Experimenting at Bikini
In a twin-engine plane twenty miles from the falling atomic bomb Dr. David Bradley waited anxiously, looking
out through black goggles toward the Bikini lagoon. "Then, suddenly we saw it—a huge column of clouds, dense,
white, boiling up through the strato-cumulus, looking much like any other thunderhead but climbing as no storm
cloud ever could." The atomic conflagration was rising from its midair detonation point at a speed of two miles per
minute. "The evil mushrooming head soon began to blossom out. It climbed rapidly to 30,000 to 40,000 feet,
growing a tawny-pink from oxides of nitrogen, and seemed to be reaching out in an expanding umbrella overhead."55
In the hours immediately after the explosion, with Geiger counters clicking rapidly, radiological monitoring
planes swept through the air around the mushroom cloud. No one seemed to know whether the gas masks worn by
the crews would filter out harmful radioactive particles.56
As Bradley’s plane drew closer to the cloud, passengers could see many of the target ships afire below; a few
were sinking. "Expecting much more dire and dramatic events our crew was disappointed," he recalled. "There was
much pooh-poohing of the Bomb over the interphone."57
The Able test countdown and explosion seemed to bring the atomic bomb within human scale. "Awful as it was,
it was less than the expectations of many onlookers," remarked Time magazine. "There was no earthquake, no ‘tidal’
(seismic) wave or other catastrophe to justify the fears of crackpots that the bomb would bring the end of the
world."58 And Newsweek expressed some optimism in its coverage: "Man, pygmy that he is in the endless stretch of
time, set off his fourth atom bomb this week. Trembling, he waited once again to see if he had wrought his own
destruction. . . . Yet, as the macabre cloud of his fourth explosion rose majestically from Bikini’s environs . . . he
could sigh with relief. Alive he was; given time and the sanity of nations, he might yet harness for peace the
greatest force that living creatures had ever released on this earth."59 The limitation of visible physical impact was in
the spotlight; little attention was devoted to invisible radioactive fallout.60
A week after the Able explosion Dr. Bradley boarded a patrol gunboat at Bikini and headed westward, reaching a
small atoll after an hour’s journey. "Even below the high water mark, on the south shore, whose rocky ledges are
constantly being sluiced by the foaming breakers, even here we found radioactive material, invisibly and almost
permanently adsorbed to the surface of the rocks. It isn’t enough to be serious, but illustrates the difficulty of trying
to clean any rough surface of fission products. Even the great Pacific itself cannot wash out a roentgen of it."61
The radiation could not be cleansed away. The situation became severely aggravated when the U.S. went ahead
with its second postwar nuclear shot, code-named Baker, set off three and a half weeks later. Baker exploded
underwater at a shallow location beneath the lagoon surface, displacing two million tons of water.62
Instruments in Bradley’s monitor plane detected radiation from the targeted ships and the ocean water. Needles
on all Geiger counters quickly went off scale.63 Radioed orders to abandon the survey task were a great relief to the
crews—"with radiation so intense at such an altitude, that at water level would certainly be lethal. And this wasn’t
just a point source, it was spread out over an area miles square."64
For many weeks afterward monitors found radiation permeating the ecosystem of the Bikini atolls.65 Meantime
many thousands of sailors were aboard ships anchored in Bikini’s lagoon. Four days after the Baker detonation Dr.
Bradley and his coworkers became aware that "the live fleet is lying at anchor in dangerous water. . . . By noon the
intensity was such as to endanger our water intakes and evaporators."66 The entire fleet pulled up anchors and moved
in an attempt to escape the radioactivity.67
But U.S. servicemen were being sent aboard the target fleet—about one hundred ships—under orders to scrub off
the persistent radiation. More than a week after the Baker blast Dr. Bradley observed "most of the ships are still in
quarantine because of radioactivity." The decks were "still so hot as to permit only short shifts of twenty minutes to
an hour. The rain which fell contained the equivalent of tons of radium."68 For Navy hands accustomed to swabbing
the decks, it was an exercise in frustration. Scrubbing the vessels, with help from fire-fighting equipment, provided
"no relief from the ‘damned Geigers.’"69 Two years later those ships remained highly radioactive.70
For all the official public talk about Operation Crossroads being a crucial experiment, from the standpoint of
scientific inquiry it had a number of peculiarly flawed aspects.
For example the Navy killed Bikini atoll insects before the first atomic explosion there—preventing any accurate
assessment of the bomb radiation impacts on the land food chain. Unlike mass circulation periodicals, the small
journal Science News Letter noticed the action, reporting after the first blast: "The atom bomb’s effect on Bikini’s
ecology will have a blurred record because DDT was sprayed over the atoll islands before Seabee forces went to
work there weeks ago. This was done to abate the plague of flies that wrecked comfort and threatened health.
Biologists making the ‘before-B day’ survey objected but Navy authorities decided in favor of the Seabees."71
Whether the test supervisors were merely concerned about servicemen’s comfort—or whether they also wished to
preclude the possibility of news accounts revealing that an atomic explosion had wiped out insect life—remained
unclear. But, as Science News Letter correspondent Dr. Frank Thone pointed out, DDT indiscriminately kills almost
all aboveground insects—including those transferring pollen to sustain plant life. So use of the DDT predictably
clouded reasons for insect and plant deaths on Bikini.72
The government’s DDT dousing prevented systematic evaluation of radiation effects on other atoll life as well.
"Some birds and almost all lizards depend mainly on insects for food," Thone reminded readers. "Recent
experiments indicate that DDT-poisoned insects do not kill birds and fishes that eat them but if the insects are killed
off, where will the birds find food? . . . This one monkey-wrench, thrown into this atoll’s ecology, sprinkles question
marks all over the biological record."73
Those life forms that escaped the DDT were not missed by the radiation. After the Baker test ordinarily brighthued
coral heads were white, and dead; their normally nurturing surroundings remained highly radioactive. Dr.
Bradley’s "first netfull of sand dumped upon the fantail of our boat proved to be so radioactive that in a panic I had
the whole catch thrown overboard."74
The implications were disturbing. Intensive radiation on the lagoon bottom threatened to contaminate the ocean
food chain. After two more weeks passed, Bradley found that nearly all seagoing fish caught around the atoll were
radioactive.75
Government authorities and the mass media neglected such biological issues. More conspicuous, however, was
the failure to decontaminate the target ships; the military had little choice but to concede a lingering problem.76 In
the words of Bradley’s log, there remained "a real hazard from elements present which cannot be detected by the
ordinary field methods. . . . recent studies with the alpha counter have established the presence of alpha emitters,
notably plutonium."77 A month after the Baker explosion it became clear that ship surfaces would shed radioactivity
only through sandblasting or administering huge quantities of strong acid.78 Seven weeks after the blast, laboratory
studies were consistently detecting "a small but definite amount of plutonium spread atom-thin over most of the
contaminated areas."79
The public version of Operation Crossroads was that no long-term harm had been inflicted by the tests. Bradley’s
conclusions were far different: "We don’t know to what distances from Bikini the radiation disease may be carried.
We can’t predict to what degree the balance of nature will be thrown off by atomic bombs."80
55. Bradley, No Place to Hide, p. 55.
56. Ibid., pp. 22-23.
57. Ibid., pp. 57-58.
58. Time, July 8, 1946, pp. 20-21.
59. Newsweek, July 8, 1946, p. 19.
60. American media eagerly lacquered events even indirectly linked to the atomic test with thick coats of patriotic heroism. An Associated Press article—
headlined "SCIENTISTS RISK LIVES TO SAVE ATOMIC SECRETS" in the Los Angeles Times—disclosed that "a group of famous scientists flying to the
United States from Bikini, deliberately gambled their lives today in a thunderstorm over Nebraska by refusing to bail out to save top secret photographic and
instrument records of the atomic blast." (Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1946.)
61. Bradley, No Place to Hide, p. 73.
62. Bruce A. Bolt, Nuclear Explosions and Earthquakes (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1976), p. iv.
63. Bradley, No Place to Hide. p. 95.
64. Ibid., pp. 96-97.
65. Ibid., pp. 98, 107-108, 126.
66. Ibid., pp. 100-101.
67. Ibid., p. 101.
68. Ibid., p. 102.
69. Ibid., p. 103.
70. Uhl and Ensign, GI Guinea Pigs, p. 44.
71. Science News Letter, July 6, 1946, p. 3.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. Bradley, No Place to Hide, pp. 107-108.
75. Ibid., p. 126.
76. Ibid., pp. 115-116.
77. Ibid., pp. 116-117.
78. Ibid., pp. 131-132.
79. Ibid., p. 147.
80. Ibid., p. 149.