Seabees built bunkers, floating dry docks, 75 ft (23 m) steel towers for cameras and recording instruments, and other facilities on the island to support the servicemen. The islands were primarily used as recreation and instrumentation sites. The United States assembled a support fleet of 242 ships that provided quarters, experimental stations, and workshops for more than 42,000 personnel. The Cross Spikes Club, painted by Navy artist Arthur Beaumont. The Navy left them with a few weeks of food and water which soon proved inadequate. No one lived on Rongerik because it had an inadequate water and food supply, and also due to traditional beliefs that the island was haunted by the Demon Girls of Ujae. They were transported 125 mi (201 km) eastward on Navy landing craft 1108 and LST 861 to the uninhabited Rongerik Atoll, which was one-sixth the size of Bikini Atoll. On March 7, 1946, the residents gathered their belongings and building supplies. Navy Seabees helped them to disassemble their church and community house and prepare to relocate to their new home. King Juda agreed to the request, announcing that "we will go believing that everything is in the hands of God." Nine of the eleven family heads chose Rongerik as their new home. In February 1946, the United States government forced the 167 Micronesian inhabitants of the atoll to temporarily relocate so that testing could begin on atomic bombs. Preparation Residents relocated Ĭhief Judah, island magistrate from Rongerik Atoll, with one of his subchiefs, August 1947 However, Stanford University scientists reported "an abundance of marine life apparently thriving in the crater of Bikini Atoll" in 2017. A 2016 investigation found radiation levels on Bikini Atoll as high as 639 mrem yr −1 (6.39 mSv/ a), well above the established safety standard for habitation. The United States has paid more than $300 million into various trust funds to compensate the islanders and their descendants. Despite the promises made by authorities, these and further nuclear tests ( Redwing in 1956 and Hardtack in 1958) rendered Bikini unfit for habitation, contaminating the soil and water, making subsistence farming and fishing too dangerous. Both locations proved unsuitable to sustaining life, and the United States provides residents with on-going aid. A majority of the island's family heads agreed to leave the island, and most of the residents were moved to the Rongerik Atoll and later to Kili Island. Īuthorities had promised the Bikini Atoll's residents that they would be able to return home after the nuclear tests. The scientists and military authorities were shocked by the size of the explosion, and many of the instruments that they had put in place to evaluate the effectiveness of the weapon were destroyed. This was about 1,000 times more powerful than either of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Scientists miscalculated: the 15 Mt of TNT nuclear explosion far exceeded the expected yield of 4–8 Mt of TNT (6 predicted). It was detonated at dawn on March 1, 1954. The first detonation was Castle Bravo, which tested a new design utilizing a dry-fuel thermonuclear bomb. The second series of tests in 1954 was codenamed Operation Castle. Seaborg, the longest-serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, called the second test "the world's first nuclear disaster." A third test, Charlie, was cancelled due to concerns over the lingering radiation from Baker's detonation. It produced a large Wilson cloud and contaminated all of the target ships. The second, Baker, was suspended under a barge. Able was dropped from an aircraft and detonated 520 ft (160 m) above the target fleet. The first series of tests over Bikini Atoll in July 1946 was codenamed Operation Crossroads. The United States and its allies were engaged in a Cold War nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union to build more advanced bombs from 1947 until 1991. The test weapons produced a combined fission yield of 42.2 Mt of TNT in explosive power. Tests occurred at 7 test sites on the reef itself, on the sea, in the air, and underwater. Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll consisted of the detonation of 24 nuclear weapons by the United States between 19 on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Map all coordinates in "Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll" using: OpenStreetMap It was organized as a secret test, but it quickly became an international incident, prompting calls for a ban on the atmospheric testing of thermonuclear devices. The fallout spread traces of radioactive material as far as Australia, India, and Japan, and even to the United States and parts of Europe. The size of the Castle Bravo test on Mafar exceeded expectations, causing widespread radioactive contamination.
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