It Was 'Snow' That Brought Death

From MIKE MALONE in Saipan

March 1, 1954, began like any other day for the people of Rongelap. The sun rose in the eastern sky over the flat, narrow, coral and sand atoll in the north ern Marshall Islands, but none of the 82 inhabitants of the isolated atoll, least of all one year-old Lekoj Anjain, realized it would be a day that set them apart from the rest of humanity.

Before the sun had risen high in the sky that morning, a shock wave cracked across Rongelap’s watery horizon.

Lekoj, who was probably play ing near the lagoon with the other children, must have paused and stared at the distant brightness coming from the west. They must have wondered if it would happen again.

It didn’t. But several hours later a snow-like ash began falling from the sky. Older children who had seen pictures of real snow were delighted and rubbed it on their skin. Lekoj must have done the same. But the village elders watched and wondered and thought about the distant bright ness that appeared in the west.

As one Rongelapese man said years later, “We did not under stand what could have made the

bright light in the west. The sun was already up in the east. There was nothing in the west except Bikini.”

Today Lekoj Anjain is dead. He died, November 15, of myelogenous leukemia at the US National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

On that first day of March over 18 years ago, Rongelap and her people were exposed to the first shock waves of the first hydrogen bomb, a weapon so new and powerful that it out-paced man’s technology.

Because of a freak wind shift, officials say, harmful radioactive fallout rained down on Rongelap that morning from a US Atomic Energy Commission test site on Bikini atoll, located only 100 miles west. By day’s end, everyone on Rongelap, including little Lekoj, had acute signs of nausea, vomiting ’ and itchin § of skin.

Two days later, the US Navy evacuated Rongelap’s ailing inhabitants to a hospital at Kwajalein Naval Base, about 250 miles south. The Rongelapese had been exposed to near-lethal doses of whole bod y radiation, suffered beta burns, loss of hair and pigment changes in the skin.

Since that time, the 82 Ronge lapese have been subjected to yearly examinations by Atomic Energy Commission doctors. In 1962 they were awarded $902,000 (US) as compensation, but the following year thyroid nodules appeared, particularly in younger childen like Lekoj, who had been exposed at a very early age.

To date, 19 Rongelapese have received operations for thyroid abnormalities; three have proven cancerous. An American thyroid specialist, a member of the AEC team that visited Rongelap last March, prophetically mentioned to this writer during that medical survey trip that leukemia was “a real danger”, although none had then yet appeared. However, Dr Robert Conard, a senior scientist from the Brookhaven Laboratories in New York who has headed the AEC’s annual trips to the islands since the 1954 incident, denied this as a possibility.

Lekoj was the first known Rongelapese victim to die of the incurable disease. He was 19.

His body was flown to the Mar shall Islands late last month for burial. Deputy High Commissioner Peter Coleman flew to Majuro to pay his respects to the young man.