development meant nuclear testing, and the Atomic Energy Commission
noted that “tests should be held overseas until it could be established more

definitely that continental detonations would not endanger the public
health and safety.”
°
Enewetak was chosen as the test site.

Paradoxically, it was the same isolation that had once insulated Enewetak
from Western culture that now finally thrust it into direct contact with the

most elemental forces in Western technology.

The area downwind from

Enewetak was uninhabited for at least 500 miles.

And, according to a

December 1947 A.E.C. press release, "“Enewetak has the fewest number
of inhabitants to be cared for." Ujelang was to be their new home. Much
smaller, much less bountiful than Enewetak, this atoll held no attraction

for the Enewetakans.

One of them wrote a song.

On the day of the twenty-first, all of the people

came to this atoll.
But we do not worry for it is the will of the Lord.
We are very sad. We miss the islands from
which we are separated.
But we do not worry for it is the will of the Lord.
At Enewetak, a city of 10,000 was built.

Airfields, bunkers, research

laboratories and barracks were crammed onto the atoll's two-and-one-quarter
square miles.

.

On October 31, 1952, "Mike" was detonated on an Enewetakese island named
Llugelab. The world's first hydrogen bomb -- over ten megatons -- vaporized
the island and left a crater over a mile wide and three hundred feet deep.

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