Bikini Atoll

File:Flag of bikini.png

The Flag of Bikini Atoll

Bikini Atoll (also known as Pikinni Atoll) is an uninhabited 6.0-square-kilometer atoll in one of the Micronesian Islands in the Pacific Ocean at 11°30′N 165°25′E. It is a member of the Marshall Islands. It consists of 36 islands surrounding a 594.2-square-kilometer lagoon. As part of the Pacific Proving Grounds it was a site of more than 20 hydrogen and nuclear bomb tests between 1946 to 1958.

The navigator and explorer Otto von Kotzebue named Bikini Atoll Eschscholtz Atoll after the scientist Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz.

Preceding the nuclear tests, the indigenous population was relocated to Rongerik Atoll. The tests began in July 1946. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, some of the original islanders returned from Kili Island but were removed because of the high radioactivity.

For examination of the fallout, several rockets of the types Loki and Asp were launched at 11°35′N 165°20′E.

Bikini Island

File:BikiniIsland.png

Location of Bikini Island

It is the northeasternmost and biggest island of Bikini Atoll. It is the most well-known and most important island of the atoll, and measures about four kilometres. On about twelve kilometres to the northwest is Aomen (the first island in that direction), and on the south of Bikini is Bukonfuaaku situated. Bikini Island is well-known for two reasons. First, it, along with the rest of the atoll, was subject to numerous nuclear bomb tests. Second, the swimsuit, the bikini was named after this island (or possibly the entire atoll).

Between 1946 and 1958, 23 nuclear devices were exploded at Bikini Island. The Micronesian inhabitants, who numbered about 200 before the United States relocated them after World War II, ate fish, shellfish, bananas, and coconuts. In 1968 the United States declared Bikini habitable and started bringing the Bikinians back to their homes in the early 1970s. In 1978, however, the islanders were removed again when strontium 90 in their bodies reached dangerous levels. They sued the United States and were awarded $100 million in compensation, but the cost of the clean up, which would entail scraping off the top 16 inches of soil from the main island of Bikini, far exceeds this sum, and the operation would produce a million cubic feet of radioactive soil that nobody would know what to do with.

Map of the Marshall Islands

References in popular culture

• The author Theodore Taylor wrote a children's novel titled The Bomb, which told the story of a teenager's fight to prevent the first atom bomb from being dropped onto the atoll.

• Big Boss, a villain in the Metal Gear video game series and the main character of Metal Gear Solid 3, is said to have been involved in the Bikini Atoll tests.

• SpongeBob SquarePants, a cartoon on Nickelodeon, takes place in a town known as Bikini Bottom which supposedly is under Bikini Atoll. In the episode Dying for Pie, a bomb disguised as a pie violently explodes on impact with the Squidward character. Brief footage of the Crossroads BAKER H-Bomb test at Bikini is shown.

• A low-grade joke in the 50s asserted that "...right next Bikini Atoll is a famous nudist colony: No Bikini Atoll". The requisite rimshot is left as an exercise for the reader.

See also

• Flag of Bikini Atoll
• Operation Crossroads
• Operation Ivy
• Operation Castle
• Daigo Fukuryu Maru
• Bikini Bottom from SpongeBob SquarePants

External links

• A Short History of the People of Bikini Atoll
  • What About Radiation on Bikini Atoll?
• Department of Energy Marshall Islands Program : Chronology of nuclear testing, relocation of islanders and results of radiation tests.
• Radio Bikini : Oscar-nominated 1987 documentary on the 1946 atomic bomb tests on Bikini Atoll and the effects on the Bikinians as well as the US sailors who witnessed the tests.
• Het Einde van de Wereld The End of the World (1995/VPRO-tv/Theo Uittenbogaard) a Dutch documentary on the history of the people of the island Rongelap, who were evacuated due to fallout from the Bikini nuclear tests and their hearing by a Senate Committee in Washington DC
• Annotated bibliography for Bikini Atoll from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues