oe roose WeoN manut adlinthe. + "BOE Ww Al ( _——d be a BW 408309 Altre = oe AMON -[Ouas- Ours Orr tee FermNeda rereisi — a Acre UNITED STATES ite 326 U.S B OFFICE OF THE SecretTARY 2 ems 8 emcees” ; USRRR wn ‘ERGY oh *COMMiss DEPARTMENT OF THE ine ERIOR Oy -69 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20280] Taccion & L- FAR125868 77G - . Folder Mas Redan 3 ve3 rene ll Dear Senator Burdeick: tienen aD wwe ak 2 me oxe. . “= Thank you for your Letter of March 1 calling to our attention corre=spondence which Senator Case has nad with Nr. and Mrs. Todd E. A Meare aah! Jenkins, Peace Corvs Volunteers on Kili in the Marshall Islands. Me. and iirs. Jenkins are concerned with the situation of theformer Bikini people who now reside on Nili and desire to effect their immediate return to their home atoll. As you are no doubt aware, ims has now written to the United Nations asking for an in on by the Trustcesnip Council of the possible return of the Bikini, Hashir at yy A news report of this action appeared in the of Thursday, March 7. Hh included in the correspondence which Senator Case provided you is a copy oF 3 letter from this Department's Orfice of Territories dated December 15, 1957. There is Little which I can add at this time to that letter, which was intended to indicate the extreme concern wnich the High Cormissioner and we have for the Bikini people, as well as to summarize briefly their history to the present time. We also wished to indicate that the Hien Commissioner and we are seck= ing an orderly solution to the problem. Let me expand somewhat on the latter point. Recognizing the desire of the former Bikini people to return to their home atoll, we have been avtempting to proceed on a step-by-step basis. First, it is | clearly necessary to determine whether or not it is now safe, fron a health standpoint, for the people to return to Bikini. As noted in our letter, over a year ago this Department asked the Atomic Energy Commission to analyze the Levels of radiation in the islands that comprise the atoll to determine wnether a people who have been relatively unexposed to radioactivity may now live a normal and us ful life there, The field wok for this study was conducted by the. Atomic Enerry Commissicn lest April and the months since then have been used for a careful and painstaking analysis of the data collected. During High Commissioner Norwood's recent visit to Washington he and representatives of the Office of Territories met only last week with the Atomic Enersy Commission for a status report. The analyses are not yet completed and it is, therefore, cecn eble to clarify the Sevtexser 1556 statement attributed to ~, Noxvrood oy Mr, Jenkins to the effect that Bikini could be re- settled in 1966, but, if Mr. Norwood made such a statement, he based it on information which has since been proven to be unreliable. BEST COPY AVAILABLE BIAS premature for us to say wacther or not, from the health standpoint, + is now safe for these people to return to Bikini. We have not yeu