Fortuitous Fallout

"It looked like salt," said one of the 82 natives, recalling the shower of radioactive ash that fell on Rongelap atoll in the Marshall Islands in March 1954. "It came down like rain, and it burned when it touched your skin." An unexpected shift of wind had carried the ash from H-bomb tests 150 miles away, off Bikini.

The embarrassed U.S. Navy hastily evacuated the Rongelapese to two distant islands. Navy doctors treated and kept close check on the 45 who had suffered burns. Except for some skin discoloration, they all recovered with no serious permanent damage. But for a while the transplanted Rongelapese were bitter. "We done no wrong," they said. "We no understand why we should be punished."

For more than three years the homesick and bewildered people of Rongelap stayed on in exile as charges of the U.S. Government, while nuclear experts checked the lingering radioactivity on their native island. Last year, when it became apparent that Rongelap would soon be free of danger, the Navy invited a handful of native leaders to come help them plan a new village in anticipation of the islanders' return. It was to include brand new modern houses with heat-resistant, rainproof aluminum roofs, a new school, a new hospital, a church, a radio station, scientifically planted groves of coconut designed for maximum copra production, plantations of papaya and breadfruit seedlings, and a whole new fleet of canoes for the local fishermen.

Last week, with the model island village ready for occupation, a U.S. Navy LST set sail from Kwajalein loaded to the scuppers with happy homeward-bound Rongelapese. They were a far cry from the worried souls who three years ago had called themselves "the poisoned people." Good news travels fast, and because of what the Navy and the AEC had done for their atoll, many a Rongelapese who left his home long before the H-bomb blast occurred had decided to return to it. Since island law provides that every member of a Rongelap family, whether living there or not, is entitled to a share of land, the Navy found itself returning a boatload of 275 Rongelapese to the atoll in place of the 82 it originally carried off.

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