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Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll

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Imagine witnessing two young boys outside fighting over a toy, each grabbing the opposite ends and finally breaking it as they pulled too hard. This analogy can also be used between the Army Air Force and Navy over the peacetime use of atomic weapons at the conclusion of the second world war. Jonathan Weisgall's book on Operation Crossroads demonstrates the blistering competition for tax dollars between the Army and Navy in 1946 and beyond.

Crossroads not only was a basis for continuing scientific research with nuclear energy, but also served as an excuse by the United States government to play with this new "toy" and how the civilian and military branches fought over controlling it. It also goes into great depth on describing how the government deceived the Marshalleise inhabitants. This book reveals this and shows the folly of the tests, as well as the long term health and ecological ramifications of atomic testing on both the Marshalleise as well as the rest of the world.

Crossroads was a nuclear catastrophe, probably equaled to that of Chernobyl. Weisgall's detailed information about the first two tests (Abel and Baker) cannot be equaled. He also writes about test Charlie, the aborted attempt to blow up an atom bomb about a thousand feet below the surface of the ocean. Even back then, scientists fought the Army and Navy tooth and nail to cancel this test knowing that it would have caused a greater ecological disaster than the first two detonations.

Operation Crossroads was not only the beginning of postwar atomic testing, but it also signaled things to come in the atomic age. Jonathan Weisgall does a careful analysis of the documentation that came out of the first atomic tests at Bikini Atoll. A must-read for anyone who wants to delve deeper into this unfortunate period of history.

Jonathan Weisgall has done an incredible job of not only documenting the politics and in-fighting leading up to the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, but doing so in a very readable and compelling style. With the kind of factual back-up and verbal acuity possessed by only the most effective of attorneys (which Weisgall must be, given his success as counsel for the Bikini islanders), Weisgall takes the reader from the hallways of the Pentagon to the decks of the target ships swinging at anchor at Bikini Atoll. His narrative manages to touch on a wide variety of diverse topics -- cold war politics, in-fighting within the military bureaucracy, slipshod planning for radiation emergencies, and the popularization of atomic weaponry -- in a manner that is both entertaining and competent.

Weisgall is also adept at humanizing the Bikini islanders and conveying their plight to the reader. What emerges from his book is how, in the arrogance of its emergence as the world's first nuclear super-power, the United States managed to steal away this little corner of paradise and lay waste to it in a cynical exercise of military politics. I read Weisgall's book shortly before spending a week diving the shipwrecks of Bikini Atoll, and cannot adequately convey just how well he captures the tragedy of this haunted island.

Jonathan Weisgall has given us an astounding account of the atomic tests on Bikini Atoll. This book goes into fine detail about the preparations for Operation Crossroads, the first atomic tests at Bikini. It goes into great depth, describing the mismanagement of America's atomic policies toward the Marshalleise. It even goes as far as to describe how faulty the geiger counters were when the men (and women) who were exposed to the Able ("Gilda") and Baker ("Helen of Bikini") detonations. Also, Weisgall explains how the men would try to "wash" off the radiation, not only from themselves, but off of the hulls of their ships and some of the targets. They used bleach, sand, clam shells and acid! It demonstrates how ignorant we were (and still are!) about the dangers of radiation. This book is highly recommended to anyone who wants to gain an understanding of the early atomic tests as well as the perils involved.

This book carries the imprint of one of my very favorite publishers: Naval Institute Press. I bought my copy at their bookstore on the campus of the USNA in Annapolis, but it sat unread in my personal library for a couple years. Before reading the book, I read the reviews here at Amazon, and the general tenor of those reviews made me a little apprehensive that the content of Jonathon Weisgall's book might be largely a bitter harangue against the American military, and little else.

But my faith in Naval Institute Press is such that I could not imagine them publishing such a work, so I delved into these pages with confidence. It turns out my confidence was not misplaced-this work is not a diatribe but a generally well crafted rendering of an important and under-told story.

I use the qualifier "generally" because there were a few passages that caused my brow to furrow with concern that this author may be a bit away from his element when discussing certain technical matters, including some principles of geography and geology. For example, early in the narrative (page 34), is the following sentence attempting to describe an atoll: "Here, millions of years ago, a coral shelf began to build upward from a submerged volcano that rose about 15,000 feet from the ocean floor."

This description is at best misleading, and at worst bewildering to a reader with no familiarity of the subject. It might make a reader think coral can rise from great depth, which is not true. Darwin got it right in chapter XX of The Voyage of the Beagle when he described an atoll as being created when a volcanic island becomes encircled by a fringing coral reef, and the volcanic island then subsides. The coral polyps are able to grow at the approximate rate of subsidence, hence the reef can maintain its position near the ocean surface.

Just two pages later I had to grimace again at the phrase "The Spice Islands (Moluccas), located off the coast of Indonesia . . ." I must assert this phrase is nonsensical. First of all, the Moluccas are part of Indonesia, and secondly, I can't discern what sense it makes to be located off the coast of an archipelago of some 13,000 islands. One could certainly be off the coast of Java, or Sumatra, or New Guinea, for example, but what could it mean to be off the coast of Indonesia?

On page 213 Weisgall gives a brief introduction to alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. Since these phenomena are of central importance to the ensuing discussion, it would seem to be justified to develop this subject in some detail, and thereby de-mystified for interested readers. (Alpha particles consist of two protons and two neutrons, i.e. a helium-4 nucleus; beta particles are the result of a neutron emitting an electron and becoming a proton, and gamma rays are electromagnetic radiation consisting of photons). Fleshing out this information in a couple of pages would provide a workably clear understanding, I think.

The details cited above caused me such concern because this book is withal an interesting and competent telling of the story, and it is my wish the author's credibility be unassailable.

Weisgall seems to be clearly in his element when he discusses political issues, as one might expect of an author with a background in law. Also, his development of the historical context of keys issues, dating back to Billy Mitchell and the sinking of Ostfriesland, are very well done. I also liked his biographical development of many characters, especially that of William Blandy.

This book is not a diatribe. It's an even-handed and intelligent telling of intelligent men doing controversial things involving new and little understood phenomena. Doing such things is what leads to new knowledge. Looking back cynically with 20/20 hindsight and berating people for mistakes is the height of hubris. This author does no such thing.

I purchased this book for my father. He was a sailor on a destroyer assigned to the bomb test site at Bikini. He saw many of his friends die of cancer over the years and was convinced that the government had "gotten away" with doing some bad things. This book let him know that he and his shipmates had not been forgotten. It became one of his prized possessions. He passed away a couple of years after I purchased this book. Recommended.

For the World War II history enthusiast who wondered what happened after the conclusion of the Pacific War, Weisgall has provided an enjoyable, highly readable account of U.S. atomic testing at Bikini Atoll in 1946. The reader will not fail to be astonished at the level of ignorance--and, sadly, apathy--on the part of military brass as they tinkered with America's newest and deadliest weapon.

In the context of the U.S. Navy's attempt to get a stake in the nuclear game, under the aegis of Adm. William "Spike" Blandy--who, during World War II, commanded the battlewagons that shelled Iwo Jima--"Crossroads" engagingly details the behind-the-scenes bureaucratic wrangling and public perceptions associated with how exactly to use the weapon of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The book features appearances by Harry Truman, Robert Oppenheimer, and other major players associated with the Manhattan Project. And for the naval afficionado, the book chronicles the final fate of such well-known fighting ships as the Saratoga, Salt Lake City, and Prinz Eugen.

Intertwined throughout is the sad story of the Bikini Islanders, who agreed to allow the U.S. to conduct atomic testing in their home and wound up becoming nuclear nomads.

Finally, Weisgall also provides an important contribution to U.S. naval history in his description of how the Bikini tests caused the Navy to utilize nuclear power aboard its warships and develop the submarine as a key component to U.S. strategic nuclear strategy.

This was a cracking good yarn that any reader of Samuel Eliot Morison or Barbara Tuchman will enjoy. Highly recommended.

...for the student of the Cold War. This book nails it perfectly with accuracy, interesting narrative and pertinent photographs. There was WAY more to the story than could fit in this volume, but it's a fine place to start if you're interested in these tests, ABLE and BAKER, the opening shots in a decades-long series of above-ground nuclear tests that we're still paying the price for today. The book even has a few funny bits, believe it or not. Well done.

Author Jonathan Weigall has been a legal counselor to the people of Bikini Island since 1975. When I first saw that, I thought that this was going to be a diatribe on what the US did to the Bikini Islands. The author is clearly of the opinion that much that was done was wrong, but it is a very good, detailed history of the Atomic Bomb tests that went on in 1946. It is not light reading but very revealing and holds your interest.

The US had political, military and even some scientific reasons for the testing. One of the most interesting aspects of the Atomic Tests was how much debate for and against the tests was generated by the public. Indeed, the test was broadcast live over the radio. The intra service fights between the Air Force and Navy are also examined here. Some of the things that were said of the Navy, Air Force or politicians were amusing.

What was not, nor is now amusing, were the cover ups by the US government in downplaying the danger of radiation - to the thousands of servicemen who were exposed to dangerous levels of contamination nor the lingering effects to the environment that last to this day. Indeed, the last chapter covers how the US anticipated and planned to fight lawsuits filed by anyone involved in Operation Crossroads. Fortunately, the book is not about litigation. It's about key decisions that were made for, and a result of, these atomic tests done so long ago. Like the radiation, it still impacts us today.

This thoroughly researched and documented book chronicles one of the most underreported stories of our nuclear past. Utilizing declassified records and wide assortment of sources, Weisgall offers unique insights into the crude mentality of the post-war period, where our own sailors and soldiers became victims of the burgeoning nuclear hysteria. And just as revealing is the callous attitudes toward the native people of Bikini, whose basic human rights were thrashed in the process. If reading this book doesn't leave you with a profound sense of distrust of the military and convinced of the need for more civilian controls, it will at least cause you to doubt the processes and laws that permit such activities and decisions to be made without even lip service to democratic principles. This book is a must read for every thoughtful American.