Micronesians have been pushed around with impunity, since they had no effective legal recourse against eminent domain proccedings, eviction, or against the construction of military bases. As much as 60 per cent of some islands is retained by the United States, most of it valuable agricultural land, now kept idle. Last July it became known that the military proposes to retain “‘riphts’ for continued use of parts of Bikini, despite ifs return to its owners. Although the Trusteeship Agreement charges the United States with the responsibility for “protectuny the inhabitants against the loss of their lands and resources,” the United States has blatandy evicted Micronesians and taken their land for pseudopublic purposes. Micronesia is the only one of the eleven original postwat trust territories, set up under the United Nations, that has not been guaranteed its independence, Last summer the Conpress of Micronesia voted to begin negotiating for independence, and a majority of the Congress expressed opposition to previous agreements reached with the United States which would perpetually subject Micronesia to US. strategic interests, As a result, the United States has called a halt to talks and has warned Micronesia that under no cucumstinces would it agree to termination of the trusteeship under conditions which would “in any way Unreaten stability in the area and which would tn the THE NaTION/ February 5, 1973