Primary Sources
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1 Bibliography Primary Sources Addressing the Japanese fishing vessel that was affected by the Castle Bravo blast. March 24, 1954. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb459/docs/doc%204C%20%203-23 -54%20tokyo%20cable.pdf. Castle Bravo unknowingly affected the crew of a Japanese fishing vessel. The Japanese wanted compensation. Additionally, this was proof of the radioactive dangers of these thermonuclear bombs. Armed Forces Special Weapons Project. OPERATION CASTLE. Albuquerque, NM, 1959. Accessed August 28, 2019. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/garcia2/docs/0201_a.pdf. Operation Castle was initiated as a consequence of Operation Ivy, and was used to confirm Operation Ivy's data. This technical report further explained the purpose and went into detail about the execution of Operation Castle. Although it focuses more on Operation Castle, it shows how integral the information gathered by Operation Ivy was to further development of thermonuclear bombs. Before and after the bombing of Elugelab. November 1, 1952. Photograph. Accessed August 25, 2019. http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/elugelab-is-missing.jpg. Elugelab is completely vaporized after Ivy Mike is detonated on November 1, 1952. This horrific set of images captures string of atolls in the Marshallese islands before and after Ivy Mike. In the after photo, Elugelab has been completely wiped off the map, demonstrating the environmental distress caused by Operation Ivy. Bikini atoll crater from Castle Bravo. Photograph. Earth Observatory. August 13, 2013. Accessed September 2, 2019. 2 https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/83000/83237/bikiniatoll_oli_20132 31.jpg. This picture is a satellite image of current Bikini atoll which contains a giant crater from Castle Bravo. This is crucial supplementary evidence to prove how devastating the thermonuclear bombs were. This also puts into perspective the sheer power of Operation Castle’s bombs: an improvement upon this. The Boston Daily Globe. Accessed September 18, 2019. https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/hydrogen-bomb-1950. The H-Bomb utilizes a trigger that generates heat to set off the thermonuclear fusion, as detailed by this article praising the AEC. It is stated that the AEC had started another project for the hydrogen bombs, presumably Operation Ivy. This helps to demonstrate the magnitude of tension built by mutually assured destruction so hauntingly real during the Cold War. Castle Bravo Detonation. March 1, 1954. Photograph. Accessed August 25, 2019. https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/BravoC167c10.jpg. This is the mushroom cloud and resulting fireball from Castle Bravo's detonation. The image demonstrates the devastating power that these experiments were causing, leading us to the conclusion that the experiments so close to inhabited land was an obvious violation of human rights against the Bikinians. Crawl Out Through the Fallout. By Sheldon Allman. 1960, compact disc. Accessed January 31, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XPzICHxXoQ. This song, Crawl Out Through the Fallout, illustrates the impact that the idea of having nuclear war had on people. They wanted to express the idea of nuclear war as something comedic and commonplace. This song details the aftermath of nuclear war. In addition to this, this was not the only song about nuclear war to be published throughout the Cold War, creating a rather sad normalization of the reality of possible nuclear annihilation. 3 Department of Commerce Weather Bureau. Marshall Islands File Tracking Document/World-Wide Fallout From Operation Castle. Report no. 164. Washington, DC, 1955. Accessed August 28, 2019. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/garcia2/docs/51383e.pdf. Operation Castle was supposed to be an improvement of Ivy: more powerful and overall better technology. The debris in the atmosphere was significantly less from Operation Ivy to Operation Castle. This kind of technological improvement undoubtedly played a big factor in the tensions of the Cold War. Department of Defense Defense Nuclear Agency. Operation Ivy 1952. 1952. Accessed August 18, 2019. https://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/2-Hist_ Rpt_Atm/1952_DNA_6036F.pdf. Ivy Mike was the first ever thermonuclear bomb to be detonated. It created a surface level explosion that produced 10.4 megatons of force, equal to the explosive force of 10,400,000 tons of TNT. 15 years after the blast, leukemia and radiation was found to becoming increasingly prevalent among those who were present for those who participated in the operation. Operation Ivy was a test to push the limits of nuclear technology as well as learn to measure radiation. Hoover, Will. "Bikini Atoll survivors recall horror of nuclear explosion." Honolulu Advertiser (Honolulu, HI), March 2, 2003. Accessed September 18, 2019. http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Mar/02/ln/ln05a.html. The people of the Marshall Islands were not properly informed about the tests resulting in their radiation, among other negative impacts. There were jellyfish babies born due to the radiation, which was traumatic. There were also susceptibilities to cancer. This is further documentation of the human rights violation of Operation Castle. 4 The images contain physicians responsible for the creation of H-Bombs. Photograph. Accessed September 18, 2019. https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/hydrogen-bomb-1950. Isidor Rabi was an American physicist. He had won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1944. He had discovered nuclear magnetic resonance, used for magnetic resonance imaging. Hans Bethe was a man who's work correlated with the theory of atomic nuclei. He had developed a theory of deuteron in 1934, later expanding the study in 1949. Klaus Fuchs was a physician in charge of studying the effects that thermonuclear reactions produce on the Earth. Ivy King Fireball. November 1, 1952. Photograph. Accessed August 25, 2019. https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Iking3.jpg. This is the resulting fireball from the world's second hydrogen bomb test: Operation Ivy's King shot. The mushroom cloud reached into the sky, and the dust barely settled, resulting in the disappearance of a pilot. This further supports the idea of the destructive nature of the thermonuclear bomb as well as potential to harm that it already demonstrated. Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA). "H-BOMB TEST STORY MEETS AEC SILENCE." November 9, 1952. The government kept the tests secret from the public, however information had already been leaked. Officials denied knowledge to the public. The military throughout the United States continually denied knowing anything about the nuclear bomb, causing even further stress upon the public. Memorandum of Conversation. July 6, 1954. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb459/docs/doc%2012%20hot%20tuna.pdf. Reports of radiation poisoning in fish around the Castle Bravo detonation site were becoming increasingly common. This widespread effect further illustrates the dangerous 5 nature of thermonuclear development, and the environmental neglect that occurred by performing these tests. Military Effects Studies on Operation CASTLE. United States Air Force, 1954. https://archive.org/details/MilitaryEffectsStudiesonOperationCastle1954. This video shows the data and effects of the bombing of Bikini Atoll. Absolutely devastating, giant gusts of wind pushed out from the area as the US military stands by. It was incredibly powerful, and deliberate. The main thermal pulse of the low yield weapon completes in a few seconds. It takes 3 seconds to peak for the higher yield while it also maintained a longer duration. There was great intellectual progress. The New York Times (New York, NY). "EXPERIMENTS FOR HYDROGEN BOMB HELD SUCCESSFULLY AT ENIWETOK; LEAKS ABOUT BLAST UNDER INQUIRY." November 12, 1952. People started suspecting that the hydrogen bomb went off, and more pressure from the public to know the status of the bomb as the Cold War went on caused frenzy as documentation and information that was leaked and later revealed. People were terrified about what was about to happen next, showing the social repercussions of the Cold War and the secretive nature of thermonuclear bombs. "Nuclear Testing Program In The Marshall Islands." July 19, 2005. Accessed September 2, 2019. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/gutwald2/docs/S_Hrg_109-178.pdf. Operation Ivy and Operation Castle releases widespread radiation throughout the Pacific. The AEC went through with radiation monitoring in order to see the larger effects of the bomb. They later learned that it spanned all the way to Hawaii and Guam, as radiation levels were slightly elevated in those places. 6 Operation CASTLE. Defense Threat Reduction Agency, n.d. Accessed August 25, 2019. https://www.dtra.mil/Portals/61/Documents/NTPR/1-Fact_Sheets/CASTLE%20-%20201 7.pdf?ver=2017-02-07-081707-913. Operation Ivy was the beginning to the rest of the thermonuclear bomb tests, such as Castle. Additionally, Operation Ivy led to the moving of test locations from Nevada to the Marshallese atolls. This was good for the background and transition from Operation Ivy to Operation Castle. Operation Castle. U.S. Department of Energy, 1954. https://archive.org/details/gov.doe.0800013. This video documents the process of Operation Castle, and the explosion. This shows the deliberate actions taken to execute Operation Castle, yet the complete neglect for the Marshallese people. Operation IVY. 1952. https://archive.org/details/OperationIVY1952. This video demonstrates the entire process in which Operation Ivy occured, from planning to the actual dropping of the bomb. It begins by talking about the upcoming test of the Mike bomb. It's too dangerous to test on land, so they choose to go to the Marshallese Islands. At the time manned machines were quite the force for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Instead of utilizing experimental drones, manned jets were much more effective for the testing of nuclear bombs. In this case the Mike bomb was tested by these pilots creating cheaper methods of testing for the US. Operation Ivy: Mike Shot. AtomicHeritage, 2016.