PREFACE
If you care to know, the largest atoll on Earth—found about halfway between Kaho'olawe in Hawai'i and Papua, New Guinea—is Kwajalein atoll here in the Ralik chain of the Marshall Islands. Kwajalein Atoll's ninety-three tropical islands sit just above sea level on a reef that rims the world's largest lagoon. The islands are small and have no mountains or rivers, but they do have jungles and freshwater wells and soil good for growing. The lagoon and surrounding ocean is full of fish. In 1965 the American military depopulated most of Kwajalein's islands, providing the people homes in a labor camp, so that a large area of the lagoon and some of the islands could be used as a bull’s-eye for ballistic missile testing.
You might already know that the Western world got one of its favorite words, bikini, from the language of the Ralik chain of the Marshall Islands. If not, you can find that fact about halfway between Big Bang and Biocide in your dictionary. Bikini really means surface of coconut palms, and it is the name of an atoll just two hundred miles north of Kwajalein. Bikini was denuded and so was the neighboring atoll of Eniwetak, and six of their islands were vaporized by the surface detonation of sixty-six atomic and hydrogen thermonuclear bombs. The people of these islands, descendants of ancestors who had arrived before Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, were barged away and told by soldiers that their islands were needed for a short time to benefit all mankind and to end all wars.
One of the hydrogen thermonuclear bombs, code-named "Bravo," was one thousand times more powerful than "Little Boy," the thirteen-kiloton bomb that killed close to one hundred thousand people at Hiroshima, Japan. Bravo, detonated in March of 1954, had an explosive force of fifteen megatons, meaning that its blast was as strong as fifteen million tons of exploding dynamite. The blast was also deadly radioactive and created an ashy fallout that fell over a large area of the Pacific ocean and on several inhabited atolls. Marshallese women collected it in their wash tubs. Children played in it as it fell like snow.
My friend, Jebro Keju, just a fisherman like me, says all twenty-nine Marshallese atolls were contaminated by radiation and fallout from these 66 bombs—altogether yielding the equivalent of more than 7,000 Hiroshima bombs. The American military claims to have contaminated only fourteen atolls, deeming many of them now safe. Jebro was born in 1963 on the island of Tar-WÇj at Kwajalein Atoll. He was born with six fingers on his left hand—an extra-long extra pinkie with no nail. It has no strength, but Jebro says he can bring fish by wiggling it in the water. It is his magic finger.
Do you know that jellyfish babies are babies born with no bones in their bodies? Sometimes they look transparent, inside-out. They happen because radioactive elements like cesium-137 and strontium-90—which once introduced into land or sea will not go away for hundreds of years—get into foods like crabs and coconuts and breadfruits and bananas and are absorbed into the human body as though they were calcium and potassium.
Do you know that malignant transformation of human cells as a result of radiation exposure might take twenty or more years to occur? You might think you are headed for
a comfortable old age, and then your thyroid goes haywire telling your body to sprout deadly tumors. Sometimes it does not take so long. Sometimes you acquire leukemia, or some other cancer, or your children are born retarded or freakishly deformed.
Sometimes, if you are a woman, you give live birth to a jellyfish baby, or an octopus baby, an apple baby, a turtle baby, what some Marshallese women call monster babies.
Kwajalein atoll's American history began in February of 1944, when U.S. ships targeted the main island—also called Kwajalein, and a Japanese headquarters at the time—for three days of saturation bombing. Fifteen thousand tons of explosives hit the island, the heaviest artillery barrage delivered anywhere in the entire war. The Japanese fortifications were powderized, and when the American flag was raised after mopping up, just three palm trees remained alive as shell-shocked sentries on a barren, bombed-out wasteland. The entire island was leveled with bulldozers, and several hundred Marshallese were recruited as laborers to help rebuild it into a Navy base.
After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had ended the war with Japan, the United Nations decided that the Marshall Islands should become part of a Trust Territory to be administered by the United States. In exchange for agreeing to give the Marshallese economic and political nurturing, and promising to "accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost the well being of the inhabitants," the United States received permission from the United Nations to use the islands for military purposes. As such, Kwajalein's role immediately after the war was in support of atomic weapons testing which began at Bikini in 1946 with an air-dropped atomic bomb code named "Able," and ended at Eniwetak in 1958 with the surface detonation of a hydrogen thermonuclear bomb code-named "Fig."
In 1960, the ocean just south of Kwajalein Island was designated as an impact area for Inter-Continental Ballistic missiles (warheads without their nuclear payloads), and to intercept these missiles the atoll was outfitted with several radar installations and launching facilities. Five years later, the United States Army evicted all Marshallese people living on islands in the central two-thirds of Kwajalein atoll, including Jebro and his family on Tar-WÇj, and forbid them to return home or even fish any longer in most areas of the lagoon. The Army began using this vacated area, the "Mid-Atoll Corridor," as a bull’s-eye to test the accuracy of theater and strategic ballistic missiles and their anti-missile missiles, including, by 1981, every type of medium and long-range missile in the arsenal of the United States. To conduct these missile tests, civilian engineers and technicians contracted by the Army developed and continue to engage Top-Secret range instrumentation including the FPQ-19 Radar system (a long-range high-accuracy C-band amplitude comparison monopole radar capable of manual or automatic RF optical tracking, providing video azimuth and elevation data, digital in-phase and quadrature video for phase derived range data-also possessing, as an adjunct, angular tracking error and stellar calibration capabilities) * an ARPA Lincoln C-band Observable Radar (ALCOR, having high-powered, narrow beam, coherent chirped monopulse tracking capabilities) * a Target Resolution And Discrimination EXperiment (TRADEX, a 140 ton high-power pencil-beam tracking radar with a parabolic reflector antenna having a two-way 6-dB bandwidth of 10.6 mrad giving it an angular width greater than the moon, a dual frequency L-band/S-band configuration, a Multistatic Measurement System for dual-bistatic signature capability allowing it to trilaterate, a coherent integration capability for increased gain to see objects as they come over the horizon, and a MultiTarget Tracker able to detect and track up to 63 distinct targets and provide angular locations, ranges, and signature data on each of them through real-time interactive graphical displays on the control center's MADTraC computer system) * mobile sensors such as Airborne Surveillance Testbeds and the Navy's AEGIS weapons system (an on-line tactical asset) five separate telemetry sites which include nine auto-tracking and three fixed antennas configured with multiple receivers and recorders supporting the full IRIG standard frequency range of 1700-2400 megahertz for telemetry streams of up to 10 megabits per second * a wide variety of 35 and 70 millimeter motion picture cameras (with film rates ranging from 90 to 2,500 frames per second providing for both exo- and endo-atmospheric data collection, precise trajectory reconstruction, accurate kill assessment, and miss distance estimation to less 25 centimeters)-and with all this technology (the entire range provided with encrypted connectivity by a submarine high-bandwidth fiberoptic transmission system), and with the ability to locally fire a variety of anti-missile missiles (Ground Based Interceptors and Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicles), the engineers and technicians of Kwajalein atoll acquire, identify, and track the incoming ballistic missiles and their Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicles—or MIRVs (warheads)—on their way into the Mid-Atoll Corridor, the lagoon, (the bull’s-eye) and try very hard to shoot them down, which they rarely ever succeed at doing. The Army, in part, employs the imported American civilian population of Kwajalein to develop Global Protection Against Limited Strikes, code-named GPALS, and looks forward to handling Multiple Simultaneous Engagement Scenarios, as required by the Theater Missile Defense Program.
When in 1965 the Army gathered Jebro and his family and the rest of the Marshallese living on islands in the newly designated bull's-eye and made them go live in the labor camp on the tiny island of Ebeye—giving the head of each household twenty-five US dollars a month as compensation—many protestors (Jebro's grandfather, Ataji, among them) began staging sail-ins and sit-ins and making formal complaints because they wanted very much to go back home. Ebeye is less than one mile long and about six hundred feet wide, unsuitable, really, for thousands of people. Protests and sail-ins did not achieve for Ataji Keju the right to return to his home, but through this pressure he and his fellow landholders and some hired lawyers did get the American government to pay a little more money for the islands they had taken.
As further compensation for denying them their lands and fishing areas, for ending their traditional way of life and their ability to teach their children the same, the Army promised the Marshallese relocated to Ebeye some jobs at Kwajalein, and promised good wages, nothing below American minimum wage. Because Marshallese custom dictates that one cannot deny hospitality to fellow clan members (networks of families existing on many other atolls) this promise of wages greater than anywhere else in Micronesia attracted people from all over the Marshall Islands to Ebeye. With its population rising from a few hundred in the fifties to over twelve thousand in the twenty-first century, Ebeye quickly became a filthy, overcrowded slum, overwhelmed by deadly epidemics of polio, hepatitis, spinal meningitis, gastroenteritis, measles, tuberculosis, typhoid, dengue fever, amoebic dysentery, a thirty percent rate of diabetes, chronic youth suicide (boys prefer hanging, girls used to drink liquid bleach) bizarre parasitic worms and bacterial conditions, alcoholism, repeated outbreaks of gonorrhea, yaws, syphilis, and, of course, mostly but not entirely among Marshallese from northern atolls: leukemia, malignant neoplasms, thyroid cancers, and jellyfish babies. Just recently, the island was quarantined because of a cholera epidemic.
On Kwajalein island—at twelve times the size of Ebeye and just three miles away—where in 1981 it was forbidden for any Marshallese to live or spend the night or even visit unless they had a valid reason and a permit, American families and singles (about five thousand Americans living on the island) were provided free of charge with furnished air-conditioned homes, having yards and lawns, while single people were housed, free of charge, two-to-a-room in large apartment buildings. These rooms were also furnished and had air-conditioning and lofts, free towel service and Marshallese maids. The nicest home on the island, reserved for the Colonel, was large and spacious and, for some reason I do not know, even had working fireplaces.
Regardless of a worker's status, unless Marshallese, he or she could enjoy all of the amenities that Kwajalein had to offer. On Good Friday in 1981, these included three free movie theaters (one air-conditioned, one outdoor, one open-air ) * tended white-sand beaches with party pavilions and barbeque facilities a nine-lane bowling alley (35 cents a game) * three baseball fields (one for little league) two soccer fields * a running track * two Olympic-sized swimming pools with high and low diving boards, lounge chairs and floats * a free nine-hole golf course with country club and clubhouse (beer machine at the sixth hole) * free use of a driving range, weight rooms, basketball courts, racquetball courts, tennis courts and games rooms * free sports equipment check-out * a community court to air your grievances * a large hospital with pharmacy, operating rooms and inpatient facilities * a dental clinic * three libraries * a teen center with attached disco * three bars * two restaurants * snack bars * a department store * a convenience store * a hardware and sporting goods store * a grocery store * a bakery * discount tax-free prices on everything including beer and stereo equipment * free meals three times a day for singles (unaccompanied personnel) * a beauty parlor and a barber shop * a free hobby shop (industrial power tools available) * a large attractive church with adjoining chapel an airport capable of handling large commercial and military aircraft * a nursery school, kindergarten, elementary school, highschool, and college classes at night for adults (Marshallese students excluded) * Cub Scouts, Brownies, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Officers' Wives Club * free use of a photo lab, pistol range, and shotgun range * a plant nursery (plants free) * free expert landscaping and meticulous tree trimming * well-maintained roads and curbing * playgrounds, parks and ponds * a yearly carnival with Looper, Ferris wheel, Moonwalk, kiddie cars and gambling booths * single-engine aircraft (Cessna- 150) available for rent or instruction * free use of sail boats (Cal-20), ski boats and ocean-going power boats (I8' and 2I' Boston Whalers) and no charge for the gas and oil, and Marshallese people eager to buy your catch * the Kwajalein Yacht Club for those who brought their own yachts * free ice * go-carts and a go-car track * lifeguards * Alcoholics Anonymous * and aerial fireworks on the fourth of July.
Privately-owned automobiles were not allowed on Kwajalein-everybody traveled by bicycle-but this made it much safer for children to play, and the reduced traffic noise was a pleasant change from life in the States. A free taxi-van service served those who did not feel like pedaling, or those whose golf clubs did not fit in the baskets of their bicycles. All of these things made Kwajalein a very nice place to live, and to make it nicer, to attract the right people to such a distant place, the IRS designated the island a "Hardship Camp," and as such, none of the residents had to pay any Federal income taxes.
On Good Friday in 1981, twenty-three years after "Fig" was detonated at Eniwetak, more than nine thousand Marshallese and three discos were crammed on Ebeye along with its resident rat hoards, dog packs, an indeterminable number of oddly beautiful feral cats, an empty water tower where on top somebody had brush painted in green: FUNKYTOWN, and enough cars and pick-up trucks to cause a rush hour—horns honking and drivers waving their arms just like in America.
Among the eight hundred Marshallese permitted to work for the American community on Kwajalein was Jebro's father, Rujen, who worked at the sewage plant. He liked to eat his lunches just down the road at the turtle pond. He was also an usher at the Americans' Catholic church, the only Marshallese in the congregation. Rujen was given his First Holy Communion as a child on Tar-WÇj by a traveling missionary priest.
Rujen was there when some blood came up from the mouth of the mermaid in the middle of the turtle pond on Good Friday 1981, and so many strange things happened that day on Tar-WÇj and Ebeye and in the lagoon and the ocean and the sky and the Kwajalein Catholic church, and so much of it seems so unbelievable now in the twenty-first century that I better just get started before I forget, and so this story begins.
