building as they prepared to take observations in connection with the
testing of the inmost powerful explosive device ever to be detonated by
man.
They stayed on Rongerik as a Radiation Safety team connected
with Joint Task Force Seven.
Tney were the only inhabitants of the
island aside from rats, flies, and coconut crabs.
‘Their quarters,
wnile spartan, were well stocked witn canned food, and water and they
nad a refrigerator to keep food and driiks cold.
ven early in the
morning they must have begun to perspire--not because of the heat, but
from the intense numidity of the island.
Tne feelings of boredom and
anxiety, of frustration and excitement must have permeated most of them
to varying degrees.
To some it was a job, to otners an interesting
experience--to some it was probably drudgery.
The paradisical Pacific
islands were not always physically and psychologically kind to transplants from the mainland.
There were no girls and no bars, no steak
and no movies~-at least on the island.
better.
On the ships,
the men fared
Despite this, however, it was a well-known practice for enlisted
men, weary of the duty,
to slip radiation badges
into their shoes and
thus receive their maximum dose of radioactivity rapidly from the
relatively "hot" decks of the Task Force siips so that they might be
transferred. (90)
But there was little cnance of this on the island, since the test
would be more than one hundered miles away.
‘The men checked their small
radio unit, over which they would hear of the "things' ' detonation,
badges and the radiation monitoring device.
of familiar objects was a comfort in itself.
.
48
wm
033)
their
The checking and rechecking
There was no reason to