THE ATOM: Polite Complaint

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Politely, the leading citizens of the Marshall Islands began their petition to the United Nations with a bow: "We have found the American administration [of the Pacific Trust Territory] by far the most agreeable one in our memory."* Then came the point: would the Americans please stop experimenting "with lethal weapons" in the Marshalls, or at least take a few more precautions?

Some of the inhabitants of the two little atolls of Rongelap and Utirik, caught accidentally in a rain of radioactive coral dust from the March 1 H-bomb test (TIME, March 22), were showing distressing symptoms—" lowering of blood count, burns, nausea, and the falling off of hair from the head," said the petition. " The people . . . would have avoided much danger if they had known not to drink the waters on their home island after the radioactive dusts had settled on them." U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was quick to tell the U.N. that the U.S. was " very sorry indeed" about the March 1 injuries. The 236 Marshallese citizens on Rongelap and Utirik were, he said, getting the best of medical care and should suffer no "permanent aftereffects." Furthermore, the U.S. would do "everything possible to prevent any recurrence of possible danger," would instruct the Marshallese in anti-radioactivity safety measures, and see to it that no island citizen suffered financial loss because radioactivity had driven him off his land.

As for stopping the tests, the U.S. could promise very little. The Atomic Energy Commission announced in Washington that the 1954 series was officially ended, and reporters estimated that six H-bombs of varying sizes had been exploded. But further tests were expected to be so routine that the AEC was setting up a permanent testing staff for the Bikini-Eni-wetok proving grounds in the polite but unhappy Marshall Islands.