Between 1946 and 1958, twenty-three nuclear devices were detonated at Bikini Atoll, beginning with the Operation Crossroads series in the summer of 1946. The March 1st, 1954 detonation codenamed Castle Bravo, was the first test of a practical hydrogen bomb. The largest nuclear explosion ever set off by the United States, it was much more powerful than predicted, and created widespread radioactive contamination.

Hired later by the Nuclear Claims Tribunal to research and report on the economic damage caused by the testing, Economist and Crisis Consultant Randall Bell writes in his book, Strategy 360 , “Bravo had an explosive force equal to nearly 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs. It vaporized the test island, parts of two other islands, and left a mile-wide crater in the lagoon floor. In total, nearly 70 acres of the Bikini Atoll were vaporized by the nuclear testing.” Bravo was estimated as being equivalent to approximately 15 megatons of TNT, while the Hiroshima bomb was estimated at 13 kilotons.

Randall Bell also notes, “Many of the landowners and local people accompanied me back to Rongelap an Rongerik, where much of the nuclear fallout came down. John, an elderly man, stood on his former home site in Rongelap and told me that he had gotten up early to make coffee and the sun had not yet come up. Suddenly, the sky lit up like it was day. He could see the large mushroom cloud rising off the horizon from Bikini and, soon after, he felt the blast of the shock wave. Later, as the entire village gathered, they watched the radiocative gray ash fall on them, their houses and their children. John did not express any anger, only deep sorrow that his one-year-old daughter died from leukemia soon after Bravo.”

Among those contaminated were the 23 crewmembers of the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon 5.The ensuing scandal in Japan was enormous, and ended up inspiring the 1954 film Godzilla, in which the 1954 U.S. nuclear test awakens and mutates the monster, who then attacks Japan before finally being vanquished by Japanese ingenuity.

The Micronesian inhabitants, who numbered about 200 before the United States relocated them after World War II, ate fish, shellfish, bananas, and coconuts. A large majority of the Bikinians were moved to a single island named Kili as part of their temporary homestead, but remain there today and receive compensation from the United States for their survival.

In 1968 the United States declared Bikini habitable and started bringing a small group of Bikinians back to their homes in the early 1970s as a test. In 1978, however, the islanders were removed again when strontium-90 in their bodies reached dangerous levels after a French team of scientists did additional tests on the island. It was not uncommon for women to experience faulty pregnancies, miscarriages, stillbirths and damage to their offspring as a result of the nuclear testing on Bikini.^[9] The United States provided $150 million as a settlement for damages caused by the nuclear testing program.

Since the early 1980s the leaders of the Bikinian community have insisted that, because of what happened in the 1970s with the aborted return to their atoll, they want the entire island of Bikini excavated and the soil removed to a depth of about 15 inches. Scientists involved with the Bikinians have stressed that while the excavation method would rid the island of the cesium-137, the removal of the topsoil would severely damage the environment, turning it into a virtual wasteland of wind-swept sand. The Council, however, feeling a responsibility toward their people, have repeatedly contended that a scrape of Bikini is the only way to guarantee safe living conditions on their island for their future generations.

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