WHEN we hear the word bikini, we think of a two-piece swimsuit for women, but historians conjure a darker meaning. This is the tragic story of what was once a beautiful island paradise but now is an eerie ghost town.
In the late 1940s the United States acquired the rights to use Bikini Island in the Marshalls as a testing ground for nuclear weapons. The native population was relocated and the island obliterated in dozens of tests.
Bouncing around from island to island like Pacific gypsies, the people of Bikini spent time on Kwajalein, Kili and other places. Finally, in 1968, ten years after the last explosion, President Lyndon Johnson announced that the displaced islanders were free return home. The radiation had dropped to acceptable levels, and all was well.
Houses were built, streets laid, bulldozers and other heavy equipment brought in, crops planted, and debris picked up. Reconstruction went so well that by the mid 1970s over 150 islanders lived on Bikini. People returned to the traditional work of hunting and fishing and plans were laid to develop tourism on the island. The coral and fish populations recovered from the nuclear blasts much sooner than anyone expected, and thanks to the tests the lagoon featured some of the most famous warships in the world: Nagato, Saratoga, and so on, lying on the bottom in submarine splendor. There was no need to worry about radiation. Scientists measured very low levels on the island and in the water. Then things started to go wrong.
After a few years the islanders showed signs of radiation sickness. Scientists found high levels of cesium in their bodies. Radioactive material was there, alright. It hid several inches below the surface in the sand and soil. When islanders ate the plants that grew there and the fish that feasted on contaminated aquatic plants they ingested the cesium. Sadly, the people of Bikini were moved out once again.
The courts got involved and in 1986 the islanders received tens of millions of dollars in damages from the U.S. government and tens of millions more to pay for cleanup of the radioactive mess on Bikini. The efforts went well until, in the mid 1990s, Bikini was declared habitable once again and the tourism industry, spearheaded by the scuba diving community, appeared ready to hit the water. Ready, that is, until the EPA changed the guidelines for what constituted safe levels of radiation. They declared that more cleanup was needed, the tourists fled, and many of the few inhabitants left once again.
Today Bikini is a ghost town. The worn-out structures that dot the island testify to two eras. First are the military structures from the time of the nuclear testing, their stout facades of concrete and steel providing silent testimony to a world gone mad. The second are the buildings of the attempted resettlement, even sadder reminders of good intentions and misguided thinking.
There remain very few Bikini islanders from the era of relocation. Only 34 Bikinians are left who were born on that island, the rest are refugees born in other places. Recent polling revealed that most Bikinians would not move to the island even if radiation levels were safe. It is not home to them and never was, more like a mystical place from a fairy tale told by their parents. Most want to move to America to find jobs and stability.
Dr. BC Cook taught history for 30 years and is a director and Pacific historian at Sealark Exploration (sealarkexploration.org). He currently lives in Hawaii.
