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On the fifth day after the test, a guard of two monitors each
morning and afternoon was set up on the test island, and the Beach
Radsafe Center established. This made the island more accessible to
the engineers who were to work on the portion where the intensity of
radiation was now below tolerance limits. It considerably reduced the
monitor demand on Task Group 7.6, and at the same time insured a closer
watch on the many parties that had mission on the test island,
The bogged tank was recovered from the crater, and work was befun
by the engineers to destroy the remains of the test structures on the
island in order to prevent any unauthorized persons from obtaining any
information on the effects of the tests.
On X-RAY~plus 9 the USS BAIRCKO shifted its anchorage to a location
off the test island for YOKE Day, and final preparations for YOKE test
were well underway, Two days later the island of X-RAY test was closed

to all personnel,

Preparation far YOKE Test
Installation of stakes, and the painting of numbers on various
structures of the test island facilitated island surveys. Three stakes

at hundred yard intervals were placed on the island immediately to the

north of the zero point for use in any surveys that micht be made in
this direction. The stakes on the test islands were not located on a
systematic radial manner from the zero point as was the case in test
X-RAY, because the engineer structures were located in a cleared strip
extending along the lagoon side of the islands and about 300 yards wide,
It was planned to ignore, for all practical purposes, the extensive palm
grove on the portion of the island toward the ocean, and which was expected
to become a mass of tangled rubble as a result of the test, All of the
island survey monitors were throughly briefed.
Because of the evidence of fall-out from the X-RAY test, it was
decided by higher authority to maintain monitors on the destroyer patrols
until YOKE-plus 4. Accordingly a monitor was assigned to each of following
destroyers:

USS TUCKER (DDR 875)

USS SPANGLER ( DE 696)

USS GEORGE (DE 697)
YOKE Day

A huge cloud resulting fram the explosion of the atomic weapon was
still plainly evident thousands of feet above the cero island when the
four helicopters came in on the southern tip of the island for a landings.
The landing was made about twenty minutes after H hour.

l&jor Cook ina

jeep with Dr. Orle and Mir. Linnenberger went along the land cable to assist
in recovering the samples at various points alon; it. Major Sheppard

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