(28 Nov. 86) Cassidy Taylor and I arrived on Omelek at 1030. We were delayed on Meck when a fire light went on in the helicopter and we had to abandon ship. Although there was no fire, another chopper picked us up.
1300 – All islands were evacuated for a secret mission on the lagoon.
1600 – Heavy rains returned and the mission was canceled. We arrived back on Omelek at 1845. The test will be rescheduled for tomorrow.
(29 Nov. 86) Residents of Bigej Island, in the affected missile test area, refused to leave their homes. Missile tests take place in the mid-corridor area of the lagoon. Bigej is on the east reef, inside the southern boundary of the range area. In the early part of this year, Marshallese took over the outer islands, preventing any testing of the Minuteman and Peacekeeper ICBM systems and the early stages of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program.
They remained on the islands until the police force was increased and the United States forcibly loaded them on army landing craft and dumped them on unoccupied islands out of the target range.
This time a force of officers from Kwaj, along with Alvin Jacklick, who is the mayor of Kwajalein Atoll, Justin deBrum and a representative from the Army took an LCM up to Bigej and convinced all but three people to leave. They are supposed to leave tomorrow. Meanwhile, the mission had to be postponed one more day.
One officer who participated said they arrived on the island a half hour before the scheduled test. They transported about twenty islanders to Ebeye. He couldn’t understand why three were left behind but dismissed it, saying he wasn’t running the operation.
(30 Nov. 86) The mission is scrubbed again.
Filed under: Almost Paradise Volume 1
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