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Man’s Inhumanity to Man

October 25, 2007 at 10:48 pm · Filed under Family, Life, Photography, Rants · Comments

While surfing Wikipedia’s recent changes page, a nuclear testing related page caught my eye and it led me to share the following with Justin and my family via email …

Beautiful, yet sobering, images of nuclear tests performed at Bikini Atoll (part of the Pacific Proving Grounds — where more than 65 nuclear tests were performed) from 1946 to 1962.

Further Reading:
Pacific Proving Grounds
Castle_Romeo
Castle_Bravo

Pics attached (they’re not copyrighted due to U.S. gov’t creation.)
castle_romeo2.jpgoperation_crossroads_baker_wide.jpg477px-castle_romeo.jpg750px-castle_bravo_black_and_white.jpg
One of the black and white photo’s caption includes the following –

The water released by the explosion was highly radioactive and contaminated many of the ships which were set up near it. Some were otherwise undamaged and were sent to Hunter’s Point in San Francisco for decontamination. Those which could not be decontaminated were sunk a number of miles off the coast of San Francisco.”

Surely the sailors aboard those vessels didn’t fare too well from the exposure.

The other black and white image’s caption includes –

“Unexpected fallout from the detonation—intended to be a secret test—poisoned the crew of Daigo FukuryÅ« Maru (”Lucky Dragon No. 5″), a Japanese fishing boat, and created international concern about atmospheric thermonuclear testing.”

Amazing what we’ve done and lived to tell about it, as a species, eh?

ADDED LATER: My dad responded with the following family anecdote which I wanted to share –

“Your great uncle Lloyd (my mother’s brother) was there during some of the tests in the late 40’s and early 50’s. He was the last or one of the last men off the island (Enewetak, I believe). He was in charge of all materiel and had to do a final inventory of everything that was being left behind prior to the detonation. Of course they expected to be able to go back and continue what was left behind. They did not expect to virtually erase the island from the face of the earth.

Lloyd was a strange quiet man who absolutely would not talk about what he witnessed. He lived at the Elk’s Lodge in Burbank and shot pool, when I knew him. That was about all. According to my parents, he was greatly changed by the experiences in the South Pacific which also undoubtedly significantly shortened his life. An interesting note is that no wrist watch would run on him. Not cheap ones, expensive ones or even the early electronic ones. He had some sort of permanent magnetic field about him.

Love,Dad



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