LEGACY of BIKINI

 

I prefer to think of this inhuman event in human terms. In that regard, it was important not for when or why it was, because the “when” was mere connivance. M-hour was 7:15 A.M. local time, Saturday, 1 November, 1952.  But five hundred forty miles to the east at the same moment it was still Friday, 31 October 1952...Halloween.

The difference was the International Date Line (above),  drawn on paper across the not really empty emptiness of the Pacific Ocean.  The “why” is the simplest of the elements; because human egos were involved. So you see that ultimately the only important thing about the event is the humans it happened to; the people who lost their homes, the man who was not there, and the man who died.

The atoll of Enewetak was built upon a 60 million year old volcanic seamount which never reached the surface, but got close enough to it to provide a sunlit foundation for zillions of an almost microscopic creatures humans have called coral polyps. 

The polyps secrete a silicone exoskeleton...

...which are fed on by the sharp teeth of parrot fish, who pooped out white sand, which provides a foothold for aquatic plants behind the protected waters of built up coral reefs,  which hold the sand together long enough for some 40 bits of dry land to stay above sea level most of the year.  And when the coral dies their exoskeletons were left behind and eventually became limestone.

Humans arrived on “Aelon Kein Ad” (our islands) about 4,000 years ago. How and why humans made this improbably voyage remains a mystery. But since then,  the entire Enewetak atoll has proved the perseverance of corals and humanity.

Some how humans crossed hundreds of miles of open ocean to reach this tiny string of pearls -  just over 2 square miles in total of dry land, 200 yards across at it's widest point, with an average elevation of 5 feet above sea level, mostly on the east side of a 50 mile wide central lagoon. And somehow about 500 human beings at a time survived over two millennia in this place, enduring isolation, typhoons and droughts.

And somehow they survived the arrival of the Spanish in 1528, the British in 1788 (who renamed their home “The Marshall” Islands), the Germans in 1885, and the Japanese in 1915. However, in 1943, the Americans were attracted to the islands when the Japanese built an airstrip on the largest triangle of land in the atoll, called Engebi island. 

And somehow the native peoples even survived the Americans, who bombarded their island from the sea and the air and invaded it in February of 1944 (Operation Catchpole). In less than a week of fighting over three hundred Americans and two thousand six hundred Japanese died to claim possession of the various sand spits that made up the atoll of Enewetak. How many of the people who actually lived on the islands were killed in the battle was not recorded.  Nobody who cared about numbers bothered to ask about the native people until much later.In December of 1947 the Americans decided to use Enewetak to test their new atomic bombs. So the 141 of those natives who had survived the Battle of Enewetak were transported 140 miles east to Ujelang atoll.  It would be, the Americans assured them, a mere three year sojourn. But the nuclear explosions did not stop until 1958.

During those 12 years the people who had lived on three islands around Enewetak lagoon, were now crowded into a single village on a single island. Food was sometimes so short that coconuts, which were supposed to have been sold for copra, were instead eaten for survival.

Epidemics of polio and measles and rats plagued the village. As one woman told an ethnographer, “In those days, the wailing across the village was constant.” And always there was the paradise lost, an Eden that looked more perfect as memories of it faded. Even after 1958, when the last bomb exploded, the natives could not return home because the white sand beaches and coral rocks were too radioactive to be safe. What could have been worth this nightmare forced upon the people of Enewetak? Their nightmare was the dream of one man more than any other. Edward Teller (above) was an Hungarian born genius who was despised by most of his fellow scientists. In 1950 he aided and abetted the humiliation of his mentor, Robert Oppenheimer, by slyly suggesting that “Oppie”, who had overseen the invention and construction of the uranium fission bombs, could no longer be trusted with state secrets. Because of Teller’s secret testimony Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance and branded a traitor. Which he was not.

Oppemheimer’s actual crime seems to have been that he simply believed that Teller was over selling his design for the hydrogen fusion bomb, which was so big Teller referred to it as the "Super"..

Most scientists familiar with the subject agreed with Oppenheimer, including Stanislaw Ulam (above), a Polish-American mathematician, who in 1950 completed calculations that proved the design championed by Teller would never work. However Ulam did suggest there was a way “The Super” bomb could be built so that it would work.

Exactly what Ulam suggested is still classified. But Teller seized on that suggestion and pushed for the design to be tested as soon as possible.  The place chosen to test this new H-bomb was a distant speck, so far off in the Pacific Ocean that to most of the generals, admirals, scientists and politicians in Washington, it was not a real place. 

Teller himself never journeyed to Enewetak to supervise the construction of the device he had championed for six years because he “did not feel comfortable” at the test site, surrounded by his peers. So he did not have to look into the faces of the natives being ripped from their ancestral homes. 

Edward Teller did not have to watch the women carry their lives down to the boats that would transport them to a place they have never seen, One tropical island looks like every other, doesn't it? At least it does if you have never called a tropical island home. So, on Halloween night 1950, the ambitious Edward Teller monitored events on a seismograph 5,000 miles away, in a basement at the University of California at Berkley.

Meanwhile, on the tiny island of Elugelab (above, bottom), near the southeastern tip of the Enewetak atoll, the United States built an explosive device based on what was now called the “Teller-Ulam Concept”.

It was not a bomb. It was not a practical weapon, as it could not be "delivered". It was a proof of concept Rube Goldberg device,  nicknamed “The Sausage”.   It stood 20 feet tall and 22 feet long. It would never fit in a airplane's bomb bay. No rocket ever built would be able to lift it. It weighed  140,000 pounds, not counting the 24,000 pound refrigeration plant needed to chill the heavy hydrogen down to minus 417 degrees Fahrenheit, so that it would stay liquid long enough to allow it's atoms to fuse together more easily.

Officially the device was code named "Ivey Mike" (above), and it was serviced by 9,350 military and 2,300 civilian personnel. Eniwetok had never been so crowded. And it never would be again.

At precisely 7:14 and 59 and 4/10th seconds local time on the morning of 1 November, 1952 the device Ivy Mike was ignited by remote control from a ship 30 miles away.

Ivery Mike exploded with the force of  almost 10 and 1/2 million tons of TNT. That was bigger than had been anticipated. 

It sent 10 million tons of seawater and coral rocketing out of the lagoon. Waves 80 feet high raced outward, slowing dissipating until, at three miles they finally disappeared.

Within 90 seconds the fireball had reached 57,000 feet, where the mushroom cloud would eventually become 100 miles wide. 

The island of Elubelab (above, left center) simply evaporated.......leaving behind a crater 6,240 feet wide and 164 feet deep. This quickly filled with sea water.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/32912172@N00/2924242774/)

One hour and forty minutes after Ivey Mike was ignited, four F-84 fighter jets (above), designated Pebble Red Flight,  entered the stem of the mushroom cloud at 42,000 feet, two at a time, to measure radiation levels. Each pilot wore a heavy lead lined “gown” for added protection against the gamma rays from cesium-137 and strontium-90 and alpha rays emitted by the plutonium-90 produced by the fusion.  At ground level, 20  miles from the point of ignition, a lethal dose radiation would be received within 25 minutes.

Upon entering the cloud at 42,000 feet the cockpit of Red One, flown by Lieutenant Colonel Virgil Meroney, was instantly bathed in a deep red glow. His “rad indicator” hit the peg – maxim radiation readings.

Worse, the rate indicator, which showed how quickly radiation was being accumulated, “went around like the sweep second hand of a watch.” Colonel Meroney immediately instructed his wing man in Red Two to follow him, and together they executed a 90 degree turn and flew back out of the cloud.

Red Three and Four were next to enter the cloud.  Very quickly Red Three returned. But from Red Four, flown by Lieutenant Jimmy Robinson (above) there was only silence. Then Robinson reported that he was at 20,000 feet, his autopilot having put him into a spin, and that his compass was out. 

Jimmy Robinson (above)  asked to be vectored to a B29 refueling tanker, but then reported  he had picked up the radio beacon from Enwetok air station, and was going to land there. He finally popped out of the mushroom cloud at 5,000 feet, saying he was now out of fuel and would have to bail out. He ejected his plexiglass canopy, but he never activated his ejection seat. 

A helicopter followed Robinson as he piloted Red Four into the lagoon,  about 3 ½ miles from the end of the runway. Hitting tail first, Robinson’s plane skipped 300 yards before slamming into the water nose first and flipped onto its back. 

It quickly sank in 175 feet of water, leaving an oil slick, a flight glove and some maps floating on the surface. The accident report suggested that the lead line apron may have prevented Robinson from getting out of the jet. Other than uncounted sea birds, fish, crabs, turtles and insects, his was the only death recorded that day.

Although told that divers had reached the wreckage of his F-84, neither his widow, Rebecca Robinson  nor her children were told if Jimmy's body was ever recovered, or why he  crashed.  Posthumously Jimmy Robinson was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. It was pinned on Rebecca's chest (above).  But the family were never told if he or his plane was recovered from the Eniwetok lagoon. All details were and are still covered by the phrase, "National Security".

Edward Teller claimed he was burdened with the title “Father of the Hydrogen bomb”. Yet he based the rest of his life around it. He championed using hydrogen bombs to blast a harbor in Alaska and crushing petroleum out of Canadian oil sands. Later he was one of the primary champions who convinced President Ronald Reagan to push the infamous  and impractical "Star Wars Nuclear Defense System". None of Teller's ideas for civil uses of the hydrogen bomb were ever attempted. His star wars defense system was deemed unaffordable and unworkable, like his original design for the "Super" bomb.  Teller died in September of 2003, a controversial figure to the end of his life.

A quarter century after the U.S. government temporarily moved the people of Eniwetok, and sick of hearing unfulfilled promises, the 150 survivors finally appealed to the United Nations. An embarrassed American government then began, in the mid 1970’s, to scoop up the radioactive sand contaminated by the 30  thermonuclear bombs exploded on, above and under their atoll.

Some 95,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris were trucked to the most northern island on the atoll, the tiny islet of Runit.  There it was mixed with Portland Cement until it formed a mound 25 feet high. 

The original plan was to seal this radioactive material within a concrete tomb. This was then to be covered by an 18 inch cap of "clean" concrete. 

But financial constraints meant the containment dome would have no bottom. In other words, it has always been open to the sea. 

They labeled their work "The Cactus Dome" or "The Runit Dome"(above). In 1980 this tiny island was declared safe for human habitation again. But almost from day one cracks appeared in the dome, and by the turn of the 21st century, some were so large "...birds have laid eggs in them." 

 In fact the expensive 1970's clean up collected less than 1% of the total radioactive waste left on the atoll.  Despite this the natives of Enewetak were allowed to return.  The U.S. government built them houses (above) and even a town hall. The federal government even planted new coconut palm forest, in hopes of replacing the copra exports. But even without copra, the natives are doing better. Their boats catch fish every day. And they make a good living providing scuba diving tours of the war ships sunk in the lagoon by all those nuclear weapons.  

They enjoy American citizenship, but without access to social security or similar benefits. Today the natives peoples worry less about radiation than they do about rising sea levels. In fact, should The dome completely collapse tomorrow, their radiation exposure would not change significantly.

It wasn’t until fifty years later that the United States Department of Defense allowed the family of Jimmy Robinson to hold a memorial service and burial of an empty coffin in Arlington National Cemetery (above). His daughter, Rebecca “Becky” Miller, works for a Veterans organization but has been told that officially her father was not a casualty of the cold war, and so the family has never received the benefits due them . As a web site notes, "In reality, Jimmy Robinson remains lost because his own government …has chosen to abandon him.”And that, along with the spending of $9.6 trillion dollars in the entire effort on  Enewetak, remains the American legacy of nuclear weapons. That and 75 years of no nuclear wars. 

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