This problem has reached a crisis point on Ebeye Island, said Kwajalein Senator and traditional leader Michael Kabua.
Ebeye, the bedroom community for the one thousand Marshall Islanders who work at the U.S. Army’s Kwajalein missile range three miles away, has a population estimated at greater than 10,000 living on 78 acres (31 hectares) of land.
As a chief for Ebeye and the surrounding islands of Kwajalein Atoll, Kabua is responsible for burials and other matters involving land use on these small, low lying coral islands. “All of Ebeye’s cemeteries are full,” he said Wednesday. “There is no place to bury people.”
Kabua said there are four funerals in progress this week and burial locations are a problem.
“People are being forced to dig up existing graves and put new caskets in on top of the remains already buried,” he said.
The Kwajalein leader said he has raised the problem to U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll officials as an issue that needs to be addressed. One option is to create cemeteries on islands that border the central part of Kwajalein Atoll’s lagoon that are periodically off-limits because U.S. missile tests launched from California are targeted on the atoll. But Kabua said that option also presents the problem of the cost of transporting people by boat to these small islands, Kabua.
Centuries ago, Marshallese “buried” their dead in the ocean. But in modern times the custom of burial on land has been adopted and limited space in the two crowded urban centers is becoming an increasingly serious problem.
The lack of burial space on Ebeye is also a concern of Kabua’s for long-term U.S. use of the atoll and restrictions this places on the movement of Marshall Islanders to many of the 93 islands in this atoll. “Can we put up with this for another 70 years on Ebeye?” he asked.
