The people of Bikini: 60 years after the bomb

Jefferson Jibas, 20, loves living on a tiny Pacific island where he doesn’t have to work and everything he needs is free. His older brother, Anderson, is frustrated with lack of opportunity on the island and plans to return to college.

Within this family is the dynamic of some 1,100 displaced souls still living on a rock surrounded by open ocean. The original 167 Bikinians were moved off Bikini Atoll in 1946 so the United States could test nuclear bombs. They’ve lived off of rations for so long on Kili that most don’t know the traditional ways of living. Modern skills, such as mechanics and computers, haven’t been learned. Many are caught between the two worlds and work in neither.

Today they could go back to Bikini but food would have to be imported as cesium from nuclear fallout still contaminates plants on Bikini. The local government chooses to live off the proceeds of their trust funds instead of ridding Bikini of the “poison,” as they call radiation.

Kili is a dot on a map in the Pacific Ocean 2,500 miles west of Hawaii. It has about a third of a square mile in surface area and no one can stroll for more than 20 minutes in any direction. There are only a few government jobs and food is USDA rations.

Jefferson attended school in the United States for seven years but didn’t earn his high school diploma. Now he just likes to play basketball. Anderson Jibas, received his high school diploma in the United States and finished one year of college while working full time. He plans to attend College of the Marshall Islands next semester in Majuro, the capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Kili offers day-to-day subsistence and little else. Unlike Bikini it has no lagoon and fishing is difficult much of the time. Young people face a quandary – live a simple lifestyle from compensation funds, or leave the island for better education. Citizens of the Republic of the Marshall Islands can live, work and attend school in the United States. Social services available to Americans are also open to them, such as Pell grants. But most Bikinians on Kili have never attended any type of school.

They’ve been both “screwed” and “spoiled” by the U.S. government, said Mark Townley, director of Bikini Projects Department (BPD) which manages infrastructure on Kili. He’s a ri-belli, the Marshallese term for “American,” or “foreigner.” Most of his 27 employees are originally from other islands where they received job training before marrying into the Bikinian community and living on Kili, which offers no such education.

The only education on Kili is the elementary school, understaffed and undersupplied. While Jefferson would rather play basketball, Anderson would rather help educate the island. But after teaching at Kili elementary school for eight months he wasn’t being paid by the Bikini local government and quit.

“That happens all the time,” he said standing in front of his house in January. “They [the Bikini government] say education is their first priority. How can it be? Just look at the Bikini budget.”

Though the Bikini government, running on a $9.4 million budget, spends $2 million every year on education for its students in the Marshall Islands and the U.S., the overall budget is not public record and a request for a review was turned down at the Bikini Atoll Town Hall in Majuro.

Outside the Jibas house on Kili was a short palm tree with several of the fronds and the stem clipped. A bottle was suspended from one and caught the slow dripping nectar while Anderson monitored. “It’s ‘Jakaro,’” he said. It’s what he does all day, waiting for a bottle to fill so he can share with his family and friends. “I have to do something. It keeps me educated. That’s what I do every day. There’s nothing else to do here,” he said with his arms out and palms up, indicating the entire island.

He brought out some in a glass with ice. It’s a sweet drink – like a kiwi strawberry Snapple with subdued sweetness and flavor. All natural.

There are three main sandy roads on Kili – one down the middle and one on each side. On one end of the narrow island the palm trees grow thick and at the other end are many of the island’s houses together near the church, cemetery, playing field and school. There are 110 houses on Kili, mostly made of sturdy cinderblock and have running water, which is upscale by Marshallese standards. Nearly every house has air-conditioning and a TV. A kid showed his video rental for that night – “Getting Even With Dad.”

In responding to what people do on Kili, one resident said, “sleep, watch TV, air-conditioning.” Possibly the only place in the world where air-conditioning is a verb.

“We cannot do anything on this island,” said another resident, Urantha Jibas, father of Anderson and Jefferson, as he sat on a bench outside his house. “How does your government feel about brining and putting us on a reef for 60 years?

“There are people scattered around the Marshall Islands who still have their old ways, traditions, customs. How come the U.S. government isn’t finding a way to teach our old ways? Why don’t Americans teach the elders to be more educated in this modern life?”

Urantha Jibas is the only one of 12 Bikini council members representing Kili who actually lives on Kili. He said the other leaders living on Majuro don’t “feel the heat” or live like exiles,” like the rest of Kili residents.

This upsets Johnny Johnson, 56, who ran for Bikini mayor on the promise he would establish the mayor’s office on Kili. He lost in a close, heated election to Eldon Note.

“We have [Jack Niedenthal, the Bikini Trust liaison] there [in Majuro]. He can handle what needs to be done,” said Johnson. “No meeting has taken place here since last year, no council meeting. Why? What is the mayor doing in Majuro?”

Note, the mayor, said the Bikini government may go back to U.S. claims court this spring if Congress hasn’t responded to a nearly six-year old request for additional compensation to be given to the RMI. He and Niedenthal work through a lawyer in Washington, D.C. There are no phones or e-mail on Kili. After an interview in his office, Note did not respond to a follow-up question by e-mail regarding the Bikinians’ use of their trust funds.

Twenty years ago Johnson resigned from the second highest position in the Bikini government as treasurer and took his family to Minnesota to attend Bible college. He now serves as head deacon at one of two churches on the island.

“I feel like I have a burden helping my people understand the stress of being here for over 50 years,” said Johnson at a picnic table while others came to watch him talk with a visiting reporter. The visitor asked what the half-dozen men sitting down under a tree 40 yards away were doing. “They are talking story – telling of the old way,” Johnson said. Some people around the table smirked. “They are thinking deeply,” he said and everyone laughed.

“They were probably talking about women,” one resident said.

Later on a bench on his porch Johnson said it was “embarrassing” living on Kili. “Because this is it. They have no other place to go. As long as they are on the island they’re ashamed to be begging of the U.S. government.”

Like many Bikinians, he’s not bitter that the U.S. conducted tests at Bikini. He’s glad that better technology came from nuclear tests. But the U.S. still has to fulfill its obligation of returning them home, he said.

He showed the inside of his house and criticized nearly everything. “I blame the U.S.” he said pointing to some minor repairs needed in the kitchen under the sink cabinetry. It was hard to tell whether he was kidding. He complained that he needed a chair to keep the oven door closed – as if thousands of Americans don’t do the same. His refrigerator, where he keeps his USDA supplies and other food, didn’t produce enough frost he thought.

Supplies come four times a year from a charter ship that sails from Majuro. It takes about a week to unload the supplies – three or four days if the waves are smaller.

In mid-January, the ship sat offshore while Bikini Projects Department workers towed supplies on a 15- x 15-foot barge from a bulldozer on shore. Smaller items were unloaded on an aluminum boat with an outboard motor through waves crashing on the reef. A channel about 30 yards wide was cut out of the reef providing some protection. As the boat bounced on waves to shore, two men ran out to grab it and turn it around to face the next wave so it could bob up and down instead of drifting sideways where it might have flipped in the instant of a curl.

“They need a dock. This is dangerous,” said Townley, the BPD supervisor. “A man lost his life yesterday.”

The day before, Friday, Jan. 13, Lamdrik Aneo drowned after jumping out of the aluminum boat to swim ashore. His body was found with scratches on his forehead, according to the police chief, suggesting the undertow slammed him against the reef.

On Saturday afternoon a policeman came to the channel where BPD workers were still unloading supplies and asked to borrow Townley’s pickup truck (there are a dozen or two vehicles on the 200-acre island). The funeral at the church was over, and he wanted to move the casket from the church to the cemetery.

At church the widow and daughter wore black dresses, unlike the colorful muumuus most women on the island wear. The closed casket was painted white and sat in front of the church between two pews for the family placed perpendicular to the audience.

Before the service ended, mourners placed money on the casket for the family, American currency as it is used in the Marshall Islands. Church and funerals are delivered in the Marshallese language. Out of respect, no one on the island would fish or play basketball for the next few days.

Several mourners gathered at the deceased’s house that evening. The widow and her family provided visitors with food. Some took home a plate of chicken. Up the road in the dark three young men stood drinking coffee (the island is officially dry) and asked for a lighter. What do they do on an average Saturday night?

“Nothing,” they said.

Nothing also keeps happening regarding the restoration of Bikini. Cleaning Bikini Atoll well enough for resettlement would cost about $250 million. It would involve scraping off topsoil and fertilizing the atoll with potassium, a nutrient plants prefer over the similar cesium left from fallout.

The Bikini government now has about $150 million in trust funds for resettlement. They use the proceeds of this investment for their $9 million annual budget, including an approximate $200 check for every Bikinian. Other nuclear affected atolls, such as Enewetak and Rongelap, have begun resettlement. Bikinians feel if they start to resettle, the U.S. will dust its hands of the problem and consider it over. Bikini government officials who are willing to answer the question of resettlement say their current funds are “not enough.”

Bikinians brought suit against the U.S. in 1974 requesting an environmental survey, which came after they moved off the atoll a second time. In 1978 the U.S. awarded them the $6 million “Hawaiian Trust Fund for the People of Bikini.” In 1982 they received $20 million with the “Resettlement Trust Fund for the People of Bikini.” With this $20 million they were about to move to Maui en masse, but locals there said they weren’t welcome, citing difficulties with Pacific islanders from other nations. The U.S. later added $90 million to the resettlement trust.

The Republic of the Marshall Islands entered into the Compact of Free Association with the United States in 1986. The compact pledged $150 million for the establishment of an independent Nuclear Claims Tribunal to the RMI and $75 million for Bikini. With the compact the United States also defends the republic and provides additional funding for health and education infrastructure. The compact was renegotiated in 2004 and runs through 2023.

In March 2001, the independent Nuclear Claims Tribunal established by the original compact awarded Bikini $563 million, half for cleanup and half for loss of use and suffering and hardship – with no money to back it up.

The original compact included a provision for the petitioning of Congress if scientific research provided new understanding that wasn’t available at the time of the compact.

On Sept. 11, 2000, the RMI submitted a petition to Congress for an additional $3.3 billion. Congress passed it off to the State Department for analysis, which requested other agencies’ legal examination. It was determined there were no “changed circumstances.” The State Department’s response was returned to Congress Jan. 3, 2004. Congress still hasn’t responded.

The Bikinians took their $563 million claim to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims April 11. Mayor Eldon Note wanted it to be a “last resort,” but Congress still hasn’t responded to the change of circumstances petition.

“Bikinians feel what the U.S. government gave them is not enough for using their homeland,” Note said. “They still need an answer.”

“There have been promises ever since 1946, but this hasn’t been done yet,” said Tomaki Juda, Bikini senator to the RMI Nitijelã, or legislature, in a short interview in his capitol office. “This is what we’re still waiting for.”

Some think the U.S. got off easy and that the RMI was eager to ride on the coattails of nuclear victims. Bikinians and others from the northern and most-affected atolls were against the compact.

Bill Graham, Public Advocate for the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, thought the compact was a way for the U.S. to get rid of liability for its nuclear tests. “It’s like waving a T-bone steak in front of a starving man,” Graham said in his office on Majuro in early January. “There were hundreds of millions of dollars in pending suits against the U.S.”

But he conceded that the U.S. had at least done something, unlike other countries that conducted similar tests, including the United Kingdom, France, Soviet Union and China.

“I think it’s good that the United States recognized its liability and sought to settle claims that were being pursued in U.S. courts,” he said. “That’s something that, clearly, no other country on this planet has done. And there have been other countries that engaged in nuclear testing that had effects on peoples in those countries, and to my knowledge still virtually nothing is being done.”

He admitted, though, that the RMI government hadn’t always kept the independence of the tribunal. Some laws were passed that dictated how the tribunal would honor claims from nuclear victims. This relaxed requirements for compensation. The tribunal’s original $150 million is now $2 million. Graham thought the tribunal would be out of business soon. “If this conversation were taking place a year from today, the movers would be taking the last boxes out of this office because at the end of 2006 we won’t exist anymore, I can’t imagine.”

Bikinian Alson Kelen said he wishes he could turn back the clock and have the U.S. provide education for Bikinians instead of money. A youth counselor at the jail in Majuro, he said lack of education has lead to an unwise use of money.

“When the U.S. gives us money we don’t know what to do with it,” said Kelen at his home on the island of Ejit, an island off Majuro Atoll, in January. “We don’t know how to take care of ourselves.”

No longer living off the land, many Marshallese suffer from diabetes and eat a diet of imported processed foods. Lolipops are a favorite, from kids handing them out to visitors to the senator sucking on them during the Nitijelã session.

Kelen runs a project building traditional canoes and has partially completed a doctorate in traditional navigation. “We don’t know how to weave mats, build canoes, build houses the old ways. These are the things we need to live [on Bikini],” he said.

“We were brought up in a society that was unique. We were given canned foods, we were spoiled. Most of us didn’t go to school. We’re all dropouts. Now we have kids.

“If I had to change the world it would be education for us in the ‘60s.”

“I’m sad to say there’s a great deal of ignorance here in the Marshall Islands,” said Graham, the tribunal claims advocate.

He tells of Bruce Piggott, former tribunal director, saying: “ ‘These people are ignorant.’ At the time I thought this was a huge insult.” Graham later heard the phrase, Ignorance is curable, stupidity is forever. “Mr. Piggott wasn’t saying they were stupid. … Mr. Piggott wanted to explain that they weren’t worldly, they lived sheltered lives … there are things such as handling money that they didn’t have experience with.

“I remember giving a woman a check for $40,000. She came back the next week saying, ‘I need some more.’ We were paying 40 percent as an initial payment on new awards at the time. She had a condition for which she was awarded $100,000 in compensation.” It was explained to her at a hearing that she would receive annual payments. She gave $2,000 to each of her kids and bought a pickup.

Most Bikinians still remain scattered throughout the Marshall Islands, about one third on Kili. Many feel helpless.

“Most of our health problems is from the radiation,” said one member of the Bikini counsel, his belly over his belt and fillings in his teeth.

From his office at the Bikini Atoll Town Hall in Majuro, Bikini trust liaison Jack Niedenthal said most of what he sees is in people’s heads. “You get guys getting common colds and sometimes they blame it on, you know, bombs.” He also sees a victim mentality, which is a challenge in raising his own kids within the community. Many parents sit in front of the office waiting for news of compensation.

Though only some, mostly elderly, Bikinians would go back to Bikini if it were cleaned, Niedenthal said it’s an option that needs to be given to them. In the meantime, he said it’s “depressing,” seeing people who haven’t gotten their lives going. “Those that have pretty much move out,” he said.

Note, the Bikini Mayor, said many Bikinians come to his office or to his home asking him to call the bank for them, or to ask a store to lend them credit.

Some live in such Marshallese communities in the United States as Springdale, Ark., Salem Ore., Enid, Okla., or Costa Mesa, Calif. Those people have moved on with their lives, according to Niedenthal. “Some very successfully, some not so successfully and they’ve become part of the welfare culture in the U.S.”

“Again, it goes back to education,” said Kelen. “If 90 percent of people would eliminate the check [quarterly payment of $200+] and got jobs, that would be more money, he explained, hoping the trust funds could build back up to the required amount to resettle Bikini.

But jobs are a problem in the Marshall Islands, where one-third of workers are employed by the government and another third are without work. The United States provides $65 million each year in funding to the RMI government. The largest components are for health care and education.

Kelen’s “papa,” Kelen Joash, a Bikini elder, said he doesn’t understand funding of Bikini through the RMI government. “We used to be kids belonging to the U.S., but now we’re adopted by the RMI government,” he said sitting across the table from his son. Joash said the U.S. hasn’t fulfilled its obligation to return the Bikinians back to their home.

“They made promises they would take care of us. We’re living on this rock. It doesn’t seem like we have a future on this island.

“We want to go home now.”

Bikini Atoll: 60 years after the bomb

Dave Callahan saw the first nuclear bomb test on Bikini Atoll in 1946. Just a few miles from the blast in a landing craft vehicle he also had one of the best views. “Too close,” he said thinking back 60 years about his view from a U.S. Navy landing craft seven miles from the blast.

Callahan was one of some 42,000 military personnel and civilians who were witness to Operation Crossroads, an experiment in preservation. After World War II the Navy feared it may lose its budget since an Army airplane had dropped atomic bombs on Japan. Some thought the future of war would render a navy unnecessary.

In March of 1946 the United States moved 167 natives off Bikini Atoll and spread a fleet of abandoned ships in the lagoon. On July 1, test bomb Able was dropped and exploded over Bikini.

At his home in Citrus Heights, Calif., Callahan said seeing a nuclear bomb affected him more than anything else during the war. That included participating in nearly 20 island invasions, including Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. He knifed to death a sentry on Makin Island during the Gilbert Islands raid, an experience that horrified him for many years.

The 80-year-old native of Arizona volunteered for the Navy at age 16, younger than the legal requirement. “In those days they filled out a birth certificate in pencil,” Callahan explained in a December, 2005, interview.

After the war he accepted the chance to attend Operation Crossroads, the first post-war testing of nuclear bombs. “None of us had heard of Bikini,” he said. Callahan was part of the underwater demolition team that blasted coral and set anchors for ships in the Bikini lagoon.

An atoll is a sunken volcanic ridge. Islands form a chain that surrounds a lagoon that is shallower than the ocean floor outside the reef. The natives say they liked it because fishing in the protected lagoon was safer. If they got bored on an island they could spend several days on one of the 22 other islands in the atoll.

Callahan arrived about the time the natives were being evacuated. They were loading their outrigger canoes and other possessions onto a Navy ship and left for Rongerik, an atoll 125 miles to the east, in early March. He remembered them as smiling, happy people.

“All of the islanders – when you go to one of their villages – would start singing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ … all over the Pacific, they did that. I don’t know why, but they did, and it was always fun.”

Memories are mixed as to whether military personnel were supposed to mingle with the Bikinians. Some published historical records say they weren’t but that it was hard to enforce. Callahan remembered going ashore to ask if they had “wine and women, or whatever.”

Amid the beach parties and volleyball games for sailors, author Theodore Taylor said he remembered meeting a boy named Sorry, a name he used for the protagonist in the book he wrote 50 years after his experience at Bikini Atoll. The Bomb is a fictionalized account of a Bikini family during the time the U.S. asked if the Bikinians would temporarily move from their home.

“It was really a silly operation,” Taylor said in a December telephone interview from his Laguna Beach home, disgusted that the U.S. tested bombs in the Marshall Islands. “We already knew what would happen if you dropped a bomb on a Japanese city, which we did. The only people who did not know were the natives of Bikini.”

Today in the Bikini Town Hall on the island of Majuro, a Bob Hope quote is displayed: “As soon as the war ended, we located the one spot on Earth that hadn’t been touched by war and blew it to hell.”

Motion picture footage from the time shows military officers asking the Bikinians through an interpreter speaking Marshallese if they accept their request. Juda, the Bikinian leader says they will go, acknowledging, “Everything is in God’s hands.” The scene is repeated many times for the camera as is the Bikinians saying goodbye to their ancestors in the Bikini cemetery.

“There was an actual vote of the families,” said Taylor. “I think there were 11 families on the atoll. The family I write about in The Bomb voted against leaving the atoll.”

Los Alamos still photographer Bill Regan volunteered for Operation Crossroads and remembers he wasn’t supposed to meet the natives, he said, reminiscing over lunch in a San Jose restaurant last October. He now lives with his daughter in Sherwood, Ore. “We weren’t supposed to but we managed to sneak a visit to some of the local residents. We weren’t supposed to take pictures, but I did.”

Operation Crossroads was the biggest media event of 1946 with hundreds of motion picture and still cameras recording the spectacle. Regan photographed the first nuclear test from one of several airplanes circling the atoll. The operation used so much film it created a worldwide shortage for several months, even affecting Hollywood. “I can tell you it’s true,” said Regan.

“It was the most amazing site, that whole operation,” Callahan said. He remembered the USS Nevada painted bright orange as a target for the bomb drop, a contrast to the grey ships they lived on during the operation. More than 70 war ships were strategically anchored over miles throughout the lagoon – a few miles in diameter – to later assess damage and radiation. Included for symbolic revenge were the captured Japanese battleship Nagato, from which the attack on Pearl Harbor was ordered, and German cruiser Prinz Eugen.

Controversy surrounded the need for the tests. Constituencies in the U.S. protested against using ships such as the USS Saratoga in an operation that was intent on their destruction. In his book Operation Crossroads, author and lawyer Johathan Weisgall illustrates the Navy’s intent to demonstrate their continued relevancy in the face of a possible budget slash. With an Army airplane dropping previous nuclear bombs, the Navy needed a demonstration of how it could use the new technology.

After considering test sites in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, the U.S. chose Bikini for its remote location – halfway between Hawaii and Australia – and few natives to relocate. The Bikinians had lived through brutal treatment under the Japanese military during World War II. The Japanese committed suicide upon the arrival of U.S. Marines, who gave the Bikinians food and medical attention.

Jack Niedenthal, current Bikini trust liaison, remembered Bikini elders telling of the United States’ request. “‘They had hats and stars and guns, and they had taken out the emperors of the universe. We weren’t going to say no,’” Niedenthal said in a speech to the Mieco Beach Yacht Club on Majuro in January.

The original inhabitants didn’t say “no” either. In the late 1700s or early 1800s, according to Niedenthal, Larkelon and his followers from Wotje Atoll – through whom today’s Bikinians are descended – challenged the original Bikinians from the shore. The natives surrendered and left. Land in the Marshall Islands is worth war, said one Bikini elder now living on the island of Ejit in Majuro Atoll. Two and a half centuries later the current Bikinians found themselves in the same situation – leaving without a fight.

Bikini is an old Marshallese term meaning “land of many coconuts,” said Niedenthal. Elders said it’s correctly pronounced with emphasis on the first syllable.

At the time of Crossroads, some were passionate against moving the locals for nuclear tests. Others don’t remember feeling bad. Author Taylor, a reserve lieutenant, is of the former mindset. “None of us on that ship – after meeting the natives, after seeing how they lived – wanted that bomb dropped,” said Taylor. “None of us.”

Taylor dismissed the whole operation as a promotion by an atomic scientist. “Not too much time had passed between our bombs on Japan. … We already knew all that information.” Some scientists, he remembered, were against the need to drop a bomb on “that absolutely gorgeous atoll.”

If he could ask the U.S. government any question: “Why we did it. That’s a question I could have asked 50 years ago in Washington and been told to get my nose out of it.”

“Smiles and laughter and happiness,” said Taylor remembering the Bikinians.” I remember that part of it before we shipped them away. They were just wonderful, wonderful people.”

“The day we shipped them out, every sailor lined up on the ship to wave goodbye.” A booklet about memories of the atoll was produced on the ship’s printing press. “It was a heartfelt expression about the atoll and the people who lived on the atoll,” said Taylor.

“We attended lectures in the evening,” Callahan recalled, “and they had all these what we’d call ‘longhairs.’ They were actually physicists is what they were, kind of a derogatory term we used, you know. They gave us lectures about, you know, what to expect and how wonderful the atomic age was going to be.”

Callahan said he didn’t believe them. “Most of us didn’t. Not for any reason that I would have now to not believe them. We had just been through four years worth of war, and it’s pretty hard to become everything lovely and dovely now. … But they told us all the wondrous things that ships would be powered with atomic power. Most of us are sneering, ‘yea sure.’

“One night … right in the middle of this [lecture], you know, about what atomic fusion was, which went right over most of our heads, … he said, ‘We sincerely hope that this does not set off a chain reaction in the atmosphere and just go right around the world and destroy the world.’ Well that made most of us pretty nervous. Then we started talking about it among ourselves. … “We already knew three bombs had exploded already, all in the atmosphere, so probably things were all right.”

Members of Congress and representatives of the United Nations were seated several miles away for the U.S. military’s show of force as the world entered the Cold War.

On July 1, 1946, the airplane Dave’s Dream dropped test shot Able over Bikini lagoon, the world’s fourth atomic bomb. “Bomb away,” said a voice on the speakers in ships as well as on radios broadcasting live throughout the United States.

Taylor was eight miles away and remembers watching it fall. The 21-kiloton blast – equal to the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on the Japanese city Nagasaki – had “many, many colors to it.”

“Red and green and purple and white and pink and orange, and just multi-multi-colored,” remembered Callahan.

“We were told not to look at it,” said Taylor, “which was totally stupid because everyone wanted to see what it looked like. Hell, we were out on deck, and you couldn’t help but look.”

He felt a shockwave that can be seen rattling palm trees in motion picture footage. “It would be like Katrina, really,” said Taylor.

Callahan had Navy-issued goggles. “You could look at the sun and couldn’t see anything but a little rim. You could hold your hand out in front of you and couldn’t see it. That’s how dark those things were. I thought, ‘Well this is really going to be good, we’re blindfolded.” Then he saw the blast.

“The sight of this thing was just absolutely, horrifyingly beautiful. You could recognize the power of this thing,” Callahan said. “Kind of an evil beauty.”

The cloud drifted away and 20 minutes later his crew went in. Knowledge of radiation was still developing. Callahan remembers the USS Independence on fire. On another ship he remembers many of the lab animals used as experiments lying dead.

“When you get up close and see the awesome power that that thing had, it made us all very nervous. It was very interesting, but you always had a feeling of, ‘Good God what have we done now?’ ”

Three weeks later the Navy proved its capability with test Baker, another 21-kiloton blast, this time from 90 feet under water. It threw a column of water 2,000 feet wide more than a mile high. Reports say the base surge was 94 feet and waves four miles away were still six feet high. The USS Arkansas was at the bottom of the lagoon within minutes. The USS Saratoga took eight hours to join it. Baker sank seven ships. The third test, Charlie, was canceled, which ended Operation Crossroads.

Years later some Navy veterans died of complications related to radiation. Callahan never experienced anything abnormal and doesn’t know why. He’s glad to be healthy.

Four days after test Able, French designer Louis Reard introduced a two-piece swimsuit. Perhaps riding on media attention using shrewd marketing, he called it the “Bikini.”

A year and a half after Crossroads, an American anthropologist visited the Bikinians on their temporary home Rongerik, an atoll with one-fourth the land space and lagoon of Bikini. They were malnourished and near starvation. They were evacuated to Kwajalein where they lived next to a landing strip. Other nearby atolls were inhabited and they voted for a move to Kili – a deserted island surrounded by open ocean and no lagoon. Its surface area is about one-third of a square mile compared to the once 3.6 square miles and some 20 islands of Bikini. About one-third of Bikinians still live on Kili.

Twenty-three nuclear tests were shot at Bikini intermittently for 12 years. The Atomic Energy Commission declared it safe in 1969. Some Bikinians, mostly those with larger land rights, returned. In the 1970s they were found to have ingested cesium-137 from locally grown food. Much of the “poison,” as they call radiation, was from the 1954 Operation Castle, which included the 15-megaton blast Bravo, the largest nuclear bomb detonated by the United States. 

Today the same issue remains: The atoll is safe for inhabitants provided they don’t eat the locally grown food for an extended period of time.

In the 1970s, published reports from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found that a fish in Bikini had no more toxins than a fish purchased on the market in Chicago. Radiation in the water has dissipated. Scientists say a person is exposed to more background radiation in the U.S. than in Bikini and the Marshall Islands. People visiting Bikini are exposed to more radiation on the plane getting there than during their visit. Niedenthal said that if radiation were the issue, he would rather live in Bikini versus a high-altitude city such as Denver.

Bikini is vacant now except for a SCUBA diving program accommodating 11 guests per week. It operates throughout the year providing guests with world-class diving as well as a historical lesson of what happened there in the 1940s. The dives are accompanied by guides to assure safety for the divers as well to prevent the removal of souvenirs. The ships still contain the articles left before they sunk, unlike the stripped vessels under the Chuuk lagoon. Divers can see cars, airplanes, coffee mugs, shaving mirrors, even a bugle.

Bikini diving is booked a year in advance, with 2006 sold out as is most of 2007. This year is the program’s 10th season.

The deck of the USS Saratoga at 100 feet is the shallowest dive. The deepest is 170 feet under the Japanse Nagato – the battleship where Admiral Yamamoto ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Diving Bikini requires open water certification and 50 dives. Niedenthal said the water averages 83 degrees with 100 feet of visibility.

The Bikinians own the ships after the U.S. ceded them following the end of testing there in 1958.