CHAPTER ONE: BACKGROUND by Bert Friesen Holmes & Narver, Inc. 1.1 INTRODUCTION "The light - it was many times brighter than the sun. showed as clear as in daylight. explosion. The mountains back of us We were stationed ten miles away from the At the five-mile station, two men were knocked over by the blast. The immense ball of flame rapidly going up into the sky was followed by a cloud of dark dust. The hundred-foot steel tower on which the bomb was placed was completely evaporated. The surface sand around it for a thousand feet was melted into glass." (Compton, 1956.) Thus was the birth of the Atomic Age witnessed in secrecy on 16 July 1945, with the first test of a nuclear bomb, code named Trinity, at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Three weeks later, on 6 August 1945 (local time), the second nuclear bomb was detonated over Hiroshima, Japan, followed by the third bomb over Nagasaki, Japan, on 9 August 1945 (local time). The successful detonation in combat of these powerfully destructive weapons brought a quick end to Worid War Il. The devices had worked as planned but very little was known of either the immediate or the long-range aftereffects. Although the war had ended and no further military use was anticipated in connection with WW IL military officials were anxious to learn much more about the newest weapon in their arsenal. Theoreticians could predict enough of the effects from a nuclear explosion to realize that additional testing would have to be conducted in an area far from any population centers to minimize the dangers of exposure to hazardous radiation. The fourth nuclear device, Test Able, was detonated about 500 feet above a fleet of surplus naval craft at anchor in Bikini lagoon on 30 June 1946. Test Baker followed on 24 July 1946. The Baker device was suspended beneath a small landing craft, LSM 60, with the burst point at 90 feet below water surface. "The air burst (of Test Able), despite the damage it had inflicted, seareely had prepared observers for the wrath of sound, light, and voleanie shock that erupted within the lagoon. At the moment of explosion, a giant bubble, brilliantly lighted within by incandescent materials, burst from the surface of the water to be followed by an ‘opaque cloud’ which quickly covered about half of the ships of the target fleet. Within seconds, the cloud had vanished and a hollow column, 2,200 feet in diameter and containing some 10 million tons of water, rose from the surface of the lagoon to a height of more than a mile. The 26,000-ton battleship, Arkansas, broadside to the LSM 60 but more than 500 feet away, was lifted and upended in the column before she was plunged to the bottom. At the base of the column was a tumult of foam several hundred feet high, and the descent of the water back into the lagoon set up a base surge from which rolled waves eighty to one-hundred feet high. The waves subsided rapidly as they proceeded outward, and the highest wave recorded at Bikini Island, three miles away, was seven feet, not sufficiently high to pass over the island or to cause damage there.” (Hines, 1962.) The brief chronology and quotations presented above set the stage for the rest of this document. Enewetak Atoll became a critical component of the very large and complex program of nuclear testing conducted by the United States from 1946 to 1958. Detonation of 43 nuclear devices at Enewetak Atoll created radiological conditions deemed too hazardous for unrestricted use of the atoll by future residents. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), acting in advisory and support roles to the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), participated in the radiological cleanup of Enewetak Atoll, undertaken to prepare the islands for their return to the people of Enewetak. Most of this report is devoted to a detailed description of the conduct by the DOE and its contractors of what became known as the Enewetak Radiological Support Project. Readers are directed to other sources for additional background on nuclear testing in the Pacific or details on related topics. Hines presents an interesting account of the problems and successes of conducting radiobiological studies in the Pacific Proving Ground concurrent with nuclear testing. Compton and Groueff provide excellent views of how the atomic age was conceived and carried full-term to Alamogordo and Japan. The problems of dislocation experienced by the people of Bikini 1