Radiation Sounds

On March 1, 1954, the US military detonated “Castle Bravo,” its most powerful nuclear bomb, at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Two days later, the US military evacuated the Marshallese to a nearby atoll where they became part of a classified study, without their consent, on the effects of radiation on humans. In Radiation Sounds Jessica A. Schwartz examines the seventy-five years of Marshallese music developed in response to US nuclear militarism on their homeland. Schwartz shows how Marshallese singing draws on religious, cultural, and political practices to make heard the deleterious effects of US nuclear violence. Schwartz also points to the literal silencing of Marshallese voices and throats compromised by radiation as well as the United States’ silencing of information about the human radiation study. By foregrounding the centrality of the aural and sensorial in understanding nuclear testing’s long-term effects, Schwartz offers new modes of understanding the relationships between the voice, sound, militarism, indigeneity, and geopolitics.

Radiation maps of ocean sediment from the Castle Bravo crater

On March 1, 1954, the United States conducted its largest thermonuclear weapon test in Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands; the detonation was code-named “Castle Bravo.” Radioactive deposits in the ocean sediment at the bomb crater are widespread and high levels of contamination remain today. One hundred thirty cores were collected from the top 25 cm of surface sediment at ocean depths approaching 60 m over a ∼2-km2 area, allowing for a presentation of radiation maps of the Bravo crater site. Radiochemical analyses were performed on the following radionuclides: plutonium-(239,240), plutonium-238, americium-241, bismuth-207, and cesium-137. Large values of plutonium-(239,240), americium-241, and bismuth-207 are found. Comparisons are made to core sample results from other areas in the northern Marshall Islands.

Background gamma radiation and soil activity measurements in the northern Marshall Islands

We report on measurements of external gamma radiation on 9 islands in 4 atolls in the northern Marshall Islands, all of which were affected by the US nuclear testing program from 1946 to 1958 (Enjebi, Ikuren, and Japtan in Enewetak Atoll; Bikini and Enyu in Bikini Atoll; Naen in Rongelap Atoll; and Aon, Elluk, and Utirik in Utirik Atoll). We also report americium-241, cesium-137, plutonium-238, and plutonium-239,240 activity concentrations in the soil samples for 11 islands in 4 northern atolls (Enewetak, Japtan, Medren, and Runit in Enewetak Atoll; Bikini and Enyu in Bikini Atoll; Naen and Rongelap in Rongelap Atoll; and Aon, Elluk, and Utirik in Utirik Atoll) and from Majuro Island, Majuro Atoll in the southern Marshall Islands. Our results show low external gamma radiation levels on some islands in the Enewetak Atoll and Utirik Atoll, and elevated levels on Enjebi Island in the Enewetak Atoll, on Bikini Atoll, and on Naen Island in the Rongelap Atoll. We perform ordinary kriging on external gamma radiation measurements to provide interpolated maps. We find that radionuclides are absent from all Majuro soil samples, and that they are present at highest activity concentrations in samples from Runit and Enjebi islands (Enewetak Atoll), Bikini Island (Bikini Atoll), and Naen Island (Rongelap Atoll). We contextualize all results by making comparisons between islands and to various standards, as well as to regions of the world affected by nuclear accidents. We also discuss implications for informed decision-making by the Marshallese and local atoll governments and their people on issues pertaining to island resettlement.

Arguing over A-Bombs

Interservice rivalry between the United States Army and Navy over the 1946 Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests was an example of a larger rivalry over roles, missions, and budgets that was endemic to U.S. defense policy immediately after World War II.The tests became embroiled in this larger conflict because of the perception that they could be employed by either service to argue its case for the lion’s share of resources in the postwar world.Therefore, each service went to great lengths to try to assure the press and public that the tests were not “rigged.”What is most interesting, however, about the atomic bomb tests of Operation Crossroads was the fact that the test results were so inconclusive.

A Movie (1958)

A Movie (1958) is a twelve-minute compilation montage of vintage newsreels, soft-core "girlie movies," low-budget Westerns, educational and ethnographic films, and other black and white 16mm film ephemera. Filmmaker Bruce Conner selected scenes ranging from the anonymous and slightly absurd—stampeding horses, car crashes, tightrope walkers, half-nude women, and deep sea divers—to more historically specific, even iconic images: the Hindenburg in flames, Teddy Roosevelt orating, the Tacoma bridge collapse of 1940, and, most strikingly, the 1946 underwater atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.

Vocal Ability and Musical Performances of Nuclear Damages in the Marshall Islands

The United States conducted sixty-seven nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands from 1946 through 1958. The program was shrouded in secrecy; information about the tests conducted on Marshallese bodies and their land remains classified. This essay considers how Marshallese women from Bikini Atoll and Rongelap Atoll musically sound physical and physiological disruptions and dislocations that expose broader damages caused by the nuclear testing program. Analyzing compositions and performances from a repertoire of Marshallese “radiation songs,” the essay proposes a stylistic framework that works to familiarize listeners with a sonorized logic of radiation which is compiled through recurring motifs of the disabled voice, text setting and silences, and the figure of the question, literal and rhetorical. I stress the political import of these songs as highlighting the failures of biopolitical controls on communities by exposing the production of confined disability at the level of cultural and structural violence.

Worlds Collide at Love’s Canal

In 1938, Hooker Electrochemical confronted a future without its founder when Elon died in a tragic automobile accident. The longtime patriarch was just 68 years old. Hosannas to his leadership piled up in a moving tribute album, which was quickly published as a special edition of the company newsletter, “Hooker Gas.” “Engineer, Industrialist, Patriot, Public Servant, Author, Humanitarian”: Elon Huntington Hooker was all of these things, the tribute declared, and would be sorely missed. Yet while Elon’s passing hit family and friends hard, it did not slow the firm’s extraordinary growth. Indeed, over the next thirty years, Hooker Chemical (as it soon became known) grew at an even more impressive rate than during Elon’s time. By midcentury, the company was a global leader in the production of an astonishing array of chemicals beyond bleaching powder and caustic soda—degreasers, rubbers, explosives, defoliants, plastics, and much more. One measure of its far-reaching reputation came in the late 1940s, when Hooker executive Bjarne Klaussen traveled from Niagara Falls to the South Pacific to watch a new round of atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. Cleared of its native inhabitants, the tiny island served as Ground Zero for a weapon far more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War II. Klaussen was part of a small delegation from American corporations and universities that had made “special contributions” to the nation’s atomic development. “Hooker played an important role in the Manhattan Project,” the company historian bragged just a few years later (without providing further details, though they probably revolved around chemical igniters and explosives). The company would remain a key player on the Cold War chemical front for years to come. Hooker’s explosive growth during the 1940s and 1950s had a palpable impact on the Love Canal landscape too. For booming production overwhelmed the firm’s on-site disposal capacity. Searching for new ways to deal with this growing problem, Hooker resorted to “inground disposal” at sites beyond the Niagara plant.