Most of the other OCE members wisely stayed out of the dispute and the separate accommodations route quickly fizzled. Anvil's part in the conflict was also cut short when he and Polaris flew out from Majuro Atoll for Los Angeles to take receipt of their newly purchased expedition vehicles. The “light armored vehicles” were made for the Japanese Self Defense Forces as the eastern version of the Humvee. They were chosen by the team as the ideal all-terrain transportation but required extensive customization by an auto specialty company located in Irvine, California.
 While Polaris and Anvil dealt with the vehicle issues, Meridian and Rune were lobbying for an unscheduled visit to the remotely located island of Nikumaroro following their completion of the Marshall Islands tour. Their interest stemmed from Meridian's research on the disappearance of famous aviatrix Amelia Earhart. One recent theory purported that Earhart crashlanded on Nikumaroro and may have lived there for sometime afterward.
The Marshall Islands tour finally began on July 10th after the return of Polaris and Anvil. The team was particularly interested in exploring the areas where the post-war nuclear testing forced the indigenous populations to flee, leaving behind multiple ghost towns. Few of the Marshall Islands natives were told how their homelands were being used by foreign powers, and even fewer were ever evacuated from the areas surrounding the test zone. Instead, the survivors told stories about how all the children ran outside to play in the colorful fallout dust and many others died of radiation sickness within just a few hours. The goal for the team members was a retrocognitive one, to recapture the experience of those last days for the islanders. The team's first stop was Rongelap Atoll.
The United States had
chosen the Marshall Islands
as the preferred testing
ground for its nuclear
arsenal shortly after World
War II ended. But on March 1,
1954, the test of a new
hydrogen bomb type
would turn into the greatest
nuclear tragedy since the
intentional bombing
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The test was carried
out on the Bikini Atoll,
an isolated crescent of land
within the Marshall Islands.
Originally there were twenty-
three atolls in the area,
but three (Bokonijien,
Aerokojlol and Nam) were
completely destroyed by the
nuclear tests. Their remnants
are little more than piles
of vaporized sand and
coral. The Bravo bomb was
intended to be the largest
explosion in Bikini during
the test years…
and it more than exceeded
those expectations.
In fact, the American
scientists who worked on
the project made several
gross miscalculations.
The first was the strength
of the explosion, as the Bravo bomb produced a
blast nearly a thousand
times stronger than the
one that erased Hiroshima
off the map. The fireball
expanded to a horrifying
three-mile diameter and
left a mile-wide crater in the
Bikini reef, it disintegrated
the scientific monitoring
equipment and trapped
American observers in
their bunkers.
The second miscalculation
had to due the where the
fallout from the blast
would land. American
meteorologists predicted
that the winds would
carry the radiation north,
but in fact the fallout
traveled south toward the
atolls of Rongelap,
Rongerik and Utirik.
Within an hour after the
explosion, a strange,
colorful dust began to fall
on ships and islands all
over the region. Children
ran outside to play in it,
completely unaware that
the ash was radioactive.
Once the U.S. military
understood the breadth
of their mistake, they
immediately began to
evacuate the affected
areas. But for many
islanders, the evacuation
came too late. By the time
rescuers reached them,
many were covered in
radiation burns and were
losing their hair. Some
of the most profoundly
effected people were the
23-man crew of the Fukuryu
Maru,
a Japanese fishing vessel
that was 85-miles away
when the Bravo blast lit up
the western horizon.
By nightfall, every member
of the crew was sick from the
nuclear fallout, which they
called shin no hai, or"death ash."
Two of the nearby
inhabited atolls, Rongerik
and Rongelap, were doused
with nearly fatal doses of
radiation. Both had to be
completely evacuated and
remained that way for three
years. Then, in 1957,
U.S. officials declared that
Rongelap was safe for the
populace to return.
The natives lived there
for nearly three decades
unaware of the dangers
lurking in their soil and
water as thyroid tumors
and cancer consistently
thinned their ranks.
The island was evacuated
again in 1985 and the
natives have been living
on Kwajalein Atoll, about
200 miles away, ever since.
Since that time,
the Rongelap Atoll has sat
quiet and forgotten, its
villages virtual ghost towns.
A $45 million cleanup and
resettlement effort was
authorized by the U.S.
Congress in the late 1990s,
but the job is monumental
and it is unclear if any of the
remaining Rongelap residents
would be willing to return and
take the chance of their lives.
 The OCE chartered ship arrived offshore of Rongelap on July 16th. The atoll was in an eerie state of suspended animation. But amidst the crumbling ruins of "old Rongelap" circa 1985 were "new Rongelap" construction sites for a population that at the time had yet to arrive. It was a truly surreal experience to see the past colliding with the future.
To conduct their retrocognitive experiment, the team broke into small groups and sought out the formerly inhabited areas of the atoll. Everyone had pads of paper, pens and digital cameras and were given instructions to map and document the visited areas. The teams followed each other loosely around the perimeter of the atoll, always in sight of the others but never too close to influence any psychic impressions that may have still clung to the area. From time to time they were able to find the overgrown remains of a road and follow it to its end. There are a sizeable number of abandoned homes on the atoll, many of which still had their contents in place. There were also a huge number of fresh water cisterns, smokehouses, community buildings and a small graveyard. Although the team did not make any significant paranormal discoveries, the experience affected them profoundly and they left Rongelap and vacinity with an enduring sense of sadness.
Rune expressed her feelings in a poignant journal entry:
"I can’t say that I came away with any particularly strong impression of the island. I did make one discovery that is noteworthy, at least to me. While stumbling through this rubble-filled clearing, I found two shoes – and man’s and a woman’s – lying together on a bed of crumbling bricks. Although the tropical sun weathered them, it seemed almost like they could have been left there just last month. The shoes were modern, presumably from the 1985 evacuation. I don’t know why that left such an impression on me, but I kept wondering about whom it was that left their shoes behind. When they left Rongelap for the last time, did they notice that the shoes were gone and realize that they would probably never be able to go back to retrieve them? As Polaris indicated in his previous entry, it is the finality of the environmental disaster here that is so disturbing. I have never been to Ukraine to see Chernobyl (not yet, anyway) but I imagine that that city must have a very similar feel as this little island."
The youngest OCE member, Ash, did begin to have a series of strange dreams after leaving Rongelap and beginning on July 21st. The recurring dream was about a Japanese man in a uniform. Since there was no Japanese occupation of Rongelap during World War II, the team assumed that these images were related to Wake Island, their next scheduled stop. Ash described the man as wearing a "cap like a ball cap but it has more square edges." He also stated that the man was wearing "tan-colored clothing" which could mean a military uniform. The man had a thin mustache and his eyes were obscured by brim of the cap. Ash’s memories of the man’s features were clear enough that Polaris was able to draw him a la a police suspect artist sketch.
At around this same time, Polaris's older son, Coyote, chose to leave OCE and return home. He made this announcement shortly after the team arrived back in Majuro from Rongelap. The news came as a great shock to everyone but the thirteen-year old was deeply homesick.
Meridian expressed the loss for all the members:
“We will all miss him. [Coyote] is a real character, and it will be strange not having his impish sense of humor to contend with on our trip. There was also something nice about having two really young people on this journey. What an amazing adventure to have! To see the world and explore its mysteries… I think it’s something that all of us dream about as adults. Imagine how great it would be to say, "I did that!" But for teenagers it’s not that simple, and all of us support Coyote’s decision. We will miss him, but carry him with us in our minds and hearts.”
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