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Until 1946, very few people had ever heard of Bikini Atoll. Located in the Marshall Islands chain 3,000 kilometres southwest of Hawaii, the atoll consists of 23 coral islands surrounding a central lagoon 30 kilometres wide. For thousands of years Bikini was home to a few hundred Marshallese islanders, who sustained themselves by fishing and cultivating coconuts. In 1885 the atoll was annexed by the German Empire, who used it as a production hub for coconut oil. Then, in 1914, the Empire of Japan at that time part of the Entente Powers captured the Marshall Islands from the Germans and in 1920 was awarded the chain by the League of Nations as part of their South Seas Mandate. In 1941, following the outbreak of the Second World War in the Pacific, Japanese troops occupied Bikini in order to protect the nearby and strategically vital Kwajalein Atoll. Bikini remained in Japanese hands until February 1944 when, after fierce fighting, American forces recaptured Kwajalein. By this time, the garrison on Bikini consisted of only five men, who all chose to commit suicide by hand grenade rather than surrender.

And there the story might have ended, with Bikini remaining just another coral speck among hundreds in the gruelling American islandhopping campaign. But in December 1945, less than four months after the Japanese surrender, a decision was made that would catapult this onceobscure ring of islands into the global spotlight. While it was clear to all that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 had forever changed modern warfare, what was less clear was how exactly it had changed. As the Second World War gave way to the Cold War, military strategists began to wonder how best to use this awesome new weapon. Could it be deployed tactically on the battlefield, or was it only good for destroying civilian centres? And what kinds of targets was it most effective against? Particularly concerned about its role in the nascent atomic age was the U.S. Navy, which resented the Army Air Force’s monopoly on the delivery of nuclear weapons. The Air Force, meanwhile, argued that naval ships were extremely vulnerable to nuclear attack, and that the advent of such weapons had effectively made navies obsolete.

Author: Gilles Messier
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila