Marshall Islanders Charge ‘Apartheid’

Scruffy children in tattered clothes rummage through a garbage drum full of empty beer cans near a cemetery on Ebeye Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

A few miles away, four young Americans play on Kwajalein Atoll’s immaculately trimmed nine-hole golf course, chasing balls on palm-fringed fairways.

Only a narrow strip of green water and two islets separate Ebeye from the U.S. missile range at Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, a tiny republic 2,300 miles southeast of Tokyo.

The Americans and Marshallese live and stay apart.

“It’s . . . an embarrassing situation for the U.S. government,” said 42-year-old Ebeye Mayor Alvin Jacklick, who was born on Kwajalein.

He compared the lot of the 10,000 Marshallese living on Ebeye to blacks forced to live in townships such as Soweto under South Africa’s near-defunct apartheid system.

“We are not allowed to spend the night on the military base. We are dependent on the dollar and no one wants to speak out,” Jacklick said in an interview.

The more than 1,000 Marshallese working on the base can buy in Kwajalein’s shops, but are barred from taking the goods home.

Marshallese have mastered the trick of circumventing the rules. Those buying clothes take off their old pants or shirts, put them in the laundry and wear the new ones.

The United States leased Kwajalein and 10 other low-lying coral atolls from the Marshallese in 1986 for 15 years. It uses the vital missile range to develop technology for its Star Wars defense system and to test the accuracy of ballistic missiles.

Squat clapboard houses are scattered around Ebeye. About 30 taxis chug down the narrow streets of the small atoll.

On Kwajalein, two saltwater swimming pools, a pair of tennis courts, spacious softball fields and a bowling alley are among amenities enjoyed by American residents.

There are outdoor movies and a scuba diving club. Several yachts and speedboats dock in Kwajalein’s marina.

“This is Smalltown, USA,” said Keith Herrington, the Army’s civilian counterintelligence officer on Kwajalein.

“My wife likes the small-town atmosphere. But I hate the idea, being raised in California, of not being able to just get in my car and go off. It can drive me nuts,” said Herrington, who has worked on Kwajalein for two years.

On Ebeye, the problems are somewhat different.

With a birth rate approaching 5%, among the highest in the world, overcrowding on the small atoll is an acute headache for local officials.

About 6,000 people on Ebeye are under 15, raising the specter of uncontrolled population growth in the near future.

U.S. officials are now trying to make amends.

Jacklick believes that the Americans have not done enough. The United States is “very skillful in bringing in a lot of economic assistance to make the local people dependent on their subsidies,” he said.

U.S. officials counter that they will provide more than $500,000 in aid in 1992, and salaries and spending by Americans pump at least $25 million annually into the economy of the Marshall Islands.

The money seems to have little impact.

Ebeye officials said their education and health systems are the “worst in the Pacific area.”

“The U.S. has neglected this area,” Jacklick said. “We look at what happened in South Africa and see ourselves in the same (situation).”