Atomic Crossroads

Weisgall (law, Georgetown U.) is the legal counsel for the people of Bikini and provides the first non-government account of the two atomic bomb tests on the Pacific island in 1946. He thinks that they were not a good idea, and argues that the government knew that at the time. He was also the executive producer of the film Radio Bikini. Includes lots of photographs. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Atomic Vet Recalls the Bikini Bomb Tests 70 Years Ago In July 1946, millions of people around the world waited anxiously by their radios for broadcasts of the results of the first postwar atomic bomb tests code-named Operation CROSSROADS. William L. McGee, Gunner¿s Mate in the U.S. Navy, was one of the 42,000 military, scientific, and civilian personnel assembled at the Bikini Atoll test site in the Marshall Islands. He witnessed Crossroads from the heavy cruiser USS Fall River (CA-131), Flagship for the Target Fleet. McGee has written a personal account to coincide with the 70th anniversary, Operation Crossroads ¿ Lest We Forget! An Eyewitness Account, Bikini Atomic Bomb Tests 1946. A noted WWII military historian known for a spare and straightforward writing style, McGee tells the reader what it was like to be at what scientists considered the most significant event of the twentieth century¿from the plan that was comparable to a major wartime battle plan, to the build-up, the rehearsals, the tests, and to the all-important later lessons learned. William L. McGee has garnered critical praise for his World War II military histories including his memoir within a history, Bluejacket Odyssey, 1942¿1946: Guadalcanal to Bikini, and the acclaimed Pacific war trilogy, Amphibious Operations in the South Pacific in WWII.

In 1946, approximately 40,000 U.S. military personnel participated in Operation CROSSROADS, an atmospheric nuclear test that took place at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Congress passed a law directing the Veterans Administration to determine whether there were any long-term adverse health effects associated with exposure to ionizing radiation from the detonation of nuclear devices. This book contains the results of an extensive epidemiological study of the mortality of participants compared with a similar group of nonparticipants. Topics of discussion include a breakdown of the study rationale; an overview of other studies of veteran participants in nuclear tests; and descriptions of Operation CROSSROADS, data sources for the study, participant and comparison cohorts, exposure details, mortality ascertainment, and findings and conclusions.

The first full history of US nuclear secrecy, from its origins in the late 1930s to our post–Cold War present. The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy—and potentially incompatible with both. From the beginning, this secrecy was controversial, and it was always contested. The atomic bomb was not merely the application of science to war, but the result of decades of investment in scientific education, infrastructure, and global collaboration. If secrecy became the norm, how would science survive? Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author’s efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early twenty-first century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.