Word: judas
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...King Juda, the Paramount Chief of Bikini, and his gentle, easy-living and pious (missionary-converted) people had gracefully consented to move when the Navy told them that a monstrous Thing would blast their island. Rongerik, some 100 miles to the southeast, was just as large, just as green as Bikini, and it had more coconuts and pandanus fruit. By last week Rongerik's huts had tin roofs and wooden floors; there was a big water cistern, a radio, a fine council house. But Rongerik was not home...
...Americans found the islanders' simple wants hard to understand. Through an interpreter, Commander Harold Grieve asked Chief Juda if timbers from Bikini's houses, for sentimental reasons, should not be transported to Rongerik. The interpreter answered: "He says, as the English would put it, 'Do you not think it would be like carrying coals to Newcastle...
...voyage from Bikini, Juda and his people ate K-rations with apparent relish. Progress chuckled over a victory. But as soon as they reached Rongerik, the islanders fell upon the coconuts and the sweet, tough pandanus fruit strewn about the beach...
...Questions of Man. Most puzzling for the Americans were Marshall Island politics. Juda and other Paramount Chiefs hold power through heredity on the maternal side. They alone own the land. They alone judge crimes (a little adultery, an occasional assault-&-battery). They are entitled to almost half their domain's annual crop of coconuts, which means half their people's income...
...Atomic Age, how can an Allied Military Government deal with such a feudal society? For the loss of Bikini, compensation should be paid. But to whom? Will it be democratic to pay Juda rather than his people? If Juda gets the bounty, will that not mean de facto recognition of his regime? Is this a UNO problem...