Today marks the 61st anniversary of the detonation of a 21-kiloton nuclear weapon, unimaginatively named BAKER. It was set off 90 feet underwater in Bikini Lagoon, located in the Pacific’s Micronesia. The infamous explosion was carried out as part of the US military’s Operation Crossroads.
The bikini was introduced in that same summer of ’46, just before the Baker discharge. In a marketing ploy that must have seemed very clever at the time, it was named to take advantage of the public interest in the activities taking place in the Bikini Atoll.
In DC, the politicos are winding down before their month-long summer break, which begins in 12 days. I imagine a sense of anticipation as Congress members and their staff prepare for the upcoming holiday. I envision a TGIF attitude in the air with numerous planned or spontaneous social events taking place, both formal and casual.
The countdown to vacation has begun, and so has my fictitious 60s-style 12-day long beach party on the Potomac, with the first of a series of diaries to be filled with serious and snarky commentary and songs. Everyone who’s anyone in the Bush Administration will be there.
The pleasure of YOUR company is hereby requested. Follow me – the beach is just under the fold.
NOTE: Today's theme is an unusually sensitive one for me to cover. I hope no one in this wise and wonderfully learned Daily Kos community thinks I do not take this or any of my topics seriously because I spoof them. It is precisely because I think they are so serious that that I cover them. You may now resume your normal activities...
A beach party just wouldn’t be the same without bikinis, now would it? Operation Crossroads occurred years before I was born, and I certainly never associated it with the modest two-piece bathing suit my parents wouldn’t let me wear! I thought it was named after some far-off and romantic-sounding island and nothing more. Not only that, I assumed some hep young Frenchman from my "Make Love Not War" generation designed it. After reading the entry on bikinis at Wikipedia, however, the romance has definitely left the island, the creators are revealed as two old guys, and the expression Blonde Bombshell has taken on quite a new meaning for me.
According to the official version, the modern bikini was invented by French engineer Louis Réard and fashion designer Jacques Heim in Paris in 1946 and introduced on July 5 at a fashion show at Piscine Molitor in Paris. It was a string bikini with a g-string back. It was named after Bikini Atoll, the site of nuclear weapon tests a few days earlier in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the nuclear device.
Here is some background on Operation Crossroads, which was to have been a set of three detonations:
The series was to study the effects of nuclear weapons on ships, equipment, and material. A fleet of more than 90 vessels was assembled in Bikini Lagoon as a target. This target fleet consisted of older U.S. capital ships, three surrendered German and Japanese ships, surplus U.S. cruisers, destroyers and submarines, and a large number of auxiliary and amphibious vessels. Military equipment was arrayed on some of the ships as well as amphibious craft that were berthed on Bikini Island. Technical experiments were also conducted to study nuclear weapon explosion phenomena. Some experiments included the use of live animals.
Very festive, if I do say so myself.
Bikini Island and Bikini Lagoon are part of the Bikini Atoll, which is in turn part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands of Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean. Before Operation Crossroads, it must have been a very idyllic place to live or visit. According to the Bikini Atoll web site fact page, the air and water temperature there is between 80 and 85 degrees year-round. The 23 islands combined have a land mass of only 3.4 square miles; Bikini Island is a mere 586 acres. The lagoon is 240 square miles. This is a small region by any standards, but in preparation for Operation Crossroads, the 167 residents were moved 425 miles south to the even tinier Kili Island, which is only .36 square miles and has no lagoon. This is where the Bikinians (who now number 3,850) remain.
According to this interview, American intrusion into the region made life for Bikinians a living nightmare, a nightmare which has yet to end. I encourage you to read the full interview as well as some of the others on the same page. (emphasis mine)
The difficulty in inhabiting Kili is due in part to the small amount of food which can be grown there, but more so because it has no lagoon. Kili differs substantially from Bikini because it is only a single island of one-third of a square mile in land area with no lagoon compared to the Bikinians' homeland of 23 islands that forms a calm lagoon and that has a land area of 3.4 square miles. Most of the year Kili is surrounded by 10 to 20 foot waves which deny the islanders of the opportunity to fish and sail their canoes. After a short time on Kili--an island that islanders believe was once an ancient burial ground for kings and therefore overwrought with spiritual influence--they began to refer to it as a "prison" island. Because the island does not produce enough local food for the Bikinians to eat, the importation of USDA canned goods and also food bought with their supplemental income has become an absolute necessity for the peoples survival. Lore Kessibuki, who died in 1994, tells of further problems associated with Kili:
Lore Kessibuki [Personal Communication: Kessibuki, L. Interviews with Jack Niedenthal. 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991 (all in Marshallese)]
LORE KESSIBUKI: "Let me now explain a little about the history of Kili Island. The first foreigners to come to this part of the world were the Germans, and then afterwards, the Japanese came. During these times Kili was used as a prison island for people who misbehaved on Jabwor on Jaluit Atoll, which was one of the centers for the Marshall Islands. You could say that in those days Kili was considered, literally, a prison.
"Then came the Americans after World War II, and after moving us from Bikini so that they could test their bombs, they eventually moved the Bikinian people to Kili. We feel that Kili is like a prison because we can't sail to another island, or even take a long refreshing walk when life closes in on us. Many times even the ships refuse to stop and unload supplies for the island. There are many other things that simply cannot be done on Kili, because it is such a small island.
"The food we brought with us did not last very long. We again began to starve. This time, when we began to worry, we all blamed everything on the Americans. What could we do? The Americans moved us here, then they forgot about their responsibilities to us, and again we found ourselves starving. We were full of worry and near death. Their promises were once again not ringing true. And yet, through all of this, most of us remained hopeful that the Americans would come to our aid. Most of us clung desperately to the belief that the Americans would again be our saviors.
"In those early days on Kili we spent a lot of time contemplating and dreaming about our homeland. But negative feelings would always surge up in our beings telling us that we would never see our islands again. These thoughts made us realize that we may never again be able to pass on the valuable traditional skills necessary to sustain our lives on the outer islands. And, therefore, there was the possibility that our origins and our stories of Bikini might also be forgotten. These thoughts made living on Kili very depressing.
"The Americans gave us a boat to sail to Jaluit Atoll. That made us feel hopeful that we could eliminate some of the hunger problems that we were experiencing. Within a short time, however, the boat ran aground and sank because of high winds. We kept believing in our proverb that 'everything was in God's hands' and that one day God would help us return to our homelands. This was the only way we were able to alleviate our horrible feelings of fear and frustration when our minds were drifting and filled with questions: 'The Americans, when will they come? America, America, America--where are you?'"
"As soon as the war ended, we located the one spot on earth that hadn't been touched by the war and blew it to hell." --Comedian Bob Hope commenting on Operation Crossroads
This might all seem like ancient history, but the Bikinians continue to fight for restoration of their island, recognition of the culpability of the US, and redress for their serious health issues. I call your attention to the fact that the most recent legal action by the Bikinians was in 2006 - some 60 years after the blast! As reported on the Bikini Atoll history page (emphasis mine):
Indeed, according to a Defense Nuclear Agency report on the Bravo blast, the weather briefing the day before the detonation stated that there would be "no significant fallout...for the populated Marshalls." The briefing at 6 p.m., however, stated that "the predicted winds were less favorable; nevertheless, the decision to shoot was reaffirmed, but with another review of the winds scheduled for midnight." The midnight briefing "indicated less favorable winds at 10,000 to 25,000-foot levels." Winds at 20,000 feet "were headed for Rongelap to the east," and "it was recognized that both Bikini and Eneman islands would probably be contaminated."
[Martin and Rowland, Castle Series, 1954, supra note 28, at 22. U.S. Nuclear Tests on Bikini & Enewetak Atolls in the Marshall Islands, U.S. Department of Energy. United States Nuclear Tests: July 1945 through September 1992. Document No. DOE/NV-209 (Rev. 14), December 1994].
The decision to go forward with the test, knowing that the winds were blowing in the direction of inhabited atolls, was essentially a decision to irradiate the northern Marshall Islands, and moreover, to irradiate the people who were still living on them.
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In October of 1975, after contemplating these new, terrifying and confusing reports on the radiological condition of their atoll, the Bikinians filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court demanding that a complete scientific survey of Bikini and the northern Marshalls be conducted. The lawsuit stated that the U.S. had used highly sophisticated and technical radiation detection equipment at Enewetak Atoll, but had refused to employ it at Bikini. The result of the lawsuit was to convince the U.S. to agree to conduct an aerial radiological survey of the northern Marshalls in December of 1975. Unfortunately, more than three years of bureaucratic squabbles between the U.S. Departments of State, Interior and Energy over costs and responsibility for the survey, delayed any action on its implementation. The Bikinians, unaware of the severity of the radiological danger, remained on their contaminated islands.
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In April of 1978 medical examinations performed by U.S. physicians revealed radiation levels in many of the now 139 people on Bikini to be well above the U.S. maximum permissible level. The very next month U.S. Interior Department officials described the 75% increase in radioactive cesium 137 as "incredible." The Interior Department then announced plans to move the people from Bikini "within 75 to 90 days," and so in September of 1978, Trust Territory officials arrived on Bikini to once again evacuate the people who were living on the atoll. An ironic footnote to the situation is that the long awaited northern Marshalls radiological survey, forced by the 1975 lawsuit brought by the Bikinians against the U.S. government, finally began only after the people were again relocated from Bikini.
In the 1980's, after filing a lawsuit in the U.S. Federal Claims Court [Juda vs. the United States] in 1981 that was eventually dismissed in 1987, the people of Bikini received two trust funds from the United States government as compensation for giving up their islands to the U.S. government for nuclear testing.
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On March 5, 2001, the Nuclear Claims Tribunal handed down a decision on a seven year lawsuit the Bikinians had brought against the United States for damages done to their islands and their people during the nuclear testing on Bikini. The Tribunal gave them a total award of $563,315,500.00 [loss of value $278,000,000.00, restoration costs $251,500,000.00, suffering and hardship $33,814,500.00], which is the final amount after deducting the past compensation awarded by the U.S. government [see above three trust funds]. The problem is that the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, which was created by the Compact of Free Association of 1986, was underfunded and does not have the money to pay for this claim. It is now up to the people of Bikini to petition the U.S. Congress for the money to fulfill this award. This is expected to take many years and it is uncertain if the United States will honor their claim.
On April 12 [April 11 US date], 2006, the people of Bikini Atoll filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Government in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The lawsuit seeks compensation under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for the taking of their property damage claims resulting from the U.S. Government’s failure and refusal to adequately fund the March 5, 2001 order of the Nuclear Claims Tribunal. Alternatively, the people of Bikini seek damages for the U.S. Government’s breaches of its fiduciary duty to provide just and adequate compensation for the taking of their lands in consideration for their agreement to move off Bikini Atoll and for the breach of the implied duties and covenants integral to that agreement, the Compact of Free Association, and the Section 177 Agreement. The lawsuit will seek compensation and/or damages of at least $561,036,320 (which represents the Tribunal’s original award to the Bikinians of $563,315,500 less the two payments totaling $2,279,180), plus interest as required by law. The total with interest on the filing date of April 11, 2005, is approximately $724,560,902. This complaint was amended on July 18, 2006.
At this time the people of Bikini remain scattered throughout the Marshall Islands and the world as they wait for the cleanup of Bikini to begin in earnest, mostly due to the fact that the money they have received from the U.S. government is not adequate to fund a full radiological cleanup of the entire atoll.
I also found this remarkable article from the August 19, 1946 issue of Life Magazine. Here are some teasers from Problem of the Age, but please go and read it for yourself (again, emphasis mine).
The experts had yet to come back from Bikini; their studies had still to be tallied. But what they had learned was summed up last week in the heartfelt comment of Admiral William H. P. Blandy: "It's a poison weapon." He could have gone farther. The atomic age will be an age of poison. Even the peaceful use of atomic power will generate deadly rays and radioactive particles. How to guard against them is the first problem of the atomic age.
...
Protection. Is there any defense against these subtle poisons? In the case of a bomb exploding on the ground or sea, the answer is probably no. People in the bombed area might survive the blast in deep underground shelters, but the air sucked into the ventilating systems would surely bring in radioactive particles. And in any event they could not venture above ground for some time without tons of shielding.
The peacetime problem is almost as bad, for the radioactive by-products of atomic power plants are exceedingly hard to dispose of. They cannot be blown up a stack near settled communities; rain may bring them down again. They cannot be run down sewers or even into the sea. Probably the only safe disposal place will be radioactive "cemeteries," carefully fenced and guarded.
I hope you brought your iPhone with you to the beach because I have a few little "somethings" to show you.
Appropriately, the Baker Beach Bikini Party starts off with a BOOM! with this video featuring the song of that name and images of Operation Crossroads (some of which are quite disturbing, frankly). BOOM! is performed by P.O.D. (Payable on Death) and you’ll find the lyrics to this rap song here.
My beach party song about our trigger-happy draft-evading vice president is just a "wee bit" more upbeat than what you just heard. The sing-along video is below my lyrics.
Gnarly Snarly Meany Weenie Yellow-Bellied VP Cheney
(original lyrics)
He is afraid to come out of the bunker
He is as nervous as he could be
He is afraid to come out of the bunker
He is afraid he has caused World War Three
One, two, three, four, tell the people how he swore
He is a gnarly, snarly, meany, weenie, yellow-bellied VP Cheney
And he swore for the tenth time today.
A gnarly, snarly, meany, weenie, yellow-bellied VP Cheney
So in the bunker he wanted to stay
Two, three, four, stick around we'll tell you more
He was afraid to come out in the open
And so at people around him he swore
He was afraid to come out in the open
And so he stayed hunkered up on the shore
Two, three, four, tell the people how he swore
He is a gnarly, snarly, meany, weenie, yellow-bellied VP Cheney
And he swore for the tenth time today.
A gnarly, snarly, meany, weenie, yellow-bellied VP Cheney
So in the fortress he wanted to stay
Two, three, four, stick around we'll tell you more
Now he is afraid to come out to the water
And I wonder what he's gonna do
Now he is afraid to come out to the water
So the chicken-hawk Dick shouts FU!
Two, three, four, tell the people how he swore
He is a gnarly, snarly, meany, weenie, yellow-bellied VP Cheney
And he swore for the tenth time today.
A gnarly, snarly, meany, weenie, yellow-bellied VP Cheney
So in the bunker he wanted to stay
(From the locker and the fortress)
(Swore to people on the shore)
(Even swore at the water)
Yes, there isn't any more
The number one hit song Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini was originally recorded by Brian Hylandin 1960.
Well, we covered a lot of ground – er, sand – today. For the remaining eleven days of the Baker Beach Bikini Party, there will be less talk and more music. On the stack for tomorrow is my parody of I Want Candy, which I call I Want Condi. Look for it around 5pm EST. Until then, take a dip, catch some rays...