The Plutonium Files (29 page)

One of the twenty-nine atolls and five islands in the Marshall Islands, Bikini Atoll consists of a circular chain of small, low-lying islets surrounding a gorgeous blue lagoon. The atoll began forming hundreds of thousands of years ago when a coral shelf began growing on top of a submerged volcano. The coral eventually protruded beyond the sea and attracted vegetation. Approximately 160 people lived on Bikini when the
Americans arrived. In short order they were moved off, the palm trees bulldozed, and the low-lying islets scraped smooth as a “porcelain table top in a physics laboratory.” Tall metal towers were erected where the palm trees once swayed, and cameras and radiation detection equipment were mounted atop the towers.

But it was the sepulchral collection of ships anchored in the middle of the lagoon that was the real focus of this vast exercise. This was the ghost fleet, ninety-five doomed vessels that were soon to experience the fury of two atomic bombs equal in size to the weapon dropped on Nagasaki. Bobbing on the gentle currents were American aircraft carriers, Japanese battleships, and a German cruiser. On the decks of the ships were cages containing goats, sheep, pigs, and rats.

Despite the manpower shortages, the mighty armada that was eventually assembled at Bikini consisted of 42,000 men, 156 airplanes, and 242 ships. Crossroads was so extravagant that it seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime event, but actually it turned out to be the first of a series of lavishly expensive bomb tests that would continue for more than fifteen years at both the Pacific Proving Ground and at a second proving ground in the United States, which came to be known as the Nevada Test Site.
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In the days leading up to the first atomic detonation, the men checked their equipment, attended briefings, and undertook dress rehearsals. In their off hours, they hunted for shells, went snorkeling, and swam in the warm lagoon. They ate steak three times a day, washing it down with a foul-tasting coffee called “scald.” To clean their clothes, they simply hung them out in the frequent rain squalls.

Shot Able, the first atomic test, was detonated on July 1. Dropped from an airplane, the bomb missed its target by a half mile and sank only a few ships. The general response among the observers was one of disappointment. But those who stuck around for the second detonation saw an unforgettable sight, a foaming, white mushroom cloud that would forever be seared in the public’s mind as
the
archetype of an atomic bomb explosion.

On July 25, a little more than three weeks later, Shot Baker was detonated ninety feet below the water. On the deck of the
Haven,
the Manhattan Project doctors watched in awe as a mighty geyser of water burst from the sea. When the white plume was a mile high, it suddenly collapsed and dropped a million tons of radioactive seawater onto the fleet of target ships anchored in the middle of the lagoon. Instantly a cloud of radioactive steam and spray surged out from the base of the explosion and enveloped the vessels. When the roar of the bomb had
subsided, the doctors heard the faint cries of the animals that had been sheared of their coats and placed on the decks of the doomed vessels. The animals were alive, but not for long.

Through his binoculars, Stafford Warren watched a launch carrying Louis Hempelmann and Rear Admiral T. A. Solberg speed toward the
Saratoga,
a venerable Navy carrier anchored only 350 yards from where the bomb had been detonated. The ship was listing badly and the admiral, who was in charge of salvage operations, wanted to cut the anchor and save her. Remembered Warren:

Shot Baker turned the beautiful and pristine Bikini lagoon into a radioactive stew. The bomb destroyed nine ships outright, and the highly radioactive water that crashed back down into the decks essentially put the remaining vessels out of commission. Neutrons from the detonation converted the saltwater in the lagoon into radioactive sodium and radioactive chlorine. Algae, small marine animals that lived on the coral reef, and larger fish soon became radioactive. Neutrons from the blast even made the soap on the ships radioactive. Alpha and beta particle contamination stuck to ropes and rusty metal and became embedded in the wooden decks. Despite these hazards, the first patrol boats were recovering instruments forty-one minutes after the blast, and salvage groups were working in the area two hours later.
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Forty-nine ships carrying 15,000 men had returned to the lagoon by the end of the first day.

The Navy tried to decontaminate the target ships by blasting them with seawater, coffee, rice, cornstarch, lye, boiler compound, diesel fuel, ground corncobs, coconut shells, barley, soap, sulfuric acid, flour, and charcoal. Oftentimes wearing little more than shorts and sailor caps, thousands of young enlisted men boarded the ships with mops and soap and water to scrub the decks. They also scraped radioactive paint from the hulls, radioactive rust from the propellers, and recovered underwater monitoring equipment and gauges.

The Navy’s cleanup efforts were no match for the tasteless, odorless, and invisible contamination that engulfed the target vessels. Soon the contamination spread to support ships where the sailors, scientists, officers, and journalists slept and ate. It got so bad that Stafford Warren began confiscating shirts and shoes. “They might have passed under a bit of superstructure and have water drip down their backs or something; so their clothes were all contaminated and so was the skin of their back.
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They would not wear gloves, so they would get the palms of their hands contaminated.” The radioactive mist and water seeped into ships’ ventilating systems and into boilers that converted the seawater to drinking water. Soon even the scientists on the
Haven
were finding minute doses of radiation in their food. “Our cook had never been off the ship; but, apparently, somebody had contaminated the handrails of the ladders and other places in such a way that he and his helpers had gotten their hands contaminated so that when they peeled the potatoes, it got into the mashed potatoes,” Warren remembered.
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The Geiger counters did not work well in the tropical humidity. What’s more, the counting instruments had trouble detecting alpha and beta particles. Only 15 percent of the task force, or about 6,000 people, were given film badges—and these also failed to register alpha and beta particles. The target vessels, with their uneven surfaces, gave off wildly fluctuating exposure rates. To make matters worse, many Navy officers were uncooperative and began ignoring the monitors’ advice about how long cleanup crews could remain on the contaminated ships. “Since they couldn’t taste, feel, see etc. anything, the officers then began to take advantage of their numbers and my green men,” Warren confided in an August 11, 1946, letter to his wife, Viola.
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The relationship between the monitors and the Navy men grew so strained that one day Warren was called before 1,400 officers and petty officers. He told an interviewer later, “You could just feel a kind of wall of hate when I walked in; the tension was terrific … I was just a dirty stinker, you know.”
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The Navy brass were finally convinced Warren’s concerns were real when they saw some of the radioautographs he made from the fish. The fish were sliced longitudinally down the middle, dried in a warm blast of air, and then placed facedown on a piece of film. Several hours later their gills, coiled intestines, liver, and gonads could be clearly seen on the film.

Ever conscious of litigation, Warren created a “Medico-Legal Board” for advice. Its members included Louis Hempelmann, James Nolan, and Joseph Hamilton. According to documents, the board’s function was to
“reassure Col. Warren that the safety measures adopted by RadSafe were such as to attract no justifiable criticism and to give what assurance was possible that no successful suits could be brought on account of the radiological hazards of Operations Crossroads.”
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Warren also prepared a paper trail of classified memos that would exonerate him from any future blame. He described the radiological hazards in detail and advised the task force leaders to halt the operation. In one memo he wrote that many of the men had exceeded the 0.1 roentgen per day “tolerance limit.”
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Alpha particles were “insidiously toxic in very minute quantities,” he cautioned in a later memo.
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Speaking of a “lethal dose” as an amount that could be deadly if inhaled or ingested by one person, Warren wrote:

He also pointed out to Navy officials that as little as 0.5 roentgens per day for three months or less could result in defective children in successive generations. “The majority of personnel exposed at Bikini are young, and their heredity is of prime importance to them and their families.”
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Dale Beaman, just seventeen at the time, would later wish that such information had been conveyed to him before he swabbed the decks of the
Saratoga.
“We worked there all day and took our lunch.
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When we got back to the
Fulton,
they checked us with a Geiger counter and they said we were too hot and they told us to go below and take a shower.” Beaman subsequently developed colon cancer, and his three children have experienced serious health problems. Charles McKay, a young Navy diver, made fifteen or twenty descents into the middle of the lagoon to measure the radiation on the sunken ships. A dosimeter was fastened to the back of his diving suit, and he was instructed to press his back against the sides of the vessels so the instrument could pick up the radiation. “Mac, that’s hot. Get the heck away from there,” he once heard someone say through his headset.
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McKay also developed colon cancer and believes the disease was caused by the exposure he received on the
underwater expeditions. Boley Caldwell III, one of Crossroads’ 386 radiation safety monitors, told a reporter, “It was often a matter of just several minutes before you got above a tenth of a roentgen.”
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Harvey Glenn, a young sailor who for two weeks had scraped paint from the USS
Carteret,
said a Geiger counter measured their exposure after they were abruptly ordered off the vessel. “They checked our clothing, and that thing was going mad,” he recalled.
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“Then we stuck our bare hands underneath and it did go crazy.” Glenn knew something was wrong when his tonsils began “rotting” in 1964. Three years later he was diagnosed with cancer.

Operation Crossroads was terminated in August 1946. A third test, Shot Charlie, was canceled in large part due to Warren’s constant haranguing. Exhausted and relieved, he slept for almost the entire journey home. Despite memos to the contrary, a decade later Warren denied that any of the Crossroads participants received more than 0.1 roentgen per day.
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As far as the Manhattan Project was concerned, the Crossroads tests signaled an end to its exclusive monopoly of the bomb. For the Navy, the tests confirmed that a strategically placed nuclear weapon could indeed kill every sailor on board and coat its great ships with a potentially lethal layer of contamination. As for the Soviets, they were convinced the tests were nothing more than a dress rehearsal for the nuclear battlefield. Andrei Gromyko rejected the Baruch Plan on July 25, the same day the white geyser produced by Shot Baker burst from the sea. Thus began the arms race between the superpowers and decades of disarmament talks.

Shots Able and Baker made Bikini so radioactive that residents were not allowed to return to their paradise home. The atoll was used for subsequent nuclear tests and became too contaminated for anyone to live there safely. Except for a brief period in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Bikinians never did go home again.

Radiation from the underwater blast killed large sections of the exquisite coral reef and made all the fish for miles around radioactive. David Bradley, who wrote a controversial book about Operation Crossroads called
No Place to Hide
when he returned home, stumbled across another type of desecration. On the lagoon side of a beautiful little island called Cherry, which was less than a half-mile wide and covered with a glade of pine trees, he found an urban dump:

While the Pacific tests were under way, politicians in Washington worked out the final details of the McMahon bill, which would define and establish the scope of the new Atomic Energy Commission. Ultimately the AEC wound up having a general manager and five commissioners. The commissioners were appointed by the president, approved by the Senate, and served staggered five-year terms. The general manager was chosen by the commissioners themselves and served at their pleasure. The new legislation also created three permanent committees: a General Advisory Committee, composed of civilian experts who would advise the AEC on scientific and technical matters; a Military Liaison Committee, consisting of officers chosen by the secretaries of the military branches who would advise the AEC on the military applications of atomic energy; and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, a permanent standing committee in Congress. A fourth committee, the Advisory Committee for Biology and Medicine, which provided advice on health and safety matters, would be added in late 1947.