Oct 26, 1997
 
The Baltimore Sun [Front Page]
Struggle: U.S. nuclear tests and Westernization have crippled the Marshall
Islands, which has contracted the University of Maryland at Baltimore to
recommend reforms.
 
By Frank D. Roylance
 
Sun Staff
 
MAJURO, Republic of the Marshall Islands -- Nature blessed the Marshall
Islands with warm Pacific breezes, tropical fruits, schooling fish and turquoise
lagoons.
 
But a half-century of U.S. control and influence here since World War II has
cursed them with illness and crumbling medical care.
 
The Marshallese still live with the contamination, illness, displacement,
dependency and fear brought on by U.S. nuclear tests in the 1940s and 1950s
-- 67 blasts with a total power 7,000 times that unleashed on Hiroshima,
Japan, in wartime.
 
But even more devastating have been dietary and lifestyle changes, cultural and
economic disruptions caused by rapid Westernization of the Marshalls -- first
as a United Nations trustee under U.S. administration, and later as an
independent country under America's financial and military wing. These
changes have brought the islanders premature old age, soaring cancer death
rates, and more diabetes than in almost any place in the world.
 
"The entire situation of the Marshallese is quite unfortunate," said Col. Richard
Chapman, a retired former U.S. Army commander at the Kwajalein Atoll
missile range, who developed an affection for the islands and their people.
"They embraced a good deal of what's wrong with our culture, and lost a great
deal of what was good in theirs."
 
Struggling to address its health care crisis, the Marshallese government signed
a $40,000 contract last year with the University of Maryland, Baltimore to
study the country's medical system. UMAB physicians visited the islands'
hospitals and clinics, performed 48 eye surgeries and recommended reforms.
 
The islands face enormous problems that affect public health.
 
Lured by paychecks from the U.S. Army or the U.S.-financed Marshallese
government, nearly two-thirds of the country's 60,000 people have crowded
into urban settlements on just two islands -- Majuro and Ebeye. Those who
find jobs are joined by relatives who come to share the income.
 
On overcrowded Ebeye, failing water, electric and sewer systems have led to
outbreaks of gastrointestinal illness that killed four children over four months
earlier this year, and sickened more.
 
The pursuit of cash and consumer goods, and disruption of traditional family and
community life, are also blamed for crime, spousal abuse, drug abuse, truancy,
teen pregnancy and suicide.
 
The traditional diet of fish and tropical fruits and vegetables has been largely
supplanted by the worst of the West's culinary exports. Spam and frozen
turkey tails are favorites, as are other convenience foods high in fat, salt and
sugar, and low in nutrition.
 
Among the consequences: Twenty percent of preschoolers are malnourished
and 38 percent are anemic. Half of the adult women are overweight. Thirty
percent of the people over age 15 suffer from non-insulin-dependent diabetes,
resulting in high rates of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, kidney and eye
disease.
 
"It really is a disaster," said Dr. Paul Z. Zimmet, of the International Diabetes
Institute in Caulfield, Australia who has studied diabetes in the Pacific islands.
 
There's more. Forty years of U.S. administration as part of the former U.S.
Trust Territory of the Pacific, and nearly a billion dollars in U.S. aid since
independence in 1986, have left the Marshallese with a American-style health
care system they have not been able to maintain, and which does not keep them
healthy.
 
For example, $8 million, U.S.-funded hospital on Majuro is literally dissolving
in the salt air and tropical rains. The roof leaks, and the walls are crumbling.
Just outside the 11-year-old facility, raw sewage bubbles from a broken septic
system.
 
At the similarly decrepit Ebeye Hospital, medical equipment breaks down and
can't be fixed. An X-ray developer was idled when its wiring was gnawed by
rats. A new hospital stands empty nearby. The Marshallese can't afford to open
it.
 
Inadequate preventive care has contributed to appalling health statistics. Life
expectancy for men is 61 years, third worst among 15 Pacific Island
populations. Infants die at rates five times that in American Samoa in the South
Pacific. Women die of cervical cancer at 75 times the U.S. rate. Liver cancer
kills men at 30 times the U.S. rate.
 
There is no breast cancer screening because there is no mammography
machine. Only after Marshallese women develop suspicious lumps are they
flown 2,300 miles to Honolulu for a mammogram. Breast cancer kills at five
times the U.S. rate.
 
The Marshallese believe their suffering and sacrifice for U.S. nuclear weapons
testing and America's continuing military presence at the strategic U.S. Army
missile range at Kwajalein Atoll, entitle them to more U.S. help. Talks begin in
1999 on the extension of the Compact of Free Association, which defines the
two countries' relationship.
 
But U.S. officials express no interest in expanding the taxpayers' largess for
what is now an independent country with a diminished strategic importance and
a history of mismanaging previous aid.
 
U.S. auditors have for years found evidence of waste and corruption in the
islands. A Marshallese inquiry last year revealed millions of dollars in
misappro- priations by top officials of the Marshallese Social Security
Administration, who oversee the health care system.
 
"The corruption here is so widespread that it is depressing," said Alan E.
Hutchinson, administrator for the 177 Program, a U.S.-funded health care plan
for residents of nuclear-contaminated atolls and their descendants. "It is no
wonder that, as you look around you see so little tangible evidence of the
massive U.S. aid we hear about."
 
The health crisis in the Marshall Islands is invisible to the trickle of outsiders --
about 6,000 each year -- who visit here for business or pleasure.
 
Scuba divers fly 4 1/2 hours from Honolulu to explore the spectacular reefs, or
World War II-era ships sunk by atomic bombs in 1946 at Bikini Atoll.
Fishermen come for the deep-sea angling. A few war buffs seek relics of the
1944 fighting on Kwajalein and Enewetok that ended 30 years of Japanese
rule.
 
They find 29 delicate coral atolls and five tiny islands. Coconut palms,
breadfruit and pandanus trees grow lush in the hot, humid weather and
abundant rain -- 12 to 15 inches each month.
 
The Marshalls' total dry land covers less than in Baltimore City. It speckles a
region of the Pacific twice the size of Texas, just above the equator and west of
the International Date Line. At noon in Baltimore, it is 4 a.m. the next day in
the Marshalls.
 
In 1947, the Marshalls became part of a U.N. Strategic Trust Territory in
Micronesia under U.S. administration. The United States promised to promote
their "economic advancement and self-sufficiency."
 
Independence came in 1986. Under the 15-year Compact, the United States
kept its base at Kwajalein. The islands received millions of dollars in annual
aid, open immigration to the U.S. and access to federal programs such as Head
Start and Pell college grants. The currency is the U.S. dollar.
 
Birth rates are high, and half the population is under age 15. The children laugh
and smile easily. Their parents are shy and modest, but friendly when
approached by strangers. Most speak some English, in addition to Marshallese.
 
The east end of Majuro -- a shoestring of an island 30 miles long, and 50 to a
few hundred yards wide -- is the center of businesses and government. Its low,
boxy buildings are strung along the island's bumpy, two-lane main road. Most
of its 25,000 residents live on dirt lanes, in homes ranging from simple,
air-conditioned block and stucco, to plywood shacks.
 
Ebeye, 275 miles to the northwest, is far poorer. More than 13,000 people
crowd the 85-acre island's dense neighborhoods of mostly plywood shacks.
 
About 1,200 Ebeye residents commute two miles by water to jobs at the U.S.
base on Kwajalein. The high-tech base is a well-ordered, but isolated
community of 3,000 U.S. soldiers, defense contractors and their families.
Kwajalein's vast lagoon is a target for missiles fired from California.
 
Asked what has done the most damage to their health, most Marshallese will
say it is the radioactive fallout from 12 years of atomic testing that ended in
1958. In February 1946 -- 18 months after the atomic attacks on Japan -- U.S.
officials went before King Juda, the traditional leader on Bikini in the northern
Marshalls.
 
Navy Commodore Ben H. Wyatt, the military governor, asked Juda to move
Bikini's 167 people for "the good of mankind and to end all world wars." The
United States wanted a remote spot to test its developing atomic arsenal.
 
King Juda deliberated, then agreed. If the United States wanted to use the
islands for work that "with God's blessing will result in kindness and benefit
to all mankind," he said, "my people will be pleased to go elsewhere."
 
Their generosity was the start of a half-century of nuclear exile, and a
continuing national tragedy.
 
The atomic and hydrogen bombs triggered on Bikini and Enewetok -- with 100
times the power of all the atmospheric tests in Nevada -- exploded in the air, on
the ground, under water, on barges and balloons. Most of the radiation fell
back on Bikini and Enewetok, or drifted north over the ocean. But not all.
 
In February 1954, one of America's first hydrogen bombs was detonated
before dawn on one of the Bikini atoll's ring of islands.
 
But hours earlier, high altitude winds had shifted east, toward populated atolls
75 and 300 miles away. The Americans moved monitoring ships as a
precaution, but no one thought it necessary to warn, much less evacuate, the
Marshallese.
 
The bomb, dubbed Castle BRAVO, exploded with the force of 15 million tons
of TNT, or 1,000 Hiroshima bombs. It turned the islet into a crater 24 stories
deep and 6,000 feet wide, and sent a debris cloud 114,000 feet into the sky.
 
Radioactive dust fell on 28 U.S. weather observers on Rongerik Atoll, on 253
residents of the Rongelap and Utrik atolls, and on 23 Japanese fishermen 90
miles at sea. Within hours, most were suffering burns, nausea, diarrhea,
itching, peeling skin, sores, lost hair and nails. One of the Japanese fishermen
would be dead in seven months.
 
Norio Kebinli, then 10, was up before dawn that morning, outside the
cookhouse on Rongelap. "I saw a lightning," he said. "And after the lightning I
saw a huge thing going up in the west. The color was yellow and orange."
Then came a noise "like a big thunderstorm."
 
Hours later, while climbing a papaya tree, he felt the radioactive dust falling
into his eyes. The "snow" fell for hours. It landed on Kebinli's brother, Iroji,
who was walking with girls on a beach. Iroji's burns were later photographed
by U.S. military personnel. He died from a brain lesion eight years later.
 
Kebinli, now 54, has burn scars on his left foot. One of his cousins, a year old
in 1954, died in 1972 from radiation-induced leukemia.
 
"I don't blame anybody," Kebinli said. "It was an accident."
 
U.S. military press officers declared everyone safe, but American doctors
began medical treatments and evacuated the two atolls. Authorities later offered
cash and free medical care for any radiation-related illnesses among Rongelap
and Utrik residents exposed by the BRAVO explosion.
 
Doctors from the Brookhaven National Laboratory, under a $2.4 million
annual contract to the Department of Energy, still make twice-yearly trips to the
Marshalls to treat and study the exposed islanders, and compare their fates with
an "unexposed" control group.
 
Nearly 100 of the exposed have died, but Brookhaven's reports say the death
rates are no higher than the control group's.
 
BRAVO's greatest health impact, they say, has been thyroid disease, caused by
the concentration of radioactive iodine in the thyroid gland, which regulates
growth and metabolism.
 
About a third of the Rongelap residents -- 79 percent of children aged 10 or
under in 1954 -- developed growth retardation, thyroid nodules or cancers.
Rates were lower on Utrik. All were treated with drugs or with surgery in U.S.
hospitals. Brookhaven reported no thyroid cancer fatalities.
 
In 1994, a non-U.S. scientific advisory panel told the Marshallese government
that "some islands" in the four exposed atolls need decontamination before
people can return. But elsewhere, they said, current levels of contamination
"pose no risk of adverse health effects to the present generation."
 
Authors of a Nationwide Radiological Study commissioned by the Marshallese
said any continuing fear is based on ignorance, fueled by persistent press and
scientific interest.
 
"The main challenge," they said, "is in increasing the understanding of
government leaders, health care workers, teachers, the media and the public
about the true risks of radioactivity, and about the natural causes for cancer and
other common diseases which, only in some instances, may be radiogenic."
 
But the Marshallese are distrustful of U.S. reassurance and weary of being
studied. Residents of Bikini and Rongelap were told in the 1950s and 60s it
was safe to return to their islands. Hundreds went back, only to discover years
later the food they grew wasn't safe.
 
Seizing on information from declassified U.S. documents and new U.S. and
Japanese studies, Foreign Minister Philip Muller said, "We make the claim
now that the entire Marshall Islands was exposed to radioactive fallout."
 
In light of these "changed circumstances," he said, the Marshallese will
demand more health care and compensation from the United States in the
upcoming Compact talks. "We would like to see more of our people afforded
the medical care that is needed."
 
Many Marshallese believe radiation effects have suppressed their immune
systems, caused miscarriages and gross birth deformities. They insist it has
even compromised the health of their children and grandchildren.
 
"It is a bone of contention," said Rongelap's city manager, Gordon C.
Benjamin. "The U.S. has not admitted that radiogenic conditions are being
passed down."
 
The suspicions are not limited to Marshallese. People who have developed
cancers after living on the U.S. base on Kwajalein now wonder whether their
illnesses began on "Kwaj."
 
Among the Marshallese, expectations of U.S. care and compensation have
helped fuel the growth of an infrastructure of dependency, funded by American
taxpayers.
 
Under Section 177 of the Compact, people from Bikini, Enewetok, Rongelap
or Utrik and their descendants receive quarterly shipments of cash and food
from the U.S.
 
They also receive $2 million in medical care each year. But Congress forgot to
cap eligibility.
 
Just 552 people were involved in the original evacuations. But the 177 Health
Care Program now treats 11,600 people -- one-fifth of the country's population
-- wherever they live. That strains the program's annual budget. Money for
costly off-island medical care, for example, typically runs out in four or five
months.
 
Marriages, a high birth rate and local politicians' control of eligibility account
for the program's ballooning enrollment, said Alan Hutchinson, the 177
program administrator. But the situation is made worse by waste, and political
interference in health medical decisions.
 
Thousands of Marshallese have also applied to the Nuclear Claims Tribunal in
Majuro for U.S.-funded cash reparations. totaling
 
Any citizen who lived anywhere in the Marshalls during the bomb tests can
claim cash compensation for any of 42 illnesses officially listed as radiogenic.
 
Most are cancers, and many could have causes other than radiation. But
causation can't be proven, so the tribunal presumes that radiation was to blame.
For example, a bladder cancer that might also be caused by cigarettes fetches
$75,000.
 
The United States uses the same approach under the "Downwinders Act,"
which pays Americans $50,000 for certain illnesses if they lived in parts of
Nevada, Arizona and Utah during atmospheric A-bomb tests in Nevada from
1951 to 1962.
 
In the Marshall Islands, awards range from $12,500 to $125,000. In a country
with a per capita income of $1,600, The prospect of such sums can have a
powerful effect. Health care workers say they have watched patients weep in
despair or anger when told they did not have cancer, or had the wrong sort of
cancer to qualify for the money.
 
"We sympathize with them," said Mary Note, an associate public advocate with
the Tribunal. Many Marshallese think any cancer is caused by radiation, and
that they are entitled to compensation. "They feel cheated."
 
In fact, medical experts say far more Marshallese are dying from an unhealthy
diet, lifestyle and inadequate medical care.
 
"It's a tragedy," said Dr. Neal Palafox, of the University of Hawaii, who
worked for nine years in the Marshall Islands as a physician and administrator
for the U.S. and Marshallese governments. The young nation is paying in high
medical costs and lost productivity as people sicken and die early.
 
"They don't perceive that they die young. They're just old fast," Palafox said.
 
Norio Kebinli, the BRAVO survivor, is an accounting clerk for the Rongelap
local government. At 54, he says, "I am an old man." He complains of heart
trouble, and walks slowly, with a cane, because of a stroke 10 years ago. He
plans to retire in a year.
 
Of all the islands' medical problems, none is bigger than Type II, or
adult-onset, non-insulin-dependent diabetes.
 
Type II diabetes is now one of the region's most serious health problems.
Thirty percent of Marshallese over 15 have it, compared with 2 percent of
Americans.
 
The Marshallese call it simply "the sugar." It is caused by eating high levels of
fats and carbohydrates, coupled with obesity, inactivity and a genetic
predisposition. Unlike Type I, or juvenile-onset, insulin-dependant diabetes, it
is largely preventable with diet and exercise.
 
Type II diabetes was almost unheard of in the Pacific islands before the dietary
changes that followed World War II, said Dr. Zimmet, of the International
Diabetes Institute.
 
The hundreds of Marshallese evacuated from bomb-contaminated islands were
provided with canned foods, all high in fat, salt, carbohydrates and sugar.
 
"The Navy men were very kind and gave us big bins filled with all kinds of
food we had never eaten before, like C-rations, chocolates, corned beef and
other wonderful things," said Bikinian Emso Leviticus, then a young woman.
She told her story to Bikini representative Jack Niedenthal.
 
The United States still ships the same canned fare to the nuclear exiles.
Rongelap City Manager Gordon Benjamin said such food is "not nutritious,"
but "people are accustomed to it now."
 
Thousands more Marshallese gave up fishing and cultivating tropical fruits
when they moved to take jobs -- or to be close to relatives who had jobs -- on
Majuro and Ebeye. There they began more sedentary lives, buying canned pork
and corned beef, canned fruits and vegetables, white rice, noodles, candy and
soda. The food is convenient, tasty, and keeps in the tropical heat.
 
Stores in Majuro today feature waist-high stacks of Spam. Emptied, the cans
are in the island's trash piles, on its beaches, and the bottom of its lagoon.
 
The stores' freezer bins hold turkey tails and necks, pigs' feet and other fatty
animal parts. "If we could encourage Australia, New Zealand and America not
to [export] turkey tails and mutton flaps we would be better off," said Zimmet.
 
The most widely cited explanation for the Pacific islanders' genetic
vulnerability to Type II diabetes is the "thrifty gene" theory. It suggests that in
populations subjected to periodic famine -- like the long canoe voyages that
allowed settlement of remote Pacific islands -- the survivors were those whose
bodies stored fat in times of plenty, but burned it slowly when food ran low.
 
Descendants inherited the traits. But submerged in Western culture, where food
is fatty, sweet and always plentiful, these same people store fat all the time.
They gain weight, and can't burn all the sugar in their blood. The result is
diabetes, scientists surmise.
 
Blood vessel damage caused by diabetes has also led to high rates of
arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, stroke, heart attack, kidney disease,
damage to the retina and foot ulcers.
 
On Ebeye, acting hospital chief of staff Dr. Auston Jelke recalled a woman
admitted with infected feet. Diabetes had damaged nerves in her toes, and she
had failed to notice when they were bitten by rats.
 
The Marshallese people are also dying from cancers at rates well above those in
the United States, and other Pacific islands.
 
Palafox says breast cancer mortality in the Marshall Islands was 149 per
100,000 population, compared with 32 in the U.S. and 43 in the Pacific island
republic of Belau. The death rate for cervical cancer was 269 per 100,000,
compared with 31 in Belau, and 3.6 in the United States. Death rates for
cancers of the lung, liver and mouth were also outsized.
 
Bomb fallout may explain some cancers, especially breast cancer, Palafox said.
But a diet high in fats and refined foods, and vitamin A deficiency can
contribute. So do high rates of smoking and drinking.
 
But he also blames the lack of preventive, or "primary" care. Illnesses that
might be avoided, controlled or cured, if caught early, become terminal in the
Marshalls.
 
The health care system here was instead patterned after a U.S. model that
emphasizes the delivery of high-tech acute care, in hospitals, after people get
sick.
 
On Ebeye, in the shadow of the U.S. base, Dr. Jelke and his colleagues go on
radio and TV to urge the island's children not to play in the streets.
 
"We are getting more gastro-intestinal problems -- diarrhea and vomiting," said
Jelke, Ebeye Hospital's acting chief of staff. The cause is sewage. For months
now, it has been backing up in the streets. That began after Ebeye's electrical
generator began to fail. Pumps that push raw sewage into the ocean work only
a few hours each day.
 
"It's very bad with children," Jelke said. "We have lost three or four so far.
Their parents brought them in too late, and they were severely dehydrated,
especially the malnourished ones."
 
At the 40-bed Ebeye Hospital, doctors see 60 to 70 outpatients each day for
stomach complaints. Ten or 20 are admitted each week.
 
Pure water has also been scarce since Ebeye's desalinization plant failed in
January. Residents catch rain water, or take the free boat to Kwajalein to fill
plastic jugs at the U.S. Army dock.
 
The childhood malnutrition not due to any shortage of food.
 
"It's just that parents don't give their kids the proper food," Jelke said.
Disconnected from the traditional food that once sustained them, many now
lack the money or information to make balanced dietary choices in a U.S.-style
market.
 
Deficiencies in vitamin A, for example, are common in the Marshalls, a country
littered with coconuts rich in it.
 
Poorly nourished mothers give birth to underweight, poorly nourished children
who are then at risk for infections.
 
On a recent afternoon, Frank Apon held his tiny, three-day-old son while
Stanley Jacob, a nurse, worked to insert an intravenous line in the baby's foot.
 
"Suspected pneumonia," Jacob said of the baby. "Most patients we see are
children, sorry to say."
 
The Marshallese have been unable to sustain their hospital system. Ebeye
Hospital's six doctors see between 10,000 and 13,000 patients each year, said
administrator Tommy Milne.
 
"Sometimes," Jelke said, when the 40 beds are full, "we put patients under the
beds, on the floor."
 
They share it with rats and cockroaches. The rats have chewed holes in the
walls -- in one place eating away all the support for an electrical outlet.
 
"We have to get out of here, soon," Milne said. Tropical rains, salt air, rust and
time have put leaks in the roof, corroded the prefabricated metal framing and
dissolved fiberboard walls, forcing the closure of some sections.
 
The new, two-story, concrete hospital a few blocks away has been idle and
unfurnished for two years. The cash-strapped Marshallese can't afford to open
it.
 
In the meantime, Jelke said, "our X-ray developing machine is not functioning
because some of the wire was eaten by rats, and we don't have anybody to fix
it." The dental X-ray machine hasn't worked for months, awaiting a technician.
Two of three incubators are down, "and we don't know how to fix that."
 
The staff has learned to improvise -- diluting IV solutions to needed strengths,
substituting feeding tubes for missing catheters, and developing X-rays by
hand. "We get along," he said.
 
On Majuro, the country's main hospital is also dissolving. There are holes in
the roof and walls. Sagging portions of the ceiling are propped up with
wooden posts.
 
Raw sewage bubbles up from a broken septic line a few feet from a rear door.
 
"It's rotting away," said Marshall Islands Health Secretary Donald Capelle.
These "were not the right kind of materials for the elements here."
 
A portable X-ray machine hasn't worked for four years. An 11-year-old blood
chemistry machine needs service.
 
The country wants a new hospital, and the United States government has been
approached about paying for it. But Alan Hutchinson, of the 177 program, has
warned U.S. Ambassador Joan Plaisted that a new building would do no good
without massive management reforms.
 
For example, spending to transfer patients off-island for medical care soared
from $487,000 in 1992 to roughly $3 million in 1996, according to a
Marshallese inquiry last year. Doctors said they could avoid many transfers if
they had better equipment. They also complained that government ministers
were overruling staff recommendations in order to send patients abroad.
 
In one case, investigators said, Health Minister Tom Kijiner overruled medical
staff and sent a baby off-island, at a cost of $400,000.
 
Further U.S. help is problematic. The State Department has not yet decided
what position to take in renegotiating the Compact. But in light of a "changed
world stage," one Washington observer said, it appears the United States no
longer has the same strategic interest in the Marshalls it once had.
 
Others believe America's heavy impact on the islands' health gives it a moral
obligation to help.
 
"What we did was wrong," Palafox said. "We didn't do it to beat them up, we
just didn't understand its impact. Now we need to help them find a health
system that would work, be sustainable when we're gone."
 
One answer may be assistance that helps the Marshallese take responsibility for
their own health.
 
Dr. Angela Diaz, a former White House Fellow, urged U.S. authorities to
rethink the policies that she said have "encouraged a system of dependence on
the United States thereby inhibiting the development of any grass-roots
collaborative efforts among Pacific Islanders themselves."
 
Writing in the journal Pacific Health Dialog, she said most of the islands'
afflictions are preventable. "Through education, preventive medicine, technical
assistance and staff development, [the U.S.] can both empower local leaders
and lessen the negative impact of reduced funding."
 
The Marshallese government has already embraced the idea. Muller, the foreign
minister, wants to reduce costly reliance on foreign specialists and off-island
transfers by training more Marshallese for health care careers.
 
It costs $2,900 to fly a patient from an outer island to Majuro Hospital for care.
Health officials want to improve the health clinics on the outer islands, and
reallocate scarce U.S. aid for health education and preventive care.
 
One highly successful program, called Youth to Youth in Health, is tackling
problems of poor nutrition, disease, teen pregnancy and suicide by training
young people to teach their peers -- often through traditional song, dance and
stories.
 
Outrigger canoe voyages are one of the ways troubled young people lost in the
pursuit of U.S. cultural notions can find self-confidence and self-sufficiency
through a new respect for the traditions that sustained their forefathers.
 
One afternoon this summer, eight young men hauled a 48-foot Marshallese
voyaging canoe onto a sandy Majuro beach at the end of a windy three-day
adventure.
 
"Last night was pretty rough," reported group leader Alson Kelen, 29, as he
helped to furl the boat's triangular sail.
 
On a remote island across the lagoon, he said, the canoe's outrigger had fallen
off. The young men had to retrieve and repair it. They also had to dive at night
for a lost anchor, and gather rain after a water jug was lost. When seas grew
too rough for fishing, they had to pick coconuts and slingshot shore birds for
breakfast.
 
"At night and in the morning we would gather around and talk about what these
kids got out of this trip," Kelen said. "One said, `I now know how my
great-grandfather survived on this piece of coral reef floating in the Pacific.'"
 
Youth to Youth leaders hope such experiences will help Marshallese young
people learn to survive on an ocean -- and in a world -- that is suddenly too
small.
 
The End.
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