Ceaths from these ulcers,
individuals that I
according to the memory of the
spoke to.
Startingly,
I was told
repeatedly of deaths on Utric in the month following the
bomb blasts.
Several people from Utric told me of three
in the month following the
first blast,
them being in children and one,
at least two of
to my memory,
in a young
woman.
One suspects that this immediate type of response
is due to direct radiation connected directly with the
fallout, and probably not food-chain, although absolute
certainty is not available.
All of the people have consistently told me that the
damage to the vegetation and the
foods that they eat,
--
extremely IJimited to start with -- has been devastating.
The Marshallese eat a limited diet consisting of fish,
breadfruit,
coconut,
and arrowroot.
The most sensitive
to radiation of the plants proved to be arrowroot.
But
this was a highly important foodstuff on these small
islands.
As I understood from the Marshallese that I
spoke to, before the blast the arrowroot grew as a tuber
or rhizome on the root of a bushy type of plant.
A healthy
arrowroot plant would have
six or so tubers,
and would
yield a good deal of nutritious food.
After the blast,
the arrowroot plants themselves started to diminish and
the number of tubers on the roots decreased until the
point came at which the arrowroot has almost been lost on
some of the islands and no longer serves as a staple in
the diet.
The Marshallese describe to me the tubers
shrinking to two to three on a bush,
tubers,
growing in a deformed manner.
in the
and then to small
and then to the plant just not growing at all,
coconut trees.
The
Similar effects occurred
tops of the coconut trees
turned red or brown after the blasts,
trees have not borne as well since.
and many coconut
The breaedfruit trees
have borne smaller fruit and cften deformed fruit.
of the trees
or
themselves have become ceformed.
Sceme
I am also struck by the hich incidence of hypertension in the people of the Marshall Islands.
The incidence
of hypertension in the average white American male goes
up to about five per cent depending on age. The frecuency
of hypertension however among the Narshallese far cutnumbers
that, and judging from the hospital records that I looked