![]() Only days later were they moved to Kwajalein Atoll for medical care. They experienced severe vomiting and diarrhoea, their hair began to fall out, the island fell into a state of panic. On Rongelap Atoll (located about 125 miles east of Bikini), white, snow-like ash began to fall from the sky three to four hours after the blast onto the 64 people living there and also onto the 18 people living on Ailinginae Atoll.Ĭhildren played in the fallout and as night came they began to show the physical signs of radiation exposure. Millions of tons of sand, coral, plant and sea life from three islands, the reef and the surrounding lagoon waters were sent miles into the air by the blast. This was a series of tests that would include the first air-deliverable, and the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated by the US, codenamed Bravo.Įarly in the morning on March 1 1954, the Bravo hydrogen bomb was detonated on the surface of the reef in the northwestern corner of Bikini Atoll. In January 1954, the air force and army began preparations for Operation Castle. While the islanders struggled to cope with their exile, Bikini was in the process of being destroyed. The Bikinians quickly found life on Kili very difficult as their lagoon-based culture essentially became obsolete again, they began to starve because of the poor fishing and lack of locally grown food on the island. Kili is a single island with no lagoon and is surrounded by rough seas for most of the year. This time the destination was Kili Island, their third community relocation in two years. In November 1948, after six months on Kwajalein, the now 184 Bikinians set sail once again. In March 1948, when it was finally understood by US officials that the people on Rongerik were in danger of dying from lack of food, the Bikinians were transported to Kwajalein Atoll where they were housed in tents beside the massive cement airstrip used by the US military. Within two months of their arrival they began to beg US officials to move them back to Bikini. The administration left the Bikinians food for several weeks, but they soon discovered that the coconut trees and other local food crops produced very few fruits when compared to the yield of the trees on Bikini, and the fish in the lagoon were uneatable: the islanders began to starve. In March 1946, to make way for the tests, the Bikinians were sent 125 miles eastward across the ocean on a US navy landing craft to the uninhabited, sparsely vegetated Rongerik Atoll. More than 42,000 US military and civilian personnel were involved in the testing programme at Bikini. Some 242 ships, 156 aircraft, 25,000 radiation recording devices and the Navy's 5,400 experimental rats, goats and pigs soon began to arrive for the tests. While the Bikinians were getting ready for their exodus, preparations for the Operation Crossroads nuclear testing programme advanced rapidly. King Juda, then the leader of the Bikinians, after long deliberations among his people, stood before the American delegation and replied, "We will go believing that everything is in the hands of God." On a quiet Sunday after church, he assembled the Bikinians to ask if they would be willing to leave their atoll temporarily so that the US could begin testing atomic bombs for "the good of mankind and to end all world wars". Commodore Ben H Wyatt, the military governor of the Marshall Islands - to which Bikini belongs - travelled to Bikini to address this very dilemma in February 1946. The only hindrance for the US and its grand experiments was the small band of 167 Bikini islanders.
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