Destination: Tinian. A long way from chilly Scotland, Tinian, if you remember your history books, is where, of course, the B-29s Enola Gay and Bock’s Car were loaded up with Little Boy and Fat Man and sent off to the Japanese mainland to do their thing. Part of the Northern Marianas chain that includes Guam and Saipan, Tinian is a tiny place, only about the size of Manhattan. The 2 B-29 runways are still there, and still in good shape in spite of the encroaching jungle. The nexus of this site, of course, are the two pits that were sunk into the ground to facilitate loading the two gigantic atomic bombs into the bombers. According to Frank Sanders, who wrote about this place at http://www.atomictourist.com/tinian.htm , none of the servicing facilities, buildings or infrastructure from the old American air base still exist. The pits, which Mr. Sanders visited specifically, have been filled in and turned into strange little mini gardens with a sign at each pit in English and Japanese stating “Atomic Bomb Pit No. 1” and “Atomic Bomb Pit No. 2.” It’s a long way to go just to see some filled-in holes, I guess, but perhaps that’s all the better to keep that bit of our national past far from our eyes and thoughts?
Destination: Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. Finally, for plain old sobering weirdness, Bikini is a must-see but righteously difficult place to get to. Mainly the haunt of scuba divers, and with an unprecedented ghost fleet of wrecks to dive on (including the flattop USS Saratoga and ex-Imperial Japanese Navy battleship Nagota ( the ship that was used to direct the operations against Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941), Bikini Atoll was, during the 1940s and 1950s, a US testing site for atmospheric nuclear detonations, 23 all told. According to Bikini’s official web site (yes, they do have one) http://www.bikiniatoll.com/ , total land area is only 3.4 square miles shared among 23 islands. Soberingly, there were once three other islands called Bokonijien, Aerokojlol and Nam. Unfortunately, they were quite literally vaporized by the atomic testing. By all means, visit this place, but be aware of radiation. A 1996 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 1996 states that:
"It is safe to walk on all of the islands...the Advisory Group reaffirmed: although the residual radioactivity on islands in Bikini Atoll is still higher than on other atolls in the Marshall islands, it is not hazardous to health at the levels measured....by all internationally agreed scientific and medical criteria...the air, the land surface, the lagoon water and the drinking water are all safe. There is no radiological risk in visiting the lagoon or the islands. The nuclear weapon tests have left practically no cesium in marine life. The cesium deposited in the lagoon was dispersed in the ocean long ago…”
