The Day People Saw the First H-Bomb Fallout (Inside Glimpses)

Page 1

_. On Rongelap. a tiny atoll in the Dragon John Anjain, h k o j ’ s father deold named Lakoj Anjain was learning t o thing began falling from the sky upon our walk. Fifteen miles northwest of Ronge- island. It looked like ash from a fire. It lap, radioman Aikichi Kuboyama was fell on me, it fell on my.wife, it fell on enjoying a modest predawn breakfast our infant son. .We were very curious aboard the Japanese fishhg vesse1,Lucky about this ash falling from the sky. Some Drugon. It was March 1 , 1954. p o p l e put it in their mouths and tasted .Suddenly, the western skies explod- it. One man rubbed it into hs eyes t o see ed with yellow light. The Pacific Ocean if it would cure an old ailment.”Ailuchi mirrored the eerie spectacle as the blind- Kuboyama and his fellow crewmembers ing light became red, then orange. Kubo-- .?eacted similarly. None of them had seen yama bolted out o f his cabin and joined anything like this before. the crewmen of the Lucky Dragon as As the world was soon t o learn. the they stared in awe of “Another sun rising Marshallese of Rongelap, Rongerik and in the West!” Lakoj Anjain .and the 63 Utirik and the crew of the LuckyDragon other resjdents of Rongelap heard the were the first humans to be exposed t o thunder and watched the strange clouds H-bomb fallout. Although the Marshallese over the horizon. None of them had seen were treated in relative obscurity, the anything like this before. The United Japanese fishermen were the subjects of 3tates had exploded ils first hydrogen front page stories worldwide. Ioinb - 15 megatons strong - on near- Six months after the blast Aikichi JY Bikini atoll. Kuboyama died a d became the world’s Several hours later. a white ash fell first H-bomb victim. Eighteen years after ike snow from the sky and covered both the blast Lakoj Anjain died of leukemia. .he islanders and the crew of the Lucky His father recalls :he death of his son: “In 1972 they took Lekoj away again. They said they wanted to examine him. They took him t o America, to a big hospital near Washington. Later they took me to this hospital because they wid he was very sick. My son Lekoj died after I arrived. He never .saw his island again. He returned t o our home in a box. The doctors say he had a sickness called leukemia. They are quite sure it was from t h e bomb. But 1 am positive. 1 saw the ash fall on him. I know it was the bomb. I Congress recently appropriated 5100,000 in death benefits for the family of Lakoj Anjain and offered reparation to other islanders. But, as Larry Pryor asks in “Nuclear Waste: The Pacific ProvRongelap had been a community near the atomic testing ground in Nevada, some attorneys argue, the settlements Who decides the price of a life?