Word: rongelap
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...shooting grounds, Bikini and Eniwetok in the Pacific's Marshall Islands, are physically too tiny and politically too touchy for modern megatomics. Some 1,000 Micronesians live within 200 miles of Eniwetok, more than 10,000 within 600 miles. They remember the radioactive shower that fell on Rongelap, 100 miles east of Eniwetok, after a meteorological miscalculation in a 1954 U.S. test. The island's 82 inhabitants had to be quarantined on another island for 3½ years before their home was considered safe. Twenty-three Japanese fishermen in the trawler Lucky Dragon suffered radioactive burns. Since...
Lonely little Kwajalein Island, a 600-acre islet in the central Pacific, has known more than its share of excitement. World War II bombing raids left it almost bare of vegetation. In 1954 it was the first refuge of 82 inhabitants of nearby Rongelap, who were evacuated, their hair falling out in patches, after an H-bomb test had sprinkled their home with radioactive residue. When the radioactivity on Rongelap died down, the refugees returned and Kwajalein quieted down. But last week it was busier than ever as a task force prepared to test the Nike Zeus, the U.S. Army...