Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll

Based on a wealth of previously untapped material, this comprehensive examination of the world's first nuclear disaster is the first account of the Bikini atomic test explosions from a nongovernment source. Weisgall reconstructs the air-dropped ``Able'' test and the underwater ``Baker'' test, both conducted in July 1946, and explains how the sites were determined from a bitter rivalry between the Navy and the Air Force, how the tests affected U.S.-Soviet relations and why there was a scientific failure. In light of the current attention on U.S. government radiation experiments on humans and the postwar cover-up of nuclear-weapons testing, Weisgall's study is timely as well as chilling. He charges that the Navy ignored warnings about the dire consequences of radioactive fallout which, during the Operation Crossroads tests, blanketed 95 guinea-pig ships with deadly radiation and sunk 16 of them at Bikini lagoon. Finally, he relates the sad saga of the Bikinians who were relocated several times before and after the tests, which turned their atoll in the Ratok chain of the Marshall Islands into a laboratory of death. An attorney in Washington, D.C., and adjunct professor at Georgetown University, Weisgall has represented the people of Bikini in suits against the U.S. government since 1975. Photos. (Apr.)