Bikini Atoll is one of 29 atolls and five islands that make up the Marshall Islands (“A Short History”). Located in Micronesia, Bikini Atoll played a major role in World War II. Originally taken by the Japanese and used as a lookout point, it was later captured by U.S. forces in a battle that took place in its neighboring Kwajalein Atoll (“A Short History”). This would crush the Japanese hold on the Marshall Islands. After the war, President Truman recognized the importance of the Marshall Islands and its location in the Pacific. The Truman Administration wanted to enhance the countries knowledge on the effects of nuclear weapons on its ships and equipment. Until that point, nuclear testing was done on the behavior of nuclear weapons.
During the summer of 1946, a joint task force was given the mission to test the effects of nuclear radiation on ships, equipment and material. Formed in the winter of 1946, Joint Task Force 1 was made up of Navy, Army and civilian personnel (“Operation Crossroads, 1946”). The test was done using two atomic bombs, ABLE and BAKER. The target, was a fleet of 71 to 90 ships, depending on the source, and was made up of older U.S. ships and captured German and Japanese ships the first detonation in the series was named ABLE. ABLE was a 23 kt air burst that would fall short and to the left of its target resulting in only 5 ships being destroyed (“Operation Crossroads”). Experts determined the radiation was low enough to only require a couple of days before a crew could board the vessels and do their research. The BAKER detonation would be a similar weapon with only slight modifications to allow it to be suspended underwater. Anchored to the LSM-60, a landing ship, the BAKER detonation would test the effec...
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...(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bikiniatoll.com/
Biography. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://robertstoneproductions.com/
Defense Nuclear Agency, (1984). Operation crossroads, 1946. Retrieved from U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency website: http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq76-1.htm
John Smitherman. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/media-gallery/image/tredici/84.htm
Operation crossroads. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Crossrd.html
Stone, R. (Director), Rafferty, K. (Producer), Stone, S. (Producer), Weisgal, J. (Producer), & Rayter, J. (Videographer) (1987). Radio bikini [DVD].
The bikini atoll survey "operation crossroads", 1946-47. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/expeditions/bikini.html
U.S.S. Allen M. Sumner DD-692 . (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.dd-692.com/atomic.htm
The USS Indianapolis was a heavy cruiser. She did not have heavy armor which made her vulnerable to torpedo attacks. She had been ordered to sail on July 16, 1945, to deliver a bomb that would end the war. Unfortunately, it sank before it arrived.
According to the video the U.S. Army was using the Marshallese islands as a testing sites for hydrogen bombs and a miscalculated
Prior to the war, Wake Island, located 2300 miles west of Honolulu, was an unincorporated territory of the United States, which was placed under the jurisdiction of the Navy in 1934. It was also a Clipper stop on Pan American Airlines’ famed Trans-Pacific run, and in 1939, the U.S. Navy began construction of an air and submarine base, which was half completed at the time of the attack. Because of the construction of the base, approximately 1200 civilians were on the island, working for the American construction firm, Morrison-Knudsen, in addition to the Navy personnel and Marines who had been sent to defend the island.
The Bomb takes place on the small island of Bikini Atoll after World War II in the year 1946. Being located in the west Pacific led to problems with Japan. This island was under Japanese control during World War II, until the Americans freed them. Glad to be out of Japanese control, the Islanders are happy, until the United States needs to do something even more devastating then Japan ever did.
The 32-foot-high sculpture of the Iwo Jima Memorial was inspired by a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of one of the most historic battles of World War II. Iwo Jima, a small island located 660 miles south of Tokyo, was the last territory that U.S. troops recaptured from the Japanese during World War II. The Iwo Jima Memorial statue depicts the scene of the flag raising by five Marines and a Navy hospital corpsman that signaled the successful takeover of the island. The capture of Iwo Jima eventually led to the end of the war in 1945.
Wood, Linda K. “Men and Mission of the Manhattan Project.” World War II July 1995: 38-45. SIRS Research. SIRS Knowledge Source. Manheim Township H.S. Library, Lancaster, PA. 13 Feb. 2003.
Blair Jr., Clay, (1975). Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, p. 78. p. 1072. Buell, Thomas B. -. (1987)
When President Truman authorized the use of two nuclear weapons in 1945 against the Japanese in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, the nature of international security was changed irreversibly. At that time, the United States had what was said to have a monopoly of atomic bombs. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union began working on atomic weaponry. In 1949, it had already detonated it first atomic bomb and tensions began to heat up between the two countries. With the information that the Soviets had tested their first bomb, the United States began work on more powerful weapons1, and a fight for nuclear superiority had begun.
It all started in December 1945, when the US president at the time Harry Truman gave the order for the army and navy officials that there would need to be nuclear joint testing of nuclear weapons, to determine the effect of the atomic bombs on American warships so they can be ready for anything that could happen to them. They went out looking for an area that was isolated enough from the rest of the world in order to be able to test their nuclear weapons without causing enough damage to start a crisis. They found the Bikini Atoll and Commodore Ben Wyatt, the military governor of the Marshall Islands, where Bikini is, went there in 1946 and asked the 167 Bikini islanders if it were okay for them to leave their atoll for a short amount of time so that the United States could begin testing their atomic bombs for the good of mankind and to end all world wars. The one in charge of the Bikini, King Juda, said after long discussions with his people that they will stand before the American delegation and they will believe that everything is in the hands of God.
The world as we know it was built with events and circumstances that many of us are unaware of. One of the most powerful and deadliest discoveries of the human race in the twentieth century was the development of the atomic bomb. Many are aware that we dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in the end of the Second World War, but what many do not know are the extensive research operations that evaluated the technology to be used in future military operations. In the summer of 1946, American Government and Military forces conducted this research in Operation: Crossroads which was performed in the Bikini Islands. More than 40 years later in 1988 director Robert Stone directed and produced a documentary on these tests which was named Radio Bikini: the most terrifying and unbelievable story of the nuclear age. The film was hailed by critics for the content of the film and its use of newsreels and military film for the movie as one critic said, “Wha...
The USA’s new weapon, the Hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb, was one of the most powerful weapons of the time. In 1950, the H-bomb was tested in the Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands (Cold War History). The reaction was so fierce, the explosion wiped the island off the face of the earth, leaving a crater on the ocean floor. The explosion reached a range of 25 square miles and had a mushroom cloud which dropped radioactive fallout on the surrounding areas (The Cold War Museum). This new weapon scared the Soviet Union into creating their own bombs.
In May of 1942, Japanese Admiral Isorosku Yamamoto devised a plan to draw the US Pacific fleet into battle where he could completely destroy it. To accomplish this master plan of his, he sought out the invasion of Midway Island which would provide a base for the Japan troops to attack Hawaii. Unfortunately for Yamamoto, America decrypted Japanese radio transmissions and Admiral Chester Nimitz was able to establish a counter attack against this offensive. Nimitz sent three aircraft carriers, The USS Enterprise, The USS Hornet and The USS Yorktown to destroy the Japanese. This is just a short overview of The Battle of Midway, or as commonly referred to as, the battle that changed the war. People argue that it had no affect on the war, but those critics couldn’t be farther from the truth. The Battle of Midway was the turning point of the war because it fully enters America into the war, it kicked off the Pacific Campaign, and it had Japan on the defensive, thus preventing them from helping The Axis Forces.
In 1945, the United States was facing severe causalities in the war in the Pacific. Over 12,000 soldiers had already lost their lives, including 7,000 Army and Marine soldiers and 5,000 sailors (32). The United States was eager to end the war against Japan, and to prevent more American causalities (92). An invasion of Japan could result in hundreds of thousands killed, wounded and missing soldiers, and there was still no clear path to an unconditional surrender. President Truman sought advice from his cabinet members over how to approach the war in the Pacific. Although there were alternatives to the use of atomic weapons, the evidence, or lack thereof, shows that the bombs were created for the purpose of use in the war against Japan. Both the political members, such as Henry L. Stimson and James F. Byrnes, and military advisors George C. Marshall and George F. Kennan showed little objection to completely wiping out these Japanese cities with atomic weapons (92-97). The alternatives to this tactic included invading Japanese c...
Thunderous booms and bangs sounded the evening of February 15, 1898. The battleship Maine exploded on the harbors in Havana, Cuba. Panicky passengers scurried frightened to safety, while some remained trapped, helplessly, with no possible escape. Startled survivors searched for crew members and friends. The battleship which detonated into several pieces sank to the ocean floor dragging rapt wounded and dead. Two-hundred and sixty-six of the three-hundred and fifty-five officers, crew members, sailors, and Marines on board died or drowned in the explosion or shortly after suffering from injuries or shock.