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Show 6 The Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, February Radioactive Atoll Now Safe for Natives? 10. 1980 the technology and the Lynch United Press International By Kay " HONOLULU -E- niwetok Atoll was a radioactive wasteland after the U S. nuclear test program of the 1950s, its people enduring a forced exile on a smaller atoll to the southwest. Today, it is again habitable. and in April, its Marshallese owners will go home. The remarkahle, three-yea- r, million project that reclaimed Eniwetok was mountpd by the Un-ite- States for humanitarian reasons, with prodding from the Marshallese, with no assurance that it would succeed. The greatest lesson is that wc know, now, that it is very possible to do this kind rf thing, and do it safely, says Viee Adm. Robert Monroe, who heads the coordinating Defense Nuclear Agency. The lessons learned and experience gained in this job will stand us in very good stead in the future. As the nuclear age continues to advance, the number of potential causes of radioactive contamination is increasing. It is not unlikely that, at some point, a major contamination cleanup effort wdll be needed. We now have After Search, Boy Remains Nameless money for clues. Obsessed now, he worked his days off, vacations, prowling the garish midways of honky tonk carnivals, searching trailer camps and Army posts and other spots where the earth's restless bunk down. He carried a death mask of the child in his car, visited a psychic who held in her hand the staples from the card-boarbox as her brain tried to outwit the unknown. More dead ends. More winters. After years of thinking about it. of putting myself in the parents' place, of driving the roads they may have driven to reach the field where they left him. I think I know how they feel, Bristow says now, staring at the little grave. They must have gone through 22 years of hell. Scared, on the run. looking over their shoulder, waiting for someone to tap them on the back and say, Is this your son? The cause of death is unknown. There were bruises on the body. Yet Bristow says he does not believe the child was murdered. Associated Pres Writer For 23 years. PHILADELPHIA Rem Bristow has been searching for a name to put on the little grave. J Heavenly Father Bless This Un-- j known Boy, February 25, 1957, reads ! the headstone, jutting from weeds next J to a tangled hedgerow in Potters Field. "The good Lord looks down He J I knows who that boy is, says Bristow. ! He is not unknown to him. He's I unknown to us. to me, to the police J department, to the people who visit him j all the time, who cry and who pray for J this boy. Known to Parents To his parents hes known, and perhaps to a sister who if she would look bark, might ask, WTiere is that little brother of mine? Feb. 2fi, 1957, was cold and rainy. Bristow was working the overnight shift at the city medical examiners office where he was an investigator. That day they brought in the body. It was a naked child, maybe 3, 4 years old. found by a rabbit hunter in a thicket on the citys fringe. The youngster had been dead about a day, thus the date on the headstone. He was lying in a cardboard box. covered by a cotton flannel blanket, his little arms crossed upon his chest. Bristow got the case. But lead after lead died out. That July, The Boy in the Box, as he came to be known, was buried in the city's cemetery for the unclaimed. Six homicide detectives served as pallbearers. carrying the little white casket to the grave. In October, detectives chipped in and bought the tombstone, the only one in all of Potters Field. Stayed With Case Winter came again and Bristow stayed with the hunt, dogging what one detective would call the strangest case in Philadelphia disappearance police records. "He was neglected, yes, and undernourished. and this could have caused a fall. No, I dont think he was beaten, and the love of the person who tried to bury him showed. If they didnt love him. why did they clean his fingernails, cut his hair, bathe him. close those blue eyes, and place him, covered with a blanket, in a box hig enough to he a casket? These are all signs of love for that boy. "I think they were going to bury him. But they were frightened off. maybe by a car. I think these were poor people, uneducated, confused They could have been alcoholics, I don't know. Rut they didn't kill him. If they did. theyd have put him in a gunny sack and thrown him alongside the road " Bristow still visits the grave often, bringing flowers and tidying up. He's on disability now. in his late 50s with a bad heart Flyers with the childs postmortem photograph were posted in liquor stores, race tracks and orphanages, even sent home with the city gas bills. The search for the boys identity and for his parents reached across the country, and into Canada, Mexico and Europe. Bristow offered $1,000 of his own mas morning They heard ahout the boy w hile in prison and were haunted by his loneliness If do nothing else I ho(e to disel the idea it was homicide. Then maybe the parents, no longer afraid, will come forth and make their peace with Cnd and say, 'Yes. this is our son. J - Sears Department of Energy officials say there are important differences between the situations at Bikini and Eniwetok: The cleanup of Bikini beginning in 1908 involved only debris removal and replanting, no soil removal. It was a $325,000 effort, while $100 million was spent on Eniwetok Thp types and degrees of contamination at the top habitation sites was different. Bikini Atoll was the site of the most powerful explosion of the entire Pacific nuc-le- test program, "Bravo." The cloud from that test laced Bikini soil with high concentrations fission products, primarily cesium and of strontium. It was later discovered that these were being taken up through the food chain and were showing up in tlement program. Have More Data There has been a growth in our understanding of the mechanisms involved, because of the agricultural experiments at both Eniwetok and Bikini. We have a great deal more data now than at the time the Bikini decisions were made," said Roger Ray, director of Pacific operations for the Department of Energy. Eniwetok atoil is a ring of 40 tiny islands 2,300 miles southwest of Honolulu, at the northwestern extreme of the Marshalls group. Two of its islands were blown out of existence by nuclear devices detonated between 1947 and 1958. Mike," the first hydrogen bomb, was among those unleashed at Eniwetok, with hundreds of times the explosive power of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Northern Islands The northern islands roughly from 11 oclock to 3 oclock on a circle were rendered too radioactive for habitation. They and the southern islands were also littered with unexploded ordinance and other wartime debris The U S. ohjprtive was The possibility has caused the people originally from Enjebi ahout 180 of the 453 to he to mount a resettled campaign to get Congress to earmark funds for expansion of the resettlement housing program to Enjebi before all the construction forces are withdrawn. about doing this and keeping the personnel safe. We can look back now and say we had a lot of what we would call overkill. In wanting to he we used super-safe- , many, many overlapping methods to insure radiological safety, beyond what was considered necessary. So wp proved out a lot of 9.99 Reg. $18 dozen this year give her a gift thatll keep saying love you I all year: a dozen delicate silk roses from Corham. Pick your dozen in red, Be a Romantic with or pink. And theyre already gift boxed. yellow Carr Heart Shaped Frames Add a little romance to your Valentines Day Gif Gallery. gift with a hand crafted heart frame. Encased in dainty filigree, delightful metals and heart shapes, your personal photograph takes on increased meaning, 1 6. S.L. Downtown and Cottonwood. Cameras. $4-$ J O EV2 DRAPERY CLEANING SERVICE SALE! 4 60 A. Serving bowl with server B. Salad bowl with servers C. Relish dish with server D. Three-piec- e relish set Not shown: per width iinlined 5 to feet Ioiijj . y Valentine's Day is a time to remember her, and confirm the love you share. So this year give her a gift of glass and silver that she'll treasure for years to come. Theyre for easy gift giving. ZCM1 Silver Room. even pre-wrapp- WJCONE SPRAYED CORDS ADJUSTED TAKE DOWN AND NO ODORS. NO FADING, NO SHRINKING RE-BUN- G t ( 4Nt) . . . 4.99 .3.99 5.99 2.99 n 8.99 24 Hour No-To- ii Direct Dial Shopping 321-666- Utah (nuiudr Scars IHlKftl . dish Ice cream set of four Bon-Bo- Suit Lake UM . .... 6.99 YfXJR DRAPES CLEANED AND ST.ED NEW HOOKS RODS ( anta fHaim ly did not know how to go Counting Army. Navy and Air Force personnel, those from the departments of Energy and Interior, and civilian contractors, more than 4,000 people have been involved physically in the Eniwetok cleanup and resettlement effort. At its peak, more than 900 military were working simultaneously on 19 islands, putting in days in searing heat. Young men from bases all over the country moved a total of 80,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and fi.ooo ruhic Let a Glass and Silver Gift Reflect the Beauty of Your Love Pturei important 1 t Mum "Equally was the method of operation developed. We frank- visit too, on Christ- i (Hit Protective Coverings The workers wore protective coverings of varying extent, depending on the level of contamination in thpir work areas, as determined by the Department of Energy. "The technology energy brought to bear on this was truly impressive, The de said Monroe. veloped sensing and detection equipment so ad vanned it doesn't exist outside the research community Safety Methods Her Roses Thatll Last as Long as Your Love Signs of Love 6- - A4 of debris, and morp than 15,000 pieces of unexploded war ordnance. The most radioactive soil and debris was moved to the permanentisland of ly Runit, and entombed in a crater left by one of the nuclear tests. yards Give d Two to clean up three southern islands for habitation, and to decontaminate the northern islands to an extent that would allow visiting for short periods. One of the things were proudest of and hadn't anticipated was that we could clean up the northern island of Enjebi to a level well within the residential standard," Monroe said. Mount Campaign ZCMIs Gifts of Love 23-Ye- ar J were tearfully evacuated $100 By Chris Roberts mpthod Admits Failure The federal government admitted failure in its effort to resettle Bikini Atoll, another major site of the Pacific nuclear test program In the fall of 1978, a resettlement protect was abandoned, and HA Bikinians who had been helping prepare Bikini Island for the return of others the bodies of Bikinians participating in the reset- 6 SLQ Weatern U.S O or write ZCMI, Salt Uke Cky, Ul. 84137 J |