Testing the Waters of Rongelap
Photographs by Bill Curtsinger and Emory Kristof
March 1, 1954: On a small ring of Pacific island known as Bikini Atoll, the United States detonated a nuclear bomb a thousand times more powerful than the one that incinerated Hiroshima. This megabomb, code-named Bravo, was one in a series of nuclear weapons tests conducted by the U.S. on Bikini in the 1940s and ‘50s. Radioactive fallout from the bomb landed on neighboring islands, including Rongelap Atoll, a hundred miles to the east.
Two days later, with radioactive "snow" blanketing Rongelap, the U.S. government evacuated 82 people. After three years residents returned, told that the islands were safe. But in 1985, faced with a disturbing number of abnormal births, thyroid problems, and other radiogenic illnesses, the Rongelapese left again.
The soil was permeated with Cesium 137. But how was the ocean’s water? How has the atoll’s marine life fared? A Geographic team goes deep to find out.
NGM 1998/04