Customer Reviews

Radio Bikini

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My Dad was on the USS Reclaimer - lucky to still be alive. Not many people realize what a controversial, scary event this was when it happened. People honestly thought the world was going to be destroyed and yet, hundreds of teenagers were exposed to massive amounts of radiation. As the video ends, you will be sitting there with your mouth hanging open. A must see.

"I'm making a film. If you want to learn history, read a book." - - Robert Stone

Robert Stone's Academy Award-nominated documentary, Radio Bikini, teaches history by presenting the story of the 1946 atomic bomb tests in the Marshall Islands using US government film. With hundreds of cameras recording the blasts in the Bikini Atoll, Operation Crossroads must have been the most extensively recorded event in history up to that time.

The story of smiling sailors before the test (putting animals in cages to test anti-radiation substances, drinking 3-2 beer, playing volleyball) alternates with the reminiscences of a sailor who suffered horrendous effects after returning to the area of the blast.

The chief of the island describes the day the Navy came and told him the United States needed to move his people and destroy their home. He'd never even seen a motion picture camera before that day.

Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov spars with US representative Bernard Baruch at the United Nations about which country has more peaceful intentions for the atom. Protesters march against the Bikini tests.

Stone's comment on film vs. history quoted above is misleading. He doesn't take the Jerry Bruckheimer approach to filmmaking (Blackhawk Down, Pearl Harbor) that dismisses historical accuracy in favor of an exciting story. He's just aware of the shortcomings of film to explain an historical event. (The interview with Stone included on the DVD is very interesting.)

Radio Bikini proves that film can show the truth, even if it can't show the whole truth. The physical effects of the Bikini tests we see are real. Cameras don't have to (as they often do in the age of embedded reporters) lie by showing the exultation of soldiers after combat but turning away from the dead and scarred bodies of soldiers and civilians.

(ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDATION: If you're interested in how film has treated history, see the Spring 2004 issue of Cineaste. There's a forty-page supplement with comments by historians like Simon Schama and Eric Hobsbawm and historical filmmakers like John Sayles and Costa Gavras.)

Best documentary I have ever seen. The ending leaves you speechless and in deep thought. Everyone should see this movie at least once. Should be required of all high school/college students.

I went to the official BIKINI Island website and got this movie plus TWO MORE documentaries for about $35.00...they also send you a Good Luck charm from the Island People...Proceeds go to the Bikinians!!!!!!!!!
Three Documentaries, a Charm and your money goes to a good cause!!!!!!!!
What more could one ask for?????????????????

This documentary film by Robert Stone is rife with the naive arrogance of US governmental officials as they explored the use of the atomic bomb for future nuclear war after WWII. In 1946 the US government involuntarily relocated the inhabitants of the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands to another Polynesian island. The government then conducted two atomic tests, dropping one atomic bomb on the atoll and exploding another in the ocean.

The film of a baby goat (what a metaphor!) that survived one of the explosions arouses pity and will make you wish it had died. It was harnessed on one of the target ghost ships. An interview with the Bikini islander's "king", Kilon Bauno, shows the advantage taken of the displaced islanders. The interview with ex-seaman, John Smitherman, shows the appalling human cost of the ignorance which exposed thousands of US sailors to large amounts of radioactive fallout. There is even a snippet of Alfred Einstein being co-opted into saying only "I agree" to a self-serving statement read by a government spokesman.

Smith ingeniously used the government's own footage, originally compiled for the production of a propaganda film extolling the virtues of the tests, to make a pungent criticism of the damage caused by the ignorance, naivete, and arrogance of the US government. The government dropped all plans to make its film after it realized the magnitude of the destruction it caused to the vegetation and human and animal life, and made the island uninhabitable for years. The footage was discreetly archived until Smith did his research.

The decision to exclude narration from the film was a brilliant approach by Smith. Watching the government's own representatives rationalize the tests beforehand, then showing the tests and their results without comment, is all that is needed to convey the horrendous unintended consequences of the tests. This film was Smith's first documentary and received an Academy Award nomination in 1988. The islanders had still not returned at that time because of the radioactive poisons remaining on the island.

Radio Bikini captures the earth-shattering tragedy of the Bikini tests, in ways you are probably not prepared for. Unlike other books and documentaries on the subject, it does not attempt to be too clever -- but lets the story unfold in a way that really can leave no one with any doubt as to the terrible new world America found itself in, and helped create after the cessation of WWII. I understand why we embarked on this path, but the inability of Americans then and now to deal with the human side of warfare is extremely disturbing.

I teach high school science, and have been showing this documentary for 9 years now. Students love watching, and there are many great "teaching moments". Most kids are shocked to learn that the US government did such things.

Excellently done, small wonder it's so sought after. Contains footage I've never seen elsewhere of sailors drenched head to toe in fallout from the second Crossroads shot, after the spray plume drifts into their ship. Hours later, when radiation monitors finally show up, they are pegging Geiger counters with their clothing and fingernails. Ghastly descriptions and photos of the wierd medical issues suffered by these veterens.

"The Most Terrifying and Unbelievable Story of the Nuclear Age."

That's what the quote on the cover of the DVD says. Unfortunately, I don't think the DVD quite lives up to these expectations. (Why can't we just have good cover art instead of shameless fluffy quotes?)

In my book, the first bomb drops on Japan (Justified or not) must be the most terrifying. Those awoke the world to the power man has created. If not those, the future explosions and deployment in the MEGATON range must be the most terrifying. (The bombs dropped on Japan and FIRST tested in Bikini atoll were no more than 21 Kilotons).

I found the released footage fascinating in showing our naivete of our attitudes toward nuclear weapons at the time. The zoom out of a former sailor talking earlier than showing his hand is good too, though when put in context of what happened to those in Japan, not surprising. (I have been to Hiroshima (and Los Alamos area and museum) - which might affect my perception of this film too, in other words if one doesn't know much about nuclear history they might rate it higher)

Interviews with Bikini atoll native is good too, but I don't believe the author ever mentions that <200 people (167 from what I've read elsewhere) were moved / affected. Which in the scheme of mass death during WW2, isn't a high number. Although the movie Star Trek: Insurrection comes to mind (Which talks about how many people is too much to "sacrifice" for a goal). A map showing the blasts in relation to the Atoll would have been good too for perspective.

This is where I feel the movie failed a bit, it didn't do enough to express the context of the times. While there are clips of the end of WW2 and various clips from government officials after, I think it could have been tied together better.

Some more discussion on the irony of coming out of WW2 with all its death and destruction then blowing up a tropical paradise would be good. Also, brief discussion on other Bikini Atoll blasts would have been good.

On a final positive note - using the perspective of sailors in describing the events is good.

Worth watching, but don't have too high expectations. Atomic Journeys narrated by William Shatner is worth watching too.
www.atomictraveler.com has a ton of good info on the subject too.

As an aside, a good place to visit in the US is the Titan Missle Museum near Tucson, Arizona. Fully intact missle silo with 100 foot missle. Formerly armed with 9 megaton (600x more powerful than each bomb on Japan) nuclear warhead. I believe this is the largest size nuclear warhead the US deployed. We did test a 15 Megaton blast unexpectedly though on Bikini. The Russians tested even larger ones supposedly.

The follies of man. <smile>

Director Stone vividly recounts a tragic chapter in our history too often overlooked, mingling color footage of the Bikini project with newsreel interviews. The result is as unsettling as any nuclear doomsday movie, where the United States is like a little boy playing with live ammunition. Scary but true.