ABSTRACT
The evacuation coincided with meetings of the UN Trusteeship Council in New York, where the US Ambassador, Harvey Feldman, claimed that Rongelap received less radiation than Denver, Colorado, and that the islanders had been ‘victimised by outside forces’. The Rongelap people, bringing dismantled houses, mats, suitcases and corrugated roofing, left their home because they were afraid of the effects of residual radiation deposited by fallout from the disastrous Bravo test of 1954 and from other American nuclear explosions in the northern Marshall Islands. Numerous people complained about the contamination of fish, while others wanted to know the long-term outlook for their health. The 1961 Visiting Mission was told of a variety of sicknesses among the Rongelapese, especially among children. The people also told stories of horrifying stillbirths: a ‘grape-like’ mass; a baby with brains outside the skull; a baby which looked like an octopus.
