King Juda's Decision Making as described by Rubon Juda to Jack Niedenthal, December 1989 [Note: Rubon died from natural causes in Honolulu, Hawaii on April 4, 2003 at the age of about 80. He was a former Councilman who had served several terms before his retirement from office in the late 1990's. Rubon was a very special member of our community. He was King Juda's oldest son and the oldest brother of Senator Tomaki Juda. When I lived on Kili from 1984-87 I lived with Rubon, so it was through his eyes that I learned and experienced much of the Bikinian culture in my early years with the people of Bikini.]
Rubon Juda,being the oldest son of King Juda, had been close to his father and had entered into some of the leader's decision making even as a young man. Rubon once told me that the period on Rongerik had been one of the most difficult for the Bikinian leaders. They had been responsible for organizing the gathering of food when the people had been extremely weak and full of complaints. And, moreover, they had to experience the pain and discomfort of their own families from the community's lack of food.
"Did the Americans ever stop over to see you while you were on Rongerik?" I asked this because I found it hard to believe, upon learning that American military personal had visited the Bikinians on Rongerik, that they still, apparently, had failed to understand that the islanders were wasting away from starvation. I added a second part to my query: "Did they explain to you what was happening on Bikini?"
RUBON JUDA "Yes, the Americans did come to see us. I recall that while we were still on Rongerik some ri-bellies came and showed us pictures of the bombs that they were about to detonate on Bikini."
[Note: the Marshallese word ri-belli means "Americans" or "foreigners." This word originates from the first missionaries who came to the Marshall Islands. These strange-looking foreigners were generally heavily clothed, bearded men who would walk down a path in a village, and upon seeing a bare-breasted islander woman, would demand that she cover herself. The Marshallese word for "to cover" is belli. In Marshallese, when you add the ri- to the beginning of a word, it means "people who" or "people of." So we get ri-belli, "people who cover."]
"They presented us with globes of the earth to explain where America and Bikini were located. Afterwards, they asked Juda, my father, to travel with them from Rongerik to Bikini in order to watch one of those bombs explode. My father came back one evening to our house and told us the news. He had been asked to go to Bikini to see one of the bomb tests firsthand."
"How did your family feel when they learned that your father was about to travel away from the island to actually witness the explosion of a nuclear weapon?"
"Well, my family was very worried for him, but by not showing any fear of making this trip, he calmed us. We then believed that he didn't have anything to worry about by going. My father departed with some Americans to Bikini, watched the test, and then returned to Rongerik. Immediately, he held a meeting with the community to explain what had happened at Bikini. He told the story of the bomb exploding and the great amount of noise, smoke and mist that it had created. Most of us had a hard time understanding that anything so powerful could exist. We had heard the rumble from the explosion on Rongerik--like a huge roar--but Juda reported that Bikini wasn't gone. It was still there. The birds and pigs were still alive and still running around on the island. He related that the hermit crabs could still be seen on the beach. The trees remained intact and continued to blow in the wind. Some of our houses were still standing. And so we stayed hopeful that we would soon return to our islands and that our nightmare on Rongerik would soon be over."
"What stands out in your memory about those two long years on Rongerik?"
"Well, although I was a very young man in those days, I can still remember that in the beginning we had been living off the C-rations that the Navy men had given us. After a while they too were all eaten, so we began to rely solely on the sea and the island for our food. The leaders divided us into work groups everyday with each group performing a different food gathering task. Some of us were sent off to fish, some of us to gather crabs, some to plant trees and some of us to cook the food.
"We soon discovered that the fish in the lagoon were toxic from the reef, so we got sick every time that we would eat fish. Our bodies would change back and forth from being real cold to having our heads feel hot and feverish. Sometimes we would build a big fire and stand beside it to get the blood flowing into our legs and arms--thus reducing the coldness--and that relieved the pain a bit. One man, Joash, once stood too close to the fire and wound up getting badly burned because his clothes caught on fire. But how could he prevent that from happening? He had no feeling in his body. He said that he could hardly feel himself burning! You would think that because we knew that there was the possibility that we would be poisoned if we continued to eat the fish, that this fact would make us stop eating them; but I must remind you that we were hungry. It is amazing what we were willing to endure when we found ourselves in this state. There were times when we were able to sail to nearby Rongelap Atoll and bring back coconuts and pandanus for our families to eat, but upon our return everything would be divided up among all of our people, so the food never lasted very long.
"There were other things that made our lives difficult there. One day I remember I was sitting in our house. It was located near the Council building because my father, Juda, was still the magistrate. My family was just talking with each other, when suddenly some small boys came running up to say that the island was on fire. After the whistle sounded, all of the men raced out to where the fire was raging all over the place. We worked day and night trying everything to put the flames out. Finally, early the next morning, we succeeded in extinguishing the fire without anyone getting hurt; though it had destroyed many of the coconut trees that we were using as a food supply. We all blamed the demon Litobora for the disaster. That was when the hunger truly started to get to us. And that was when one old lady, Elini, died of being so horribly malnourished. This event terrified and deeply saddened us at the same time. The children would cry all during the day. The sound of these sobbing babies made the adults suffer, but there was nothing we could do except experience the pain along with them.
"Another problem we encountered was that we had no source of income. We couldn't make copra, and only the women could make a little money from the selling of their handicrafts to the Americans when they visited us on the island, so we continued to starve. After some time, and a tremendous amount of suffering, there came an American man, Dr. Mason [an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii], who brought us some food. He understood that we were starving and he could tell that we were in trouble, even dying. He encouraged us to begin discussing among ourselves other alternatives to Rongerik Atoll. My father, Juda, began at that time to travel to some of these places with delegations of our people.
"We didn't know much about Kili then, but we did know that there was no iroij for that island. There were no people living there. We sent a small delegation led by my father to Kili to have a look, and when they returned, they told us that even though Kili was a small island it was lush and had a lot of local food. As I think about it now, the sight of what appeared to be many coconut and pandanus trees must have impressed our delegation because they had been hungry for so long and had seen nothing in the way of local food for quite some time. The delegation also went to Ujae and Wotho atolls, and upon reaching these places, talked with the local people to determine whether they thought we would be able to live among them.
"When the delegation returned to Rongerik, we had very long discussions among ourselves. Occasionally the debate became very heated because some of us wanted to go to Ujae, and some of us wanted to go to Kili. When we finally told the Americans where we wanted to go it reflected our confusion. We told them that we wanted to go to Ujae, but that we preferred to live on a place where there was no people. This statement led to another trip to Bikini, and when Juda returned, he told us once again that everything on the island was okay. Our people at that time didn't understand about the 'poison' that was on our islands, you know, that it is invisible, has no color and can't be held."
[Note: The word Marshallese people use for radiation is the English word "poison." Many people involved in the interpretation of the Marshallese language believe that this phenomenon was a result of attempts by Americans trying to describe the dangerous attributes of radioactivity during the testing period. Imagine having the task of explaining to a group of Pacific islanders, who were from day to day struggling just to find enough food to put in their mouths, the technology and aftereffects of nuclear devices; indeed, a technology which could barely be understood by anyone in the world during the 1940's.]
"So, the Bikinians' answer, that they wanted to live where there were no other people, totally confused the U.S. officials. What did the Americans do then?"
"Well, once they knew of our desires, the Americans came and started to tell us about Ujelang Atoll as yet another option for resettlement. We liked this idea because there were no people living there and also it was an atoll as opposed to a single island; though as bad as it was, some of us still wanted to stay on Rongerik because our homes and all of our belongings were there. Finally, they came and literally told us that for our own welfare we should move to Ujelang. We held a meeting and decided to go along with this idea."
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