EBEYE AND KWAJALEIN
Johnson, Giff
Ebeye and Kwajalein A tale of two islands Giff Johnson Ebeye is the sixty-six-acre island home of 8,000 Marshallese, many of whom work at the Kwajalein Missile Range. Most of the trees on Ebeye...
...We were stopped at the beach by an American guard who would not let the child enter the island____She was Marshallese...
...If Hawaii were as densely populated, it...
...We also needed to borrow some intravenous solutions to take back to Ebeye...
...William Alexander, in a report to a Congressional subcommittee investigating Ebeye problems, said, "Approximately 75 per cent of the workers were able to provide the names of specific non-Micronesians who do the exact same job, but who receive significantly higher pay for their work...
...From the Micronesian pay scale, the Marshallese breadwinner must feed ten to twenty people at Ebeye prices, which are 20 per cent higher than elsewhere in Micronesia because all the food is imported...
...some rooms sleep as many as forty at night...
...Thirteen people are apt to live in a one-room shack...
...the 3,000 Americans on the 900-acre Kwajalein Island...
...There's simply nothing else to do...
...Army live with their families in an exclusive air-conditioned community that includes a lush green golf course, tennis and basketball courts, baseball fields, swimming pools, and movies...
...Jacobs wrote in February 1977, "While Americans ton Kwajalein] can buy whole chickens for prices in the range of fifty cents a pound, the Micronesians [on Ebeye] must pay $1.55 a pound for gizzards...
...There is a critical alcoholism problem on the island...
...I took one Marshallese child that was very ill and put her on a skiff and motored four miles to Kwajalein where the Americans live...
...would have more than 400 million inhabitants...
...The Americans who work for the U.S...
...and asked for the intravenous fluids that we needed...
...I then went to the medical warehouse on Kwajalein and stole several cases of intravenous fluids and took them back to Ebeye...
...the bacteria count there has been 25,000 times higher than the safe level set by the U.S...
...The guard did not permit the child onto the island...
...The unemployment rate is now 36 per cent, and it is increasing as more young people enter the limited job market...
...Kwajalein, just four miles away, resembles a middle-class California neighborhood...
...The dilapidated houses stand only a few feet apart...
...Most of the trees on Ebeye have been cut down...
...A small can of tuna that costs forty-five cents on Kwaj sells for eighty-five cents on Ebeye...
...Dr...
...There I met with an American M.D...
...despite the fact that some of them have been working on Kwajalein since 1944...
...Public Health Service and the World Health Organization...
...Foul odors and visible pollution are part of the normal environment in which the people must live and work and the children must play," says a Trust Territory report...
...the average wage is not much higher...
...He added, "There is no such thing as a Micronesian supervisor on Kwajalein...
...Ebeye, twenty-five minutes away by ferry, has the highest population density in the Pacific...
...All these amenities are free...
...Most cannot...
...There is no high school on Ebeye...
...Marshallese cannot live on Kwajalein, but about 700 work there at service and maintenance jobs for the military and the American families...
...The elementary school has room for barely one third of the eligible students, and even these must attend school in split sessions...
...He also refused my requests...
...More than half of Ebeye's population is under fourteen years old...
...The Marshallese nurse pleaded with the guard that the child was dying and she could not receive appropriate therapy on Ebeye...
...The menial jobs necessary to keep a military base functioning pay the Marshallese at least the U.S...
...She died on her way back to Ebeye____ "I went to the Kwajalein Hospital...
...Untreated raw sewage is dumped directly into the placid Ebeye lagoon...
...William C. Vitarelli, the Trust Territory High Commissioner's representative on Ebeye from 1967 to 1969, tells of an incident which reflects the medical plight of the Marshallese: "The Ebeye Hospital ran out of intravenous fluids needed to sustain the lives of the Marshallese children severely dehydrated from the profuse vomiting and diarrhea...
...Trash litters the beaches on both sides of the narrow island...
...minimum wage of $2.90 an hour...
...The average annual salary for American civilians on Kwajalein is $18,000...
...Fine schools, good medical care (the hospital was staffed with seven physicians in 1976), and modern shopping facilities with reasonable prices are part of the life for Giff Johnson is area coordinator of the Micronesian Support Committee, 1212 University Avenue, Honolulu, Hawaii 96826...
...After returning from Ebeye in 1977, Paul Jacobs wrote: "I've seen ten-year-old kids so drunk they can't walk...
...In contrast to the abundant sports and recreational facilities on Kwajalein, Ebeye has almost none — and the Marshallese have only limited access to the facilities on Kwajalein...
...the Kwajalein schools are closed to all Marshallese, so those who can afford it must jet 250 miles away to Majuro, the Marshalls' district center...
...the ever-present smell of outhouses and burning garbage pervades the air...
Vol. 43 • February 1979 • No. 2
