Islanders return after clean-up

Press, 10 April 1980, Page 9

Islanders return after clean-up

NZPA-Reuter I Ma jura (Marshall Is.): Some 450 residents of the'i tiny Pacific atoll of Eniwe- i tok, contaminated 30 years I ago by United States atomic-, bomb tests, were on theiri way back to their homeland! yesterday. Two ships carrying Eni-i wetokese left the Marshall] Islands for Eniwetok, now] believed to be free of radio-] activity after a three-year,' -.sloo million clean-up effort] by the United States Gov-I jernrr.ent. ] ] Another Government ship: •was headed for the island of, jUjelang in the Marshall Is-; Hands where hundreds of the levaculated. islanders have! I been living since 1947. I United States officials said ; that as many people as pos-J .sible would’ be loaded on I that ship to head for Eniwe- 1 tok.

A huge celebration is to be held there today to mark the end of what ha* been i described as the biggest •clean-up campaign of its . kind. ' Up to 4000 workers clad ; in protective clothing have I worked for three years to : clean up the atoll of 40 i lands, about 3700 km south-' ' west of Hawaii, and clear ! away debris from 43 nuclear explosions from 1948 to 1958. Subsequent fall-out and contaminated debris left most of the atoll’s northern islands uninhabitable. The islanders will find that one of their islands,, whic. together made upa land mass of less than 8 sq.km, has disappeared. The first hydrogen device, l in October, 1952, vaporised it.