Bombing the Marshall Islands: A Cold War Tragedy

By Keith M. Parsons and Robert A. Zaballa, Cambridge University Press, 2017, 230 pages, paperback

This important and well-written book is the story of the nuclear tests that blasted and poisoned the Marshall Islands, and the accompanying political and technical results. It also attempts to understand the context of why a program of atmospheric testing was considered necessary despite the knowable risks. The 1946 tests known as “Crosswinds” were to assure the Navy that its fleet could survive a nuclear attack. That assurance failed. There followed “Sandstone” (1948) and “Greenhouse” (1951), designed to improve fission bombs. “Ivy” (1952), “Castle” (1954) and other tests were designed to develop fusion devices. Based upon numerous, sometimes conflicting, sources, Parsons and Zaballa describe the test preparations, explosions, and effects (medical and otherwise) upon the test participants and non-participants. There are chapters on the adverse cultural impacts of fallout (such as commercial movies) and attempts to understand cold-war history and the apparent callousness of the developing U.S. nuclear policy. Unfortunately, no relevant maps are included. Two appendices for the layman, one of them on the physics of nuclear weapons and the other on the biology of nuclear radiation, provide handy summaries of these two topics.

Al Saperstein
Wayne State University
email: a_saperstein@wayne.edu

These contributions have not been peer-refereed. They represent solely the view(s) of the author(s) and not necessarily the view of APS.