Thesis ID: CBB916791960

Discoveries and Collisions The Atom, Los Alamos, and the Marshall Islands (2015)

unapi

In September 1945, after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States possessed only one nuclear weapon. Thirteen years later, in September 1958, the nation possessed a significant stockpile of nuclear weapons, including the very powerful hydrogen bomb. The United States was able to build its stockpile of nuclear weapons because the Los Alamos Laboratory, once a secret wartime facility, was able to convert the forces of nature—fission and fusion—into weapons of war. The United States also was successful because of the sacrifice made by a tiny Pacific Ocean nation, The Marshall Islands, and the people of Bikini, Enewetak, and Rongelap Atolls. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States tested sixty-six nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands. Nuclear testing contaminated these three atolls and, in one instance, injured the people of Rongelap. As a result of this testing many of these people cannot return to their ancestral homes. This dissertation examines the many conditions that led to the creation of the Los Alamos Laboratory, its testing of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, and the long term, perhaps, permanent, displacement of the people of Bikini, Enewetak, and Rongelap.

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Authors & Contributors
Badash, Lawrence
Bailey, Janet
Brode, Bernice
Broida, Herbet P.
Evans, Jacob
Fanton, Jonathan F.
Journals
Environmental History
Historia Scientiarum: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan
History of Technology
Publishers
Los Alamos Historical Society
Cambridge University Press
University of New Mexico
University of Pennsylvania
Abrams
Arlington Place Press
Concepts
Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons
Manhattan Project
Nuclear testing
Atomic bomb
Cold War
Controversies and disputes
People
Oppenheimer, J. Robert
Richards, Hugh T.
Rotblat, Joseph
Hammel, Edward Frederick
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
Places
Marshall Islands
New Mexico (U.S.)
United States
Islands of the Pacific
Micronesia
Institutions
United States. Scientific Laboratory, Los Alamos
Peenemünde (Germany)
Manhattan Project National Historical Park
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