(Twenty-First Century Books, 88 pp.)
What has been called the world's first nuclear disaster occurred in 1946 during a series of US military bomb tests in the Marshall Islands. One of the 67 bombs detonated over the Pacific Ocean's Bikini and Enewetak Atolls and it had such far-reaching negative effects that the worst-hit area remains nearly deserted. "Bombs Over Bikiini" provides a detailed account of this tragic event and its aftermath.
Here's an excerpt:
“On launch day, Marshall Holloway waited in the control room aboard the USS Cumberland Sound 15 miles (24 km) from the target site. Holloway was a scientist who had helped develop the world’s first atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. He sat at an electronic control panel whose rows of buttons would control Baker’s firing sequence. At 8;35 a.m., Holloway began pushing the buttons one by one, setting the automatic bomb-firing in motion. After the last button, a radio signal triggered the detonation.
“‘A gigantic dome of water, white, beautiful, terror-inspiring, at least a mile (1.6 km) wide, rose nearly a mile in the air,’ wrote Philip Porter, reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper.”
