U.S. TEST PLANS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29802, 19 April 1962, Page 13

U.S. TEST PLANS

Preparation On Island <N-Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SYDNEY. April 18. The United States is reportedly spending 500.000 dollars a day in preparing Christmas and Johnston Islands m the Pacific for the proposed resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests, according to a San Francisco correspondent of the “Pacific Islands Monthly” magazine. That figure would shortly be doubled, the corres;»ndent. Ralph Craib, says in an article in this month's issue The "Pacific Islands Monthly” is a news magazine published in Sydney and circulating in Australia. New Zealand and the Pacific islands. Craib wrote that Christmas Island was virtually abandoned after the .United Kingdom had finished its atomic tests there in 1958. United States military experts who recently visited the island—some 1200 miles south of Hawaii—had reported that the tropical climate and salt water erosion had taken a costly toll. The British-built buildings were ready to fall down, the water system was beyond repair, the airstrip pock-marked with holes, and the harbour badly silted.

The United States was now building a new airstrip, a new water purifying system and installing a muiti-million dollar communications system. Craib wrote The construction and subsequent atmospheric tests—which might be visible throughout the vast area of the central and south Pacific and the United States west coast—were being conduced by a joint task force headed by Major-General Alfred Starbird, who had participated in the post-war Eniwetok atomic tests.