Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S. government carried out 23 nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, forcing the native islanders to leave their homes and contaminating the reef with dangerous radiation levels that persist to this day.
Public DomainThe mushroom cloud from the Castle Bravo nuclear test blast at Bikini Atoll, which was 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped over Hiroshima. March 1, 1954.
One day in 1946, Navy Commodore Ben Wyatt traveled to an isolated speck of land called Bikini Atoll located in the Marshall Islands between Australia and Hawaii. He had a grim message for its 167 inhabitants: The United States wanted to use the atoll as a nuclear testing site, and everyone who lived there would have to leave. Wyatt told the natives that their sacrifice would be for “the good of mankind,” and the men, women, and children reluctantly agreed. Soon afterward, the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests began with Operation Crossroads.
Between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, 23 of which took place at Bikini Atoll. A number of different operations also occurred at the coral reef, including Operation Crossroads, the first series of nuclear tests since World War II, and Operation Castle, which saw the detonation of a hydrogen bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Ultimately, the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests would leave deep, irreparable scars on the region. Though nearly eight decades have passed, the Marshall Islands are still struggling with the fallout from the testing to this day.
A Promise To ‘End All World Wars’
Public DomainKing Juda agreed to the U.S. government’s request that he and his people evacuate Bikini Atoll, stating: “We will go, believing that everything is in the hands of God.”
The story of the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests really began in August 1945 when the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The weapons’ incredible destruction heralded the end of World War II — and marked the start of the nuclear age.
After the war, President Harry S. Truman directed the military to continue testing nuclear weapons. He specifically ordered them “to determine the effect of atomic bombs on American warships.” However, the subsequent tests were also part of the nascent Cold War and the growing arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
Before such experiments could begin, military leaders needed to find a suitable testing site. They honed in on the Marshall Islands, a territory previously held by the Japanese which the U.S. took over during World War II. The remote island chain seemed perfect. It contained dozens of isolated and sparsely populated coral atolls, including Bikini Atoll and Enewetak Atoll.
Public DomainOne of the Bikini Atoll islands. It was an ideal site for nuclear testing because it was far from shipping lanes yet still accessible for bomber pilots.
What’s more, the atolls were both a safe distance from shipping lanes and accessible for bomber pilots. There was just the matter of the islands’ residents.
Ahead of the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests, Commodore Ben H. Wyatt, then the military governor of the Marshall Islands, went to Bikini Atoll to meet with the 167 people who lived there. He told them that they would have to leave their home but promised them that their sacrifice would be for “the good of mankind” and that it would “end all world wars.”
Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesInhabitants of Bikini Atoll prepare to evacuate prior to the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapons test in 1946.
Though Wyatt’s directive was met with distress, the leader of Bikini Atoll, King Juda, agreed to evacuate his people during the tests. He said: “We will go, believing that everything is in the hands of God.”
With that, the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests began
The Bikini Atoll Nuclear Tests: From Operation Crossroads To Castle Bravo
piemags / Alamy Stock PhotoInternational media correspondents take a look at the damage to target ship USS Independence from Operation Crossroads.
After the Bikini Atoll natives evacuated the islands, the U.S. military began to prepare for the nuclear tests. Some 242 ships, 156 aircraft, and 25,000 radiation measuring devices were sent to Bikini Atoll alongside more than 5,000 rats, pigs, and goats that were destined to become nuclear guinea pigs. Then, the military launched Operation Crossroads in July 1946.
This operation was meant to “study the effects of nuclear weapons on warships, equipment, and material,” and it was observed by 131 newspaper, magazine, and radio correspondents from around the world — including the Soviet Union. It began on July 1, 1946, with the Able test.
Public DomainThe explosion produced by the Able test during Operation Crossroads.
During the test, the American military assembled a “target fleet” of 95 ships with animals onboard so that they could test the effects of radiation on the creatures. Then, a B-29 dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed “Gilda.”
Though the bomber missed its target by 2,000 feet, the test otherwise went smoothly. According to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, five ships sank, and scientists were able to study the effects of the radiation on the test animals. Their grim conclusion was that “a large ship, about a mile away from the explosion, would escape sinking, but the crew would be killed by the deadly burst of radiations from the bomb, and only a ghost ship would remain, floating unattended in the vast waters of the ocean.”
Operation Crossroads involved another test as well. During the Baker test on July 25, an atomic bomb was detonated 90 feet beneath the surface of the water.
The blast carved a crater into the seafloor that was 30 feet deep and nearly 2,000 feet wide. On the surface, the effect was even more terrifying, as the detonation triggered a huge dome of water that burst into the air. The “spray dome” was over a mile tall and contained walls of water that were 300 feet thick. It also triggered a tsunami with a 94-foot-high wave.
Public DomainThe “spray dome” from the Baker explosion, which took place during Operation Crossroads.
The water coated the test fleet. All the animals onboard either died instantly from the blast or soon afterward from radiation exposure.
That marked the end of Operation Crossroads, which concluded on Aug. 10, 1946. However, the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests weren’t done yet.
After additional testing on nearby Enewetak Atoll, the U.S. military returned to Bikini Atoll for the Castle Bravo test on March 1, 1954. This experiment involved a hydrogen bomb — but the scientists behind it underestimated its power. When the 23,500-pound bomb detonated, its blast was three times larger than expected and 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan during World War II. It not only vaporized three islands in the atoll but also caused radioactive powder to rain down on nearby atolls where many people were unaware of the danger.
Public DomainThe Castle Bravo nuclear test was three times more powerful than any scientists estimated.
“Five hours after [the Castle Bravo] detonation, it began to rain radioactive fallout at Rongelap [Atoll],” a member of the Marshall Islands Parliament explained, according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation. “The atoll was covered with a fine, white, powder-like substance. No one knew it was radioactive fallout. The children played in the ‘snow.’ They ate it.”
Many of those impacted were children, who became fiercely ill after touching or ingesting the nuclear powder. Indeed, the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests, including Operation Crossroads and beyond, would have devastating ecological effects on Bikini Atoll and the Marshall Islands.
The Toxic Aftermath Of The Bikini Atoll Nuclear Tests
Public DomainBikini Atoll as seen from above in 2012. The craters from the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests are still visible to this day.
When the residents of Bikini Atoll agreed to leave their homes during the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests, it was with the understanding that they would someday be able to return. But the reality was more heartbreaking.
For years, the Bikini Atoll natives had struggled. As Marshall Islands resident Jack Niedenthal wrote for The Guardian in 2002, the Bikinians had first been sent 125 miles away to Rongerik Atoll. With little to eat, they begged to return to Bikini Atoll — but were sent to Kwajalein Atoll instead, and then to Kili Island. All the while, they asked any official who would listen about the possibility of returning home. By the late 1960s, it finally seemed feasible.
In 1969, the U.S. started to “decontaminate” Bikini Atoll. That same year, many of its former residents returned, and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission promised, “There’s virtually no radiation left and we can find no discernible effect on either plant or animal life.”
However, this wasn’t quite true. In 1978, tests revealed that the radioactive element cesium 137 was entrenched in the environment, affecting the islanders’ food. The people on Bikini Atoll had “incredible” levels of cesium 137 in their bodies — and they were forced to relocate once again. Twenty years later, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that islands in Bikini Atoll “should not be permanently resettled under the present radiological conditions.” In other words, it was still too dangerous.
The same is true elsewhere in the Marshall Islands, where health concerns about radioactive fallout endure. Residents have suffered from birth defects and cancer, and in 2010, the National Cancer Institute found that “as much as 1.6 percent of all cancers among those residents of the Marshall Islands alive between 1948 and 1970 might be attributable to radiation exposures resulting from nuclear testing fallout.”
On Enewetak Atoll, which was also the site of several nuclear tests during the Cold War, the U.S. attempted to negate the hazardous byproducts of nuclear testing by simply covering them with an 18-inch-thick concrete dome — the Runit Dome, located on Runit Island. This concrete “tomb” contains 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris. However, it’s deteriorated over time, and some experts today are worried that an earthquake or a storm surge could release its contents into the Pacific Ocean.
Public DomainThe Runit Dome contains nuclear waste from the Cold War tests, but some fear that it’s just one ecological disaster away from leaking into the Pacific Ocean.
As such, the impact of the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests continues to this day. Not only is the evidence of nuclear testing still felt on Bikini Atoll — where no permanent residents can live thanks to initiatives like Operation Crossroads — but many natives also see the nuclear tests as a betrayal. They left their homes in good faith. In return, the U.S. military dropped bombs that destroyed their land, their homes, and their health.
After this look at the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests, read up on the Halifax Explosion, history’s largest blast before nuclear weapons. Then, see some astounding photos that document the United States’ reckless history of nuclear testing.
