Peace Not

Pace In

Eniwetok

By the grace of the United States Air Force—it’s got tired of belting hell out of Eniwetok atoll in the Marshalls—the people of these islands, exiled to Ujelang atoll in 1948, should be back on their home land within a year.

Now the United States wants to take over two-thirds of Tinian Island in the Marianas to establish a joint service military base.

The people of Tinian, of course, living in those two-thirds—including the inhabitants of San Jose village— will have to move over into the 7,700 acres on the southern end of the island which the US military does not need.

In a statement detailing the US pro posal, Ambassador Haydn Williams, regretted the inconvenience this physical resettlement might cause.

The most definitive statement on Eniwetok so far came in the June sitting of the UN Trusteeship Council in New York by US representative William Schauffele.

He read to the council a statement issued by the USAF the same day saying: “A recent review of the PACE (Pacific Atoll Cratering Ex periment) programme, incorporating an analysis of new scientific data, concern of the citizens of Eniwetok and environmental considerations, have resulted in a decision that the

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cratering explosions known as PACE 11, should not be carried out on the Eniwetok atoll . .

But it’s not quite the end of the TNT—2OO pounds of TNT will be exploded as part of a non-cratering mild explosive experiment linked to continuing studies involving seismic refraction surveys and core drilling.

A few days earlier parties involved in a lawsuit against the USAF for its activities on Eniwetok had agreed to the dismissal of the suit.

It seemed that a point had been reached where the US was willing to allow the Eniwetokese people to go home and they were ready to make the trip and start picking up the pieces—which are many as a result of two decades of nuclear and heavy TNT tonnage pounding.

It may have been the testimony of Dr Robert Kiste, visiting professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaii, and Ted Mitchell, a Saipan lawyer for the Eniwetokese, at hear ings on the environmental impact statement of PACE on Eniwetok in April, which brought the change of heart.

Kiste attacked a section of the statement which read: “At this time there are no permanent residents . . . the proposed tests would have no direct impact on inhabitants.”

Because the Eniwetokese had been promised they would be allowed to return, said Kiste, there was a definite direct impact. Comparing Eniwetok to Bikini, he said nuclear testing had “had a disastrous effect on the spirit and morale of the in habitants ...” Bikini was no longer a self-sufficient community as it had been before the tests.

And, at the hearings, there was a cry from the heart—from Smith Gideon, Eniwetok magistrate on Ujelang Island: “I do not know if you have made an attempt to com pare your sense of values—you who live in America or elsewhere—with ours.

“You live with gold and money and we have to depend on land and whatever life we can find on land and in the water. Without these we are nothing.

“We do not have to explain further that Eniwetok, with whatever land resources and whatever marine resources it has, is our homeland.”