title: Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll
author:  Jonathan M. Weisgall 
description: Based on a wealth of previously untapped material, this comprehensive examination of the world's first nuclear disaster is the first account of the Bikini atomic test explosions from a nongovernment source. Weisgall reconstructs the air-dropped "Able" test and the underwater "Baker" test, both conducted in July 1946, and explains how the sites were determined from a bitter rivalry between the Navy and the Air Force, how the tests affected U.S.-Soviet relations and why there was a scientific failure. In light of the current attention on U.S. government radiation experiments on humans and the postwar cover-up of nuclear-weapons testing, Weisgall's study is timely as well as chilling. He charges that the Navy ignored warnings about the dire consequences of radioactive fallout which, during the Operation Crossroads tests, blanketed 95 guinea-pig ships with deadly radiation and sunk 16 of them at Bikini lagoon. Finally, he relates the sad saga of the Bikinians who were relocated several times before and after the tests, which turned their atoll in the Ratok chain of the Marshall Islands into a laboratory of death. An attorney in Washington, D.C., and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, Weisgall has represented the people of Bikini in suits against the U.S. government since 1975. Photos. <br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: In 1946, as part of the Cold War arms race, the 
  US military launched a program to test nuclear 
  bombs in the Marshall Islands of the Paciﬁ c 
  Ocean. From 1946 until 1958, the military 
  detonated sixty-seven nuclear bombs over the 
  region’s Bikini and Enewetak Atolls. The twelfth 
  bomb, called Bravo, became the world’s ﬁ rst 
  nuclear disaster. It sent a toxic cloud of radiation 
  over Rongelap Atoll and other nearby inhabited 
  islands. 
  The testing was intended to advance scientiﬁ c 
  knowledge about nuclear bombs and radiation, 
  but it had much more far-reaching effects. Some 
  of the islanders suffered burns, cancers, birth 
  defects, and other medical tragedies as a result 
  of radiation poisoning. Many of the Marshallese 
  were resettled on other Paciﬁ c islands or in 
  the United States. They and their descendants 
  cannot yet return to Bikini, which remains 
  contaminated by radiation. And while the United 
  States claims it is now safe to resettle Rongelap, 
  only a few construction worker