The Bomb is a fictional account based around real events: Preparations for the first post-war atomic bomb test, which occurred July 1, 1946 in the South Pacific.
The bomb referred to in the book's title was called Able, a plutonium bomb similar to Fat Man — the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki the previous August. Able was the first in the Crossroads series of test bombs and the fourth atomic bomb ever exploded. Theodore Taylor was a U.S. Navy veteran who participated in preparations for the Able test. Nearly 50 years later, he wrote The Bomb.
Crossroads required the displacement of the Bikini Atoll's inhabitants, who had called their "string of pearls" home for many generations.
Bikini had provided the islanders with everything they needed: Coconuts for food and drink, pandanus leaves to make shelters to live in and mats to sleep on, abundant fish for nourishment. They knew how to survive the occasional tropical storms that blew through the area (climb the palm trees and hang on for dear life). The only thing they couldn't control were outside military forces: First the Spanish, then the Germans, then the Japanese, and finally the Americans, who saved them from the cruel Japanese, only to remove them from their home a few months later.
The Bomb's characters are based on Taylor's experiences meeting the islanders while serving on board the destroyer USS Allen M. Sumner, which entered the Bikini lagoon about six months before the Able blast, to prepare the atoll for the tests to follow -- and to remove the islanders, who were "gently" persuaded to leave voluntarily*.
The inhabitants of Bikini were told they would be taken care of. They barely were. They were told they would be able to go back. Some finally went back, but ten years after their return, diseases brought about by the lingering radiation made them leave again (those that had not died in the meantime). The islands of the atoll are still uninhabitable due to high levels of radiation — except by wildlife that doesn't know any better, since radiation is odorless, tasteless, and colorless. It is an invisible killer around us all, all the time.
Each chapter of The Bomb is preceded by a brief description of actual events: The discovery of fission, the establishment of The Manhattan District, the Trinity test, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the end of World War Two, the arrival of the Sumner, the placement of dozens of ships and thousands of caged and penned animals to see how they would survive (or more likely, not), the atomic bomb blast and radiation effects.
The Bomb became historically significant because it was a best-seller that discussed the horrific after-effects of nuclear war, which are due to the radiation that is left behind. The book is a warning to all of us that future wars will continue to damage and kill for thousands of generations afterwards, from the Cesium-137, the Plutonium-239, and a rainbow of other radioactive elements every nuclear bomb blast releases into our tiny blue planet.
Nowhere on earth is truly isolated: Earth is a closed system. However, in 1946, it was generally assumed that low levels of radiation were actually harmless. Thousands of studies since that time have consistently shown a "Linear, No Threshold" (LNT) relationship between radiation dose and the likelihood of its causing harm to living organisms.
Bikini was considered far enough away from every other inhabited land mass that the poisons would either be harmless or only cause harm in statistically insignificant amounts.
Later in the Crossroads test series, a Japanese fishing trawler called The Lucky Dragon was twenty miles outside of the exclusion zone for the "Castle Bravo" blast, and a hundred miles away from Castle Bravo's epicenter — but downwind. What looked like snow to the sailors fell on the boat, and nearly every sailor on board became violently ill. One died after they had returned to Japan.
What America and other countries did by testing so many nuclear weapons in the South Pacific and elsewhere was unconscionable and unnecessary. People all over the world will continue to suffer from the fallout of the Crossroads tests and from every other bomb test since Trinity. Fish, crustaceans, aquatic mammals and other sea creatures will also continue to suffer and die for an eternity from these "tests."
People around the world protested against the Crossroads tests. In the novel, even before their exile is accomplished, nearly all of the islanders wished that they had not agreed to go so readily. The survivors today feel the same way.
But in 1946, less than a year after the world's most brutal war (so far) had finally ended, America desperately wanted to know EXACTLY what an atomic bomb could do to a navy. Pearl Harbor was barely five years earlier and nobody had forgotten it. Would the ships survive? Would surviving sailors be able to fight? Would they be able to have children later?
Results were presumably very disappointing — far worse than expected.
Review by Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA
* Reviewer disclosure: Many years ago, this reviewer, a computer programmer by trade, was "gently" persuaded to sell software for use by the U.S. government, and thus is well aware of what sort of effort can go into such "gentle" persuasion (they got my software, and as far as I can tell, they've been using it ever since).
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Contact information for the author of this newsletter:
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download:
acehoffman.org
Blog:
acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube:
youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at]
acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner,
The Animated Software Company
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