On July 1, 1946, 42,000 people gathered at
remote Bikini Atoll to witness history. In the heart of the lagoon, some 90 leftover
vessels from WWII had been gathered, their metal corridors now home only to dozens of
pigs, goats, and rats. As military personnel, scientists, and journalists
looked on, a plane dropped a single bomb above the lagoon. There was a flash of light. An intense, warm wind that whipped across
the audiences’ faces. And, a minute later, a deafening blast. The explosion marked the first detonation
of a nuclear bomb since WWII; the first detonation to take place at Bikini Atoll. It certainly wouldn’t be the last. Over the next sixteen years, the United States
would detonate 23 atomic devices over Bikini, transforming the landscape. In the course of the tests, three whole islands
would be vaporized, dozens of ships sank, and radiation blanketed over the entire island
chain. Yet Bikini Atoll wasn’t some random, uninhabited
place. For centuries it had been home to a people
now turned into the world’s first atomic refugees. In our video today, we’re diving into the
story of both those refugees, and the nuclear tests that shaped the modern world. Before the Bomb Way out in the empty wastes of the Pacific
lies a series of 29 atolls and five islands scattered across almost a million square kilometers. Known as the Marshall Islands, these little
specks of land are all but invisible on a map, with the biggest atoll covering a mere
16 km2. But if you were to zoom in on the far northwest
of these islands, you might eventually come across a crude white circle of sand, looking
like a necklace carelessly discarded by some giant. The name of this tiny sliver of life? Bikini Atoll. Comprising 23 islands surrounding a 600 km2
lagoon, Bikini Atoll is a place of pristine beaches and swaying palm trees. But don’t let its idyllic appearance deceive
you. It’s also a place that has been battered
by the storms of history. Although at least one scientific journal has
claimed Bikini Atoll was settled in prehistory, that doesn’t fit with what we know of Marshall
Islands migration patterns. The standard timeline for Polynesians arriving
is around 50 AD, but even then Bikini remained ignored. It was simply too remote, too far to bother
with. In fact, when the first Europeans sailed past
the atoll in the sixteenth century, it seems likely it was uninhabited. That all changed prior to 1824. We know this because 1824 was the year Russian
naval officer Otto von Kotzebue landed on Bikini and met its small group of natives. We should emphasise small. The Bikini population was never much over
150, which meant an incredibly close-knit society. Aside from family ties, life on the atoll
was based around little more than lagoon fishing, foraging for fruits and coconuts, and some
very basic farming. While this was enough for the Bikini Islanders,
it presented a very dim prospect for European colonists. Hence Otto von Kotzebue basically getting
off his ship, looking around, muttering the Russian equivalent of “to Hell with this,”
and simply sailing off again. The one thing von Kotzebue did gift the atoll
was the name it was known by prior to WWII. He named it the Escholtz Islands. The rest of the 19th Century passed with life
on Bikini carrying on as normal. It carried on as Portuguese missionaries arrived
on the Marshall Islands, trailing Christianity in their wake. It carried on as the Germans annexed the islands
in 1885, transforming them into engines for copra production. It only changed gear in 1908, when Christianity
finally made it to the atoll. But while this was a relatively minor tweak,
far bigger changes were just around the corner. In summer, 1914, WWI broke out in Europe. By fall, Japan had joined the war on the side
of the Allies. Its first act was to occupy the German-administered
Marshall Islands. For Bikini Atoll, though, this was yet another
instance of “so, no change there, then.” Although Japan claimed the islands from 1914
onwards, Bikini was as remote as it had ever been, so Tokyo just ignored it. But while WWI may have mostly passed the atoll
by, the same couldn’t be said of the war’s big budget sequel. When WWII finally hit, it was going to sweep
away everything the islanders held dear. The Beginning of Armageddon For the best part of thirty years, the Japanese
approach to the Marshall Islands was basically to say: “ehh, just let them get on with
it.” But this benign attitude was never destined
to last. As 1941 approached, it became clear that - were
the US to enter a war against Japan - Washington would use the Marshall Islands as a forward
base in the Pacific. So the Japanese decided they’d just have
to occupy the islands first. The five Japanese soldiers stationed on Bikini
Atoll formed the Islanders first sustained contact with the outside world in history. But first doesn’t necessarily mean “most
impressive.” When US forces finally captured nearby Kwajalein
Atoll in early 1944, the five Japanese soldiers committed suicide by unpinning a grenade in
their foxhole. So much for Imperial Japan’s presence on
Bikini. Shortly after, the Americans took the atoll
without firing a single shot. But if the islanders initially welcomed the
Americans as liberators, they were soon going to discover what “liberty” really meant. A year and a half after the Japanese lost
the Marshall Islands, on July 16, 1945, a flash of light in the New Mexico desert heralded
the dawn of the Atomic Age. The Trinity Test was the world’s first successful
detonation of an atom bomb. Less than a month later, on August 6, a plane
passed over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and dropped a small device attached to a parachute. Below, thousands of people watched the bomb
slowly fall with interest. When it exploded 580 meters above the ground,
all of them had their retinas burned away by the flash. The bombing of Hiroshima killed 80,000 people
in an instant, and flattened the city. Three days later, on August 9, another bomb
was dropped on Nagasaki. This one killed 40,000. From the ashes of those 120,000 lives, our
nuclear world was born. Japan’s surrender six days after Nagasaki
is controversial today, because it’s not clear the twin nuclear attacks really were
responsible. Some historians point to the Soviet Union’s
invasion of the Japanese empire as the real culprit. But there’s no doubt that Washington at
least thought their new superweapon was behind the surrender. That December, President Harry S Truman instructed
the Army and Navy to prepare a joint nuclear test. Although the rationale was to “determine
the effect of atomic bombs on American warships,” the real reason was to remind the USSR of
the power now at Washington’s fingertips. The only problem was that Truman couldn’t
just drop a bomb off the coast of Hawaii and hope for the best. No. A special place was needed. One suitably remote, where the great powers
wouldn’t care what happened. You can almost imagine Truman picking up a
globe and spinning it around, looking in earnest for somewhere far away, somewhere with a debt
of gratitude to America. Almost imagine a sly smile crossing his lips
as his finger plonks down on a remote island chain, looking for all the world like a giant’s
carelessly discarded necklace. In that moment, Bikini Atoll’s fate was
sealed. It would no longer be home to a small but
vibrant culture. By the time America was done with it, it’d
barely be capable of supporting life at all. The Exodus In February, 1946, Commodore Ben H Wyatt,
the military governor of the Marshall Islands, landed on Bikini Atoll. It was a Sunday, and a church service was
in full swing. Wyatt respectfully waited until it had finished,
then asked all 167 Bikini Islanders to join him for a formal assembly. There, before the crowd, Wyatt laid out his
stall. He wanted the Bikini Islanders to agree to
leave their home on a temporary basis, and relocate elsewhere. In return, this would allow America to conduct
tests for, in his words, “the good of mankind and to end all world wars”. Wyatt patiently waited while the locals discussed
his request. At long last, the island’s leader clambered
to his feet. “We will go believing that everything is
in the hands of God,” he said. The very next month, Bikini Atoll was evacuated. All 167 islanders were loaded into a US Navy
landing craft and sent 200km across the waters, eventually reaching Rongerik Atoll. A cluster of 17 small coral islands looping
a vast lagoon, it was about as close to Bikini as the islanders could reasonably hope to
get. Disembarking from their ship, they must’ve
briefly felt like they’d found a new home. But note the operative word in that sentence:
briefly. It soon became clear that Rongerik Atoll was
less a home than a death sentence. The fish in the lagoon were inedible, the
ground hostile to traditional crops. The coconuts the trees produced far fewer
than on Bikini. Within two months, the exiles were starving. They begged the US to let them return home. But by now their home was being prepared for
the greatest PR stunt in history. The logistics of the Operation Crossroads
test almost defies comprehension. 242 ships, 156 aircraft, and 42,000 people
all descended on tiny Bikini Atoll to witness the first nuclear detonation since WWII. There were soldiers, sailors, scientists,
journalists, politicians, dignitaries invited to see this awesome display of American might. There were crates full of goats and pigs. 90 abandoned vessels leftover from WWII were
towed into the Bikini lagoon. Come late June, Bikini Atoll was more alive
than it had been in thousands of years of history. Ironically, all this life had gathered only
to witness the spectre of death. On July 1, the observers were taken out in
Navy vessels until they were 18.5km from Bikini. Shortly after, a B-52 dropped its payload
over the lagoon: a bomb named Gilda decorated with a picture of Rita Hayworth. There was a blinding flash of light, a warm
wind that whipped through the observers’ hair… And then nothing but a mushroom cloud, rising
over the atoll. The Crossroads ABLE test sank five ships from
the 90-odd scattered around the lagoon. Importantly, though, the radiation burst that
accompanied it killed nearly all the livestock tied up in the abandoned ships. As a special bulletin enthusiastically reported: "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." But even the ABLE test would have nothing
on what came next. On July 25, the Crossroads BAKER test took
place in the same lagoon. 30 meters underwater, the bomb - nicknamed
“Helen of Bikini” - detonated at exactly 08:35 am. But while ABLE had produced a mushroom cloud
and a brief flash of radiation, BAKER was destined to produce a catastrophe. “The first nuclear disaster” If you’ve seen images of Crossroads BAKER,
you might recall a white dome rising out the ocean, looking very unlike a mushroom cloud. That’s because BAKER instantaneously turned
millions of cubic tons of water into rapidly expanding steam, which in turn sent millions
more tons of water shooting skywards. The result was a bubble of superheated spray
nearly 2km tall and 600m wide, with walls almost 100 meters thick. It wasn’t the only result. The force of the blast caused a 30m tsunami
to sweep out in all directions, tossing smaller boats onto the atoll’s beaches. Underwater, a vast crater was gouged out of
the seafloor. When all those millions of tons of water fell
back into the lagoon, they caused a surge over 270m high that swamped all the surviving
ships. 10 vanished beneath the waves. But the most dramatic sinking of all was probably
the USS Arkansas. When that gigantic bubble of steam erupted
out the lagoon, the Arkansas was so close that it was flipped up in the air onto its
bow like a toy ship being tossed by a toddler. Despite weighing over 26,000 tons, the Arkansas
stood upright for several seconds, before toppling backwards into the lagoon. It’s safe to say this was a sight none of
the Navy men present had ever expected to see. The BAKER test so doused the ships in radiation
that they couldn’t be accessed for weeks. Those who did board them to check the damage
were exposed to levels of radiation that badly impacted their health. It’s thanks to this that Crossroads BAKER
was later called “the world’s first nuclear disaster.” Although another test, codenamed CHARLIE,
had been planned, it was canceled in the wake of BAKER. So destructive had Crossroads been, that there
wouldn’t be another test on the atoll for almost 8 years. But by now, Bikini Atoll was already famous. That same summer, French fashion designer
Louis Réard released a piece of swimwear so skimpy that the Vatican declared it “sinful.” To drum up even more controversy, Réard christened
his invention the “bikini” because, like the atom bomb, it was destined to make a bang. But what of the Bikini Islanders themselves? By March, 1948, the food situation on Rongerik
had got so dire that the US government again moved the exiles, this time to Kwajalein Atoll. Unfortunately, there was no room for them
there, and the islanders had to live in tents beside a gigantic American airstrip. They were stuck there for six months before
the US finally re-relocated them to Kili Island. Surrounded by rough seas, Kili had no lagoon,
and was terrible for growing crops. Again, edible fish were hard to catch, leaving
the islanders reliant on American food aid. But, this time, there would be no moving on. The exiles had finally reached their new home. This would be it now, for good. Despite telling the islanders their evacuation
would only be temporary, the US had no intention of giving up their new proving ground. Nope. They had other plans for Bikini. Plans involving the biggest nuke in American
history. Castle Bravo The first hydrogen bomb was tested on November
1, 1952. But while Ivy Mike did take place in the Marshall
Islands, it didn’t take place at Bikini. So, yay, you might be thinking, Bikini Atoll
finally manages to catch a break. Really, though, it was more of a stay of execution. Although the US had mastered the hydrogen
bomb, the government didn’t want to just leave it at that. They wanted a hydrogen bomb so powerful it
would make the world tremble. That bomb finally arrived in the form of Castle
Bravo. Ironically, the most powerful bomb the US
ever tested wasn’t intended to be particularly special. Prior to the test, its yield was calculated
at around 8 megatons. So big it would’ve dwarfed the BAKER test,
sure, but on a par with Ivy Mike. Instead, it wound up blowing at 15 megatons. If you’re having trouble picturing 15 megatons,
just imagine those images of devastated Hiroshima. Now imagine a bomb one thousand times bigger
than the one that leveled the Japanese city. That was Castle Bravo. The most-powerful test in American history
was conducted on March 1, 1954 in the air above Bikini Atoll. At 6:45am, a mushroom cloud 7km across appeared
in flash of red light that ignited the sky. A fireball shot 40km into the atmosphere. Below, in the Bikini Atoll lagoon, three islands
were vaporized, and a 2km wide crater blown into the seabed. The Atomic Heritage Foundation notes that
sailors on ships nearly 50km away could see the shadow of their bones through their skin. That they could feel an intense heat over
every inch of their faces like from a blowtorch. One sailor present at Castle Bravo later reported: “We soon found ourselves under a large black
and orange cloud that seemed to be dropping bright red balls of fire all over the ocean
around us. I think many of us expected that we were witnessing
the end of the world.” The blast was so apocalyptic that it threw
millions of tons of sand into the atmosphere. A few hours later, ash began to fall on Rongelap
Atoll, 200km away. Not knowing what was happening, the children
on the atoll played in the radioactive dust, licking it off their skin. That night, sickness swept the island. Children began vomiting, their hair falling
out in chunks. They weren’t the only ones. The Japanese fishing vessel Fukuryu Maru had
been on the very edges of the Bikini exclusion zone when Castle Bravo detonated. The light had been so bright, so red, that
crewmembers thought the sun had somehow risen in the West. When the fallout landed on their ship, it
had left them all with nasty radiation burns that would shock the Japanese public. When news of Castle Bravo’s unbelievable
payload leaked, it caused outrage around the globe. The 1963 ban on atmospheric testing was in
large part thanks to this one bomb detonated above Bikini. As a result, the last test ever carried out
on the atoll took place on July 22, 1958. Just four years later, the era of American
atmospheric nuclear tests was over. But while Bikini Atoll would never again be
subjected to planet-sized explosions, its story isn’t done. There’s still the fate of the Bikini Islanders
to deal with. A Home from Home Reading the story of the Bikini Island exiles
today, it’s tempting to think that someone in the State Department made dicking them
over his hobby. After dumping them on Kili Island, the US
Government spent decades ignoring the Bikini Islanders’ claims that they were starving,
broke, and fed up with this cruddy island. Finally, in , Lyndon B. Johnson roused himself
long enough to declare that the Islanders could finally return to their homeland. The Atomic Energy Commission even claimed
of the much-nuked atoll: “there's virtually no radiation left and we can find no discernible
effect on either plant or animal life.” But if the Bikini Islanders were expecting
a happy ending, they were in for a nasty shock. The first 150 returned to Bikini in the early
1970s, after spending a quarter of a century in the wilderness. By 1978, though, it had become apparent that
cesium 137 had gotten into the local food chain, and that living on Bikini was almost
akin to climbing into your microwave oven and setting it to “slow cook.” So, that September, an American boat landed
on the atoll and promptly re-evacuated all the Islanders. The really galling part for everyone must
have been that Bikini itself was honestly safe. While Chernobyl still contains patches of
land soaked in radioactivity, the ground in Bikini Atoll is safe to walk on, and you could
live there year-round without suffering any ill effects. You could even survive by catching fish and
never get sick. No, the problem is that the fruit and coconuts
- staple parts of the Bikini diet - are now so dangerous that they practically glow. While the islanders would know better than
to eat them, their children might not be so smart. And a bunch of leukemia-riddled kids is a
risk neither the Bikini Islanders, nor Washington is willing to take. Finally, seven years after their second exile,
the Bikini Islanders stuck on Kili sued the US government. The court case dragged on for years, which
is kind of amazing when you remember that the US had literally exploded almost two dozen
nukes on the island and invited the entire world as witnesses. In 1991, America finally capitulated and promised
to undertake a massive clean-up operation on Bikini Atoll. A trust fund was also set up for the Bikini
Islanders and their descendants, and it was promised that any income from tourism the
atoll generated would go straight into that fund. But, despite these warm words, one salient
fact remains. The Bikini Islanders never made it back home. Today, Bikini Atoll is officially uninhabited,
save for the boats of tourists that periodically wash up, eager to see a part of our atomic
history. The sunken wreck of the USS Arkansas is now
one of the world’s most sought-after diving spots. UNESCO has listed the atoll as a World Heritage
site. Yet the Islanders - now numbering around 5,000
- remain scattered, removed from their home. Recently, their new island of Kili also became
threatened, this time by climate change. In response to a 2017 petition, the US released
all $60m held in the trust fund to the islanders, who have since used it to buy some backup
land in Hawaii. Still, while the fate of the Islanders may
remain unsettled, there’s no doubting the importance of their former home. It was here that Operation Crossroads marked
one of the opening salvos in the Cold War. Here, that hydrogen weapons reached their
terrifying full potential. It was also here that the core of the anti-nuclear
movement was born, as the world witnessed the effects of Castle Bravo, and decided “no
more.” With above-ground nuclear testing now a thing
of the past, it seems unlikely Bikini Atoll will ever again stand at the center of world
events. But no-one can deny that, for a few decades
in the mid-20th Century, this tiny necklace of islands briefly became one of the most-dangerous,
most-important places on the planet. Humans may have abandoned Bikini Atoll, but
we will never forget it.
