Remains on Bikini Island
date: label: Date made
content: 1968
name: label: maker
content: Mydans, Carl
notes: label: Description
content: The 1960s found Carl Mydans back in the Philippines with MacArthur, as well as other locations in the Pacific. In 1968, Mydans returned to Bikini with a team of experts who were conducting tests on the now-abandoned island. While the islanders had struggled to cope with their exile, Bikini had been destroyed.
label: Description
content: In 1954, the Air Force and Army began preparations for a new series of testing that would include the first air-deliverable hydrogen bomb (codename: <i>Bravo</i>) ever detonated by the United States <i>Operation Castle</i>. In its aftermath, islanders and Americans alike were exposed to ash that caused illnesses symptomatic of radiation poisoning, such as skin lesions, hair loss, and the eventual development of cancer.
label: Description
content: Twenty-two years after <i>Operation Crossroads</i> was set in motion, President Lyndon B. Johnson promised the Bikini natives, by then living in Kili, that they could return to their islands. In an effort to assure the islanders that its clean-up efforts were successful, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission issued a statement that said: "There's virtually no radiation left and we can find no discernible effect on either plant or animal life." By 1978, however, the people of Bikini were once again evacuated because of high levels of radioactive cesium and strontium in the water and in the soil.
label: Description
content: Though Bikini is not available for the natives to live on, it has not been abandoned. The lagoon of the Bikini Atoll, where the wrecks of over 90 American and Japanese warships lie under about 100 feet of water, has become an exclusive diving spot for tourists from the United States and Japan since 1992. After much planning and construction, Bikini Atoll opened to visitors in June 1996 to provide an economic base for a possible future resettlement of Bikini.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Marshall Islands: Bikini & Kili, Bikini Atoll
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Photographic History
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content: Photography
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content: Carl Mydans
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2005.0228.161
label: accession number
content: 2005.0228
label: catalog number
content: 2005.0228.161
objectType: label: Object Name
content: photograph
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 7 in x 10 in; 17.78 cm x 25.4 cm