Word: rongerik
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...spring of 1946, the 161 inhabitants of Bikini sailed away. They carried a few pandanus leaves for thatch and their Bibles and Congregational hymnals. Their unhappy migration took them first to nearby Rongerik atoll, then to Kwajalein, and finally to Kili, the inhospitable, rocky, isolated islet where they have scratched out a poverty-stricken existence for the last 21 years...
...gentle and soft-voiced natives of Bikini Atoll did not see the two terrible explosions that took place there in 1946. They had been taken by the U.S. Navy to another island called Rongerik. They did not like Rongerik. The fishing was not good; there was not enough fresh water; drought had decimated the coconuts...
...Navy could take them somewhere else. The native leaders looked over several other islands and finally chose a mile-long speck called Kili, 500 miles from their original home. There was no lagoon but there was plenty of water, much breadfruit and many coconuts, more than on Rongerik, more even than on loved and unforgotten Bikini. Last week the little band of atomic exiles, now numbering 181, were settled on Kili, making the best of things and hoping never to have to move again...
...Rongerik Atoll, "King" Juda of Bikini and his people prepared to move again. They had never quite understood why the U.S. Navy wanted their island; they were told it would be "something good for mankind," and so they agreed. Now, after a year and a half on smaller, less fertile Rongerik, they were ailing. So the Navy prepared Chapter Two in the Bikini odyssey. Juda and his people were to be shipped to Ujelang Atoll, 400 miles to the west. Ujelang, it was explained, was larger, more fertile. But what ailed Juda's people most was homesickness. "We want...
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...