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testing of the most 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,
while spartan, were well stocked with canned food, and water and they
nad a refrigerator to keep food and dri:tks cold.
Even early in the
morning they must have begun to perspire--not because of the iteat, but
from tne intense humidity of the island.
The 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 others an interesting
experience--to some it was probably drudgery.
islands were not always physically and psychologically kind to transplants from the mainland.
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The paradisical Pacific
There were no girls and no bars, no steak
and no movies--at least on the island.
better.
On the ships, the men fared
WVespite 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 "not" decks of the Task Force snips 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 naur of tne "things" detonation, their
badges and the radiation monitoring device.
of familiar objects was a confort in itself.
The checking and rechecking
There was no reason to
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building as they prepared to take oovservations in connection witn the