Bombing the Marshall Islands
A Cold War Tragedy

A narrative history of the nuclear tests conducted by the United States in the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958.

Keith M. Parsons (Author), Robert A. Zaballa (Author)

9781107697904, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 July 2017

248 pages, 8 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.4 cm, 0.37 kg

'Parsons and Raballa's multidisciplinary contribution provides a valuable reading of the Cold War's impact on the Marshall Islanders with a largely non-judgemental analysis of the key factors at play.' Roy Smith, Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies

During the Cold War, the United States conducted atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific. The total explosive yield of these tests was 108 megatons, equivalent to the detonation of one Hiroshima bomb per day over nineteen years. These tests, particularly Castle Bravo, the largest one, had tragic consequences, including the irradiation of innocent people and the permanent displacement of many native Marshallese. Keith M. Parsons and Robert Zaballa tell the story of the development and testing of thermonuclear weapons and the effects of these tests on their victims and on the popular and intellectual culture. These events are also situated in their Cold War context and explained in terms of the prevailing hopes, fears, and beliefs of that age. In particular, the narrative highlights the obsessions and priorities of top American officials, such as Lewis L. Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Introduction. Sunrise in the West: snow in the tropics
1. Operation crossroads: the World's first nuclear disaster
2. The coming of the 'Super'
3. Runaway bomb
4. The victims of Bravo
5. Monsters and movements: the cultural 'Fallout' of nuclear testing
6. Bikini postmortem I: public perceptions and official obsessions
7. Bikini postmortem II: nuclear policy and nuclear tests
Epilogue. Back to Bikini?
Appendix 1. Ultimate weapons
Appendix 2. Radiation exposure, dosage, and its biomedical effects
Notes
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Nuclear weapons [JWMN], The Cold War [HBTW], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW]