Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll - Hardcover

Weisgall, Jonathan M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1557509190 ISBN 13: 9781557509192

Publisher: Naval Institute Press, 1994

Synopsis

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 Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

About this title

About the Author:

Jonathan M. Weisgall, is adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.

From Publishers Weekly:

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.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1557509190
• ISBN 13: 9781557509192
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 415