The Forgotten Nuclear War - Bombs on Bikini Atoll | Full Documentary

it's a journey to paradise and a journey to hell the atom bomb is here it exists we must look to the future the future that was the Cold War and the arms race but they were fearing so powerful yet they didn't really know what they were doing for the supposed good of mankind people were driven from their land lost their huts houses and livelihoods but at the moment we can not go back home from still with babies [Music] at the other end of the world thousands of miles from all the major continents lies the Bikini Atoll white sand beaches warm crystal-clear water coconut palms but what looks like a holiday paradise has been a radioactive hell for more than 70 years nuclear contamination has made this group of islands permanently uninhabitable this remote yet so idyllic place was chosen by the USA to be their testing site for atomic weapons [Music] to test the enormous explosive force of this new weapons technology but also to demonstrate their power and superiority to the whole world the US military sank an entire Armada of battleships today they're a magnet for fearless divers this is because these frigates destroyers and aircraft carriers are still packed with weapons and live ammunition [Music] lamomam bond was just 10 years old when on the island of Wrangell app some 200 kilometers from the center of the atomic explosion the earth shuddered how come this day the Sun is rising in the West and all of the sudden the senses rise so we were you know wandering and some of the children went there until a very loud sound they said maybe American in Dresden or maybe studying the world let's go the was inside and important if there is only a few years earlier the war and the Pacific had raged in the region in July 1945 the post-war world order had already been negotiated in Potsdam though Japan still stubbornly resisted capitulation but even in the final months of world war ii the cold war between the Soviet Union and the USA had already begun that was also a factor when despite territorial gains American president Harry Truman gave the order to drop the atomic bomb on August 6 the long-range b-29 bomber Enola Gay took off with the bomb that had been named little boy on board at 8:16 a.m. it detonated above hiroshima after the second bomb was dropped over Nagasaki three days later Japan declared her capitulation 7:00 p.m. Eastern wartime Bobkov reporting the Japanese have accepted our Terms fully that's the word we've just received at the White House in Washington this ladies and gentlemen is the end of the second world war the victorious Americans celebrated their bomb as if it were a gift from God [Music] this gentleman President of the United States a short time ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima that bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT it is an atomic bomb it is a harnessing of the basic power of the Universe [Music] having found the atomic bomb we have used it it is an awful responsibility which has come to us we thank God that it has come to us instead of to our enemy and we pray that he may guide us to use it in his ways and for his purpose less than a year after the president's solemn words there was to be another atomic explosion but this time not on enemy territory but on the Marshall Islands after being recaptured from the Japanese this group of Pacific Islands were a Trust Territory under American administration for the next 12 years they were to be an atomic weapons testing site today they have still not recovered from the damage [Music] Jack needn't ah himself an American has been fighting for the rights of the Marshall Islands for decades the US was feeling so powerful at the time and again they were in that race with the Russians but they were fearing so powerful yet they didn't really know what they were doing and and it's evident everywhere I mean you just read through some of these documents that were released on the idea that the US came and took advantage of that I mean they spoke to the bikini ins on a Sunday after church I mean how insidious can you get you you you talk to them on a Sunday after church asking if they would be willing to go for the good of mankind and to end all world wars and that they would be like America's children 25 take one well now then James will you tell them that the United States government now wants to turn this great destructive force into something good for mankind something good for men they were in this arms race with the Russians the Russians had already detonated a hydrogen bomb the US was like in complete panic mode they wanted to get things done so they were rushing everything and you if you look at the old clips of some of the archival footage they'll talk about the Bohemians as a nomadic people people who moved around from place to place even though they'd Bennett in bikini for centuries they had purported all these myths about the bikini ins so they were I don't think they really cared about the marshalese is the easy way to put it we are all the children of God King Judah chief of the bikini ins had said and agreed to the evacuation of his people for the good of mankind six weeks before the first bomb tests 167 inhabitants of the main island and 29 from the island of Nu were transported to the smaller infertile island of wrong Eric it was the beginning of an odyssey across numerous islands and atolls that went on for decades today most bikini instill live on kili and agit Chile is a tiny spot in the ocean hundreds of miles from bikini Majuro the main island of the Marshalls isn't much closer the Japanese had used Keeley as a prison Island bikini UNS say it's still the same today officially the population has meanwhile grown to over 5,000 the people here still call themselves bikini ins though very few of them have actually ever seen bikini itself you can easily walk all around Kili on an afternoon stroll the island has no harbour and no Lagoon 3/4 of a mile long please what's up of my wife so there's no Lagoon like the other islands think they have all sort of fish we want to go back home but at the moment we cannot go back home but filled with radiation a few months ago 10 men from Kili set off to the land of their ancestors for the first time in 40 years they documented their historical journey for posterity their mission to bring back fish and seafood for the festival marking the anniversary of their deportation they only knew the promised land from the stories told by their fathers none of them had ever been there before at first sight the island appears intact white sand beaches turquoise blue water and thriving coconut palms only their fruit is poisonous just being on bikini say the scientists is not dangerous living on bikini however is because everything that grows and takes Revere is still contaminated by radiation the lagoon is teeming with life as if nothing had ever happened for the bikini ins from Kili the island looks exactly as their forefathers described it like paradise so different from Kili their new home fishing on the open sea is only possible when there's no wind very few coconuts right in here I am lost in a place that is not mine in a land that I do not earn I am drifting on the open sea it is God's world earth and water that's what we sang when the Americans took us away the Americans however presented themselves as benefactors the atom bomb is here it exists we must look to the future up until now only three have been exploded and none over the water it is the duty of the military services to explore the military might of this new weapon we want to be prepared for any use of atomic energy that may become necessary whether offensive or defensive so that the events could be witnessed by the rest of the world over 20 tons of film equipment were brought along aboard the observation ships sunglasses were provided and ice-cold refreshments served both of which became fashionable in the summer of that year as did the creation of a french fashion designer which was given the name bikini the whole 1946 operation crossroads relievers are only nuclear weapons like they dropped on hiroshima nagasaki not very powerful that was a show they had 42,000 men and women up there 5,000 radiation recording devices rats pigs goats this was this huge show and it was just to show the Russians hey look what we have [Music] on the 1st of July 1946 an armada of some 93 ships had gathered off the Bikini Atoll aircraft circled in the sky the preparations for the first atomic test were already completed when Bernard Baruch US representative to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission advocated putting atomic energy worldwide under international control if we fail then we have damned every man to be the slave of theá-- it's Abel day the 30th of June 1946 the day of the first test at this time NBC interrupts its regular program schedule to bring you our history-making broadcast the actual dropping of the bomb at bikini in a matter of minutes now an army super fortress will drop that bomb on target ships in bikini lagoon aboard 22 target ships in the lagoon the animal house ins of cameras and film cameras were at the ready half of all the world's film materials had been transported to the bikini at all [Music] [Music] the bomb attained an explosive yield equivalent to 23 killer tons of TNT about the same strength as the one that had destroyed Nagasaki of the 93 target ships positioned around the atoll including ships captured from the Japanese the former German cruiser Prinz organ but also numerous American cruisers battleships and aircraft carriers five sank immediately while the rest were seriously damaged directly after the detonation US Army units accompanied by international observers examined the damage and tried to assess the extent of the radioactive contamination most of the 5,400 test animals were killed instantly [Music] crossroads was only the beginning even today the Bikini Atoll is still uninhabitable and yet it's one of the world's most exclusive regions for diving at a depth of around 160 meters lie the very ships that were exposed to the staged atomic attack all those years ago among them the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga measuring 250 meters it's the longest wreck in the world that can be reached using breathing apparatus also on the seabed is the hij m/s Nagato once the flagship of the Japanese Navy and involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor the ships are now the property of the bikini ins they are as they say our nuclear fleet underwater but still dangerous for divers [Music] for time later six or seven years later the Russians detonate it was confirmed a hydrogen bomb well the u.s. went into a panic and they tried to Det that they did detonate a hydrogen bomb on anyway talk in 1952 which was called Mike and that weapon was not usable in a war in other words it was the size of a two-story house it was nothing you could load on a plane and use so it was still useless the difference between that weapon and the weapon that was tested on bikini is that was the first deliverable hydrogen bomb the US had ever in other words you could it was small enough to put on a plane and turned out to be 15 megatons six months after the Soviet Union had tested their first hydrogen bomb preparations were underway for operation castle the bravo hydrogen bomb was to be the most powerful device the USA had ever detonated was constructed at the southern tip of this valuable piece of real estate this is the first time on any operation that weapons were assembled on Perry and then moved out to the firing site the Bravo bomb was to be brought to the extreme northwest of the archipelago for detonation 48 hours earlier the Bikini Atoll had been evacuated completely only the firing team responsible for detonating the bomb remained in a specially constructed bunker on the South Island of Enyo [Music] recorders to read the yield of the primary bomb from its rate of neutron multiplication Claud sampling for radial chemical determination of fission yield and to assist in determination of total yield high-speed cameras and footer towers for ball of fire photography to indicate total yield of the device scopes recording electromagnetic radiation and cameras both to obtain the time in a row between primary and secondary bomb detonations on March 1st 1954 the most powerful bomb of all time exploded the scope of operation castle saw six further atomic tests carried out by mid May for the Romeo test the first after Bravo the bomb was detonated on a barge in the Pacific this test method would later be used for all powerful weapons tests to prevent further contamination of the islands for the operations final test nectar the technological advance was clear with a weight of 2.6 tonnes the bombs explosive yield was 100 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb little boy that had weighed four tonnes when the Marshall Islands gained independence a body equivalent to a quart the nuclear claims tribunal was set up to rule on the compensation claims for damage incurred during the weapons testing program who described the enormous impact of the Bravo bomb the authorities had bill Graham reads from the military's investigation report as LeBron load device detonated a huge fireball formed 10 million tons 10 million tons of pulverized coral debris were coated with radioactive fission products and sucked up into the rising fireball surrounded by moisture condensation rings caused by the passage of the shock wave the huge bubble of superheated gas and debris rose 45,000 feet in the first minute leaving behind a four mile wide stem of radioactive debris it continued to rock it upward punching through the tropopause and into the stratosphere and falling out over an area of hundreds and hundreds thousands of square miles including Ronal at 110 miles from bikini alderic and others a film in keeping with the hollywood style of the time describes the extent of the contamination the report which follows is a summation of what occurred at the pacific proving grounds during that operation in 1954 it is now known that fallout from the larger castle shots blanketed areas of more than five thousand square miles with radioactive material that would have been lethal to unprotected personnel in fact after the Bravo test both military and scientific personnel admitted their surprise at the violent intensity and power of the explosion newspapers reported 46 inhabitants of the nearby rural app at all who suffered radioactive contamination and were lucky to survive the 23-man crew of a Japanese fishing vessel 140 kilometers away were heavily contaminated one crew member died of radiation sickness fish water and land everything was highly contaminated the extremely toxic atomic fallout looked just like snow even the window the window open we were 81st and after some days something growing our fifth like like myself and through the night we were very itchy but because we will didn't know these workplaces we don't know about the resident now I am this man that it's colorless we can see it even smelly expose we're taking the Kwajalein complete physical examinations were carried out in these sometimes their babies did it they do not look like they're people the extent of the contamination only became clear later this is the graveyard of my mom she was only 16 years old at the time of the Bravo shot and the people of Ryloth was that closest to the explosion that happened on bikini on March 1st and she was one of the survivors at that time that were flown early on seaplane by the Navy because she was pregnant at the time and you know my brother Robert this one was in her stomach you know when they transferred her from role up to Kwajalein and my brother died in 2008 of stomach cancer and that particular cancer was related to nuclear radiation as part of the list that they have on their listings this is one of my cousin Harry when the powder started pouring like snow I mean the you know environment you know was pretty dark because of the debris that were you know falling down and as soon as it started hitting our people their hair naturally you know keeps falling off you know you can pull it and they didn't know you know the cause of it but somehow some of the elders you know felt that it could be from the you know snow flakes they call it according to the military there were two reasons why people had suffered firstly the explosion was much more powerful than they had planned and secondly the wind had changed unexpectedly the tremendous yield resulted in a serious fallout situation at bikini and certain of a tolls downwind from ground zero this was the forecast wind direction the actual wind was in this direction some 10 degrees less favorable than forecast even so the winds were within the area of acceptable fallout however the unexpected high yield of course significant fallout to occur on rajala Pedro both of those are absolute lies and we learned about it later from their own documents the first thing we learned was that that myth that they did they weren't sure which way the wind was that was blowing was completely false once the the Clinton administration released all those documents in the late 90s it was clear they knew the wind was blowing in the wrong way and those decisions were meet being made by the highest officials in the US government the president United States was the one giving the command to push the buttons so that that was completely false they knew the wind was going in the wrong way they knew it was blowing towards wrong lap and inhabited populations the islands 64 inhabitants had not been warned they drank the contaminated water from the cisterns children rub radioactive dust into their hair pretending it was soap it wasn't until 48 hours later that the inhabitants were evacuated but only three years after this the islands were declared clean and safe the test program continued operation castle alone involved five more bombs two years later Operation Red Wing was launched with a further 17 thermonuclear tests the devices were detonated on barges on and below the water surface dropped from planes and ignited at varying heights [Music] Tiwa and Huron on the 20th and 21st of July 1956 were the last in operation Red Wing two years later operation hard track followed with another ten bombs in the 12 years since operation crossroads the tiny group of islands had been devastated by a total of 23 bombs transforming this mini paradise into a radioactive hell on earth every substance that is radioactive can be found on the islands this enemy is invisible people and animals can't smell it or taste it only in high doses does it burn the skin like a hot light that no one can see it creeps into the body remaining undetected for years unless it is permanently monitored in which case human beings become no more than any Peaks [Music] if this should happen it would be a tragic thing for those injured no matter how small a number whether these statistically very few casualties can be justified as a personal value judgment outside the scope of this report each citizen must make his or her own evaluation there are those few who loudly maintain that there is no actual threat to the free world at all certainly none that can justify either nuclear testing or nuclear armament the opposite viewpoint holds that the development of our nuclear power has been an absolutely necessary protection against communist hostility and nuclear threat in this view the fallout casualties if any will be seen as those of unidentified soldiers in the service of humanity unknown soldiers in a war which is not struck and which our nuclear power may indeed prevent from ever striking in 1985 almost 30 years after rung a lap had been declared radiation free and its inhabitants allowed to return they were evacuated once more as the US government didn't react to the Islanders repeated requests Greenpeace came to their aid [Music] also on board the Rainbow Warrior was activist bunny McDermott today she's executive director of Greenpeace International my first impression it's beautiful it's it's we sailed into this lagoon which was very large and is completely surrounded by a string of small islands and the largest Islanders named the same as the atoll itself and the water is incredibly clear you can see down meters to the bottom and it's kind of like an idyllic what you imagined in your head of a romantic little Pacific island you know beautiful sandy islands with palm trees with coconut trees everywhere into the water came a small boat what we could what the Marshall is called a bomb bomb and it was full of women who were waving and well welcoming us and holding up a sign that said we love the future of our kids and on on the shore was a archway that they had built welcoming us as well and mostly it was the older woman and older men that were in the front and at the back were all the young men sitting on the ground and even though their senator had been talking with them for many months about the fact that they would be moving and why they were moving it wasn't until we actually showed up that it became something of a reality for people and reality had caught up with the Islanders 95% of the people who had been living on the island during the test years were suffering from thyroid cancer 30 years later children were being born with deformities we removed an amazing amount of equipment and position we had a ship loaded to the absolute gunnels with equipment and people and we made four trips backwards and forwards that was an overnight trip and then it was loading and unloading it both ends Henk Carson was an engineer on Rainbow Warrior his impressions of that day 30 years ago are still fresh when one thing was loading to give it the people was too emotional side of it you know because they were definitely affected by what was going on about what happened to them you know and I mean you can actually see it you know there's children and there misformed and it's all that's right in front of you and they're moving in people you know we're moving a whole population of this island operation Exodus took four days and four nights three times Rainbow Warrior had to make the 100 kilometer journey between rung a lap and the island of Magento but finally they had successfully managed to transport 300 inhabitants and around 100 tons of materials and yet the tragedy remained but these people were losing their home and lenders like your middle name in the marshals everyone is born belonging to a piece of land a piece of sea everyone has a place they can go and grow food on live on fish from that's it's it's your birthright it's your future it's what you pass on to your kids it's xxxx extraordinarily important it's part of the most indigenous cultures have that and the marshalese are no different and so for them to decide to move and to leave their land was an extraordinarily difficult and big decision to make [Music] their ancestors had lived on the wrong a lap at all for thousands of years that 17th of May 1985 was the final farewell a fateful day for the Islanders but the evacuation also made a deep impression on the lives of the Rainbow Warrior crew members Hank and Bunny returned three months later friends in magento helped them build a seaworthy supply ship they they'll never forget I was either there was a two-way street because they saw that Greenpeace bird what is what is this all about they had no idea or you know and and it and it and it sort of worked out some of the new settlers from that time are still living on magento today others moved to Maduro the capital of the Marshall Islands the cohesive spirit of community they had before they moved as never returned nice don't manage to keep their communities intact and that is why that the wrong Epis chose a particular alack Island to move to that was not inhabited by another community because they wanted to be able to stay intact as a community as much as they could that's what they still had if they didn't have their land was who they were as a people so they chose rather a difficult Island to move to it wasn't very productive in terms of food and it didn't necessarily have a got a lot of good fishing around it but it actually meant they could stay intact as a community and that was really significant for them the inhabitants of the Bikini Atoll also attempted to settle back into their old home and they too failed in 1968 president lyndon b johnson announced the speedy return of the at that time 540 bikini ins in late 1978 the atoll was evacuated once again the 139 inhabitants settled mainly on Majuro and h it in the Majuro at all there they and their descendants still live today they still call themselves bikini ins even though most of them had never cast eyes on bikini [Music] 70 years ago America's bombs destroyed the Islanders homeland took away everything that was important and sacred to them the compensation payments to which all descendants have since been entitled have finally robbed them of their identity - they have been taught to take an attitude of dependency imparted to even the youngest the only Authority is the church [Music] Church play a very important role in bringing people together looking back to the first migration the first thing the bikini end did when they left bikini if they won't do the church and do some example at this church and they took the church with them so wherever they go so first thing they do they always build the church and live around the church and expand sunday is the day of community after church they cook eat and talk together in a desperate attempt to save the community from disintegration [Music] [Music] since these people were again flown out of bikini they sense that they've been part of some experiment in 1968 it was clean to go that well assumed or assumed that it was clean look at that this particular fool went back to bikini so they ate the fish the coconut crab the coconut everything that they said that is poison they ate them for 10 years and 1978 they say that well sorry but you know it's it's too hot but a person of the US Department of Energy would come the bikini and did a lot of studies on human on human body you know do all the body count this suspicion alone is monstrous so you have to understand these weapons went off they got snowed upon and for the rest of their lives these people were studied constantly and if that were me I'd be feeling like wow I feel like a guinea pig so I understand that but whether or not the u.s. really intentionally did that at the beginning it's hard for me to say I'd love to be able to say yes they did I'm sort of like I have mixed feelings about it the largest coherent community of bikini ins is still the one on kili this barren island is home to around 500 people there's a school a sports ground and a satellite dish to connect them to the outside world there's no work no agriculture just the monthly checks from America those who still live here and stay here have accepted their fate an aircraft flies in the monthly rations diesel for the generator food water if someone forgets cigarettes half the population suffers withdrawal symptoms payment everybody every time the ships come they come and look at the food and see how much we get in how much everybody should have will need to went to high school in Hawaii she lived in Oregon she managed to make the break but then she came back she missed the place she says she shares the house here with her mother her daughter and an aunt what they get to eat is decided in faraway maroudo when the Islanders food rations are put together canned peas canned corn and canned meat [Music] for special occasions chicken drumsticks deep frozen defrosted barbecued there's not healthy old chicken Gordon Lee up top here take it eat it take it or leave it you don't have a choice sit eat it sometimes rough to go fishing that's what we really want to eat race - well we can't this resignation is also a long-term effect of the bonds people here have what I call and this is I don't know I call it a victim mentality it's like I've been victimized the unit the United States took my land away they bomb me they affected my health with what I have to eat now they owe me everything and you can't argue with that for me when I hear it all the time I understand the feeling they've been screwed and they feel like they are owed and I completely understand it the problem I see with it as its apps people's motivation it takes an hour to walk around the island the landing strip for the planes takes up almost an entire side of the island Kili has been flooded several times in six stormy months of the year the ocean takes everyone who dares to venture out in a boat it was coming from the ocean and then rising from the ground at the same time so it was really weird cuz it was like bubbling and coming up rising and water coming from the ocean it was it really happened for fast it was like minutes and the water was going out after that it just flooded easily here if the water if the tide is high and the water it rains it can really like - two or three days lately we've had it you know like it comes in gold after the first serious flood something resembling a dike was built [Music] they had people from mandro come and try to cover it I don't think it's that secure if we had one of those again it's gonna go just the first catastrophe is far from being over and already the next one is looming large climate change climate change is a major issue and I am a very firm believer in its anthropomorphic man is behind it it's definitely happening but I think it's being overplayed again it's being politicized with radiation you're dealing with half-lives the radiation is tapering down about it slowly but unless we do something about the climate change and global warming this place could go under here in a place where the islands are barely above sea level a rise of up to three meters is expected so now is the financial wells of atomic compensation payments are threatening to run dry global warming offers new hope as a source of international aid decades of subsidies have largely killed off people's own initiative instead of growing food in gardens of their own they wait for canned vegetables right now they don't only have pigs but they're waiting for somebody from Andhra to come and teach these boys that are working here to grow things like watermelons and I think we at that point in our life were it's like why I I'm not gonna feel hungry you know if I'm here I can I get whatever I want every house is that has a/c and hot water and everything modern technology we have cell phones cell system the power system the water system right now we have this it's no the feared rise in sea levels is a real threat for the inhabitants on kili and at the same time the next catastrophe to further cement their role as victims the role America's atom bombs have played so far is now being taken over by the co2 emissions of industrialized nations [Music] when the priest speaks of the promised land it's not clear to everyone whether he means the Old Testament and the promise made by God or bikini and the promise made by the Americans it seems to me that the desire to go back to their old home to bikini is no more than a communal dream just like the longing for the lost paradise that we know from the Holy Bible there are only a few people left alive from the generation deported from bikini Kwajalein and wrong Eric that's why I have mixed feelings about whether a return would make any real sense life on the island is not only limited by its remote location but also by strict rules the disco they wanted was demonized by the priests there's no television what's left is films on video wargames in American uniforms and dreams at ten o'clock in the evening curfew begins alcohol is strictly forbidden the evenings on Kili are long what people here know of the world outside comes from video cassettes in the form of action films and video sermons even though everyone here is seen every film a few times over business is still good for the islands only video rental store [Music] men they can come and chat and drink coffee and play cards as women we stay home cool do whatever we can and basically these are the things that you know Jill Stein whether it really was atomic weapons that have kept the peace over the last 70 years has always been and will remain a controversial issue the lawsuit filed by the Republic of the Marshall Islands at the International Court of Justice against nations failing to comply with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was rejected the nuclear arms race goes on worldwide

Channel: WELT Documentary

Views: 167,256

Keywords: full documentary, full documentaries, hd documentary, hd documentaries, free documentary, welt documentary, welt documentaries, full length documentaries, documentary film, top documentaries, reports, factual film, bikini atoll, bikini atoll doku, nuclear blast, nuclear explosion, nuclear bomb test, nuclear bomb, nuclear bikini atoll, bikini island, bikini island nuclear test, Marshall Islands

Id: NjqoiT-RS4A

Length: 50min 28sec (3028 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/laikacomehome]

really fascinating stuff. radio bikini is an older documentary on the subject that i thought was great. the footage of them just walking around on the target ships to assess the damage that the nukes did was pretty mind blowing.

[u/GodOfDucks]

OP's post history is riddled with genocide denial and pro-neofascist stuff in soon-to-be-banned subreddits - Best to give this a wide berth!

[u/brakkattack]

8:30: “the Japanese (in WW2) were using hikini as a prison island. Many say it is the same today”

This has to be the largest stretch of a comparison I have encountered, much less in a ‘documentary’. If any inhabitant has eaten or not been flogged in the last 7 days, they are doing better than any Chinese, oceanic islander, commonwealth, or US POW ever had it.

I’m 8 mins in and I’m running out of grains of salt to approach this with

[u/Tracieattimes]

There are many errors of fact and fanciful attributions of motive in this.