(clock ticking)
- Let me take you back to July 16th, 1945.
On this day, a team of nuclear engineers
detonated the world's first nuclear device ever,
right here in New Mexico.
It's hard to overstate this moment.
This moment ended an era and started a new one.
(bomb explodes)
21 days later, a U.S. bomber flew over a city
in Southern Japan with one of these bombs in its belly
and it dropped it from 30,000 feet above the ground.
The bomb dropped for 43 seconds
before exploding a few hundred meters above the ground,
turning this city into dust.
This was the first time that a nuclear weapon
had ever been used to kill humans.
And three days later, the U.S. dropped another one
on another city in Japan.
360,000 people, most of them civilians,
dead from these attacks.
The president at the time, Harry Truman,
was on a ship crossing the Atlantic from Europe,
his voice broadcasting across the world.
- An American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima.
That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT.
- The nuclear era had begun, and soon the Soviet Union
was developing a bomb of their own.
It became a race,
who could develop the biggest and best bomb.
But this nuclear bomb technology was unpredictable
and not really well understood.
The only way to keep developing it was to test it,
so that they could understand how to build these things.
The first test was here in the U.S.,
but soon the tests moved far away from the U.S.
deep into the Pacific.
This is the story of a bomb, but it's also the story
of the cultural shock waves
that these far away tests created here in the U.S.
and around the world.
From French swimsuits to propaganda films
meant to deceive the nation,
to monsters and Japanese protest films,
this story has some twists and turns.
So buckle up, and let me tell you the story
of why the U.S. bombed the (beep) out of these islands.
- A bomb will not start a chain reaction in the water.
Converting it all to gas, letting all the ships
on all the oceans drop down in the bottom.
- [Man] We have spent more than $2 billion
on the greatest scientific gamble in history.
And we have won.
- One second.
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and now back to our story.
- Oops.
(bomb explodes)
- Okay, let's back up and talk about that very first
nuclear test in New Mexico.
This is the bomb that they used.
They blew this thing up
in the most remote place they could find
in the U.S., 100 miles south of Albuquerque
in the middle of the New Mexican desert.
Because this was the first nuke ever,
no one really knew what was gonna happen.
They had no idea how explosive this thing was.
And so this guy who ran the test range,
his name was Norris Bradbury,
he was in charge of measuring this,
of assessing how big the blast was
so he could report and be like,
"These nuclear bombs are this powerful."
He was not ready for what he saw next.
(bomb explodes)
After the explosion, he said, verbatim, quote,
"The atom bomb did not fit into any preconceptions
"possessed by anybody", i.e. you can't fathom
how insanely powerful this thing is.
You could see the flash
and feel the shockwave from 160 miles away.
It was clear that this bomb was unpredictable
and hard to measure,
and scientists were realizing that the radiation
from this bomb could spread and they didn't know how much
and how far and how dangerous this thing would be.
The director of the project of the nuclear weapons
sort of freaked out with the lack of precision
on all of this.
He's like, "Did we just poison
"the entire Southwestern United States with radiation?"
(suspenseful music)
So they realized that they had to find a more remote place
if they were gonna keep testing their nukes.
And so this is where the treasure hunt
for the perfect nuclear testing site begins.
- It is the duty of the military services
to explore the military might of this new weapon.
- So you get these two Naval officers who were tasked
with finding the next nuclear test site,
and they literally just said, quote,
"We just took out a dozen maps
"and started looking for remote sites."
Okay, I can get on board with just pulling out
a bunch of maps and just perusing around,
it's sort of what I do in my spare time
so I can totally see this happening.
As they were looking at these maps,
they quickly realized that nowhere in the U.S.
is a good fit for a nuclear test site.
They needed somewhere that was extremely far away
from population centers
and they needed it to be not freezing cold,
like in Alaska or something.
I'm just imagining Harry Truman, the president at the time.
In the course of 30 days,
this guy just tested this new bonkers technology,
which happened to put an entire city at risk.
He literally destroyed two Japanese cities
and won the war with this technology.
From a global control and leadership perspective,
this guy is feeling very powerful,
except for he's a little bit nervous
about the intel that the USSR
is working on the same weapon.
They've been doing it for three years,
and the world is generally in a state of uncertainty.
Empires that ruled for centuries are losing control.
There's now two governments that are competing
for global dominance, and these weapons,
these nuclear weapons, are the key to winning.
And now Truman is being told
that you can't test these weapons on American soil
because they're too close to population centers.
So what do you do?
So Truman decides that if the perfect nuclear test site
doesn't exist, he will make it exist.
So back to these maps.
Where do we go?
Where do we set up the test site?
They start looking far far away off of U.S. soil,
deep into the ocean, and they eventually settled
on this little strip of beach called the Bikini Atoll.
- [Man] This is Bikini.
It is here that the military and scientific personnel
conduct the tests for the atomic bomb.
- The name Bikini means coconut island
roughly in the local language.
They liked this island because the weather was good.
There wasn't a lot of storms and it had this nice lagoon
that they could position a Naval fleet there
to see what nuclear weapons do to Naval vessels.
These islands had sort of been conquered by Japan,
but then the U.S. obviously conquered Japan
so they sort of took over these islands,
but they didn't officially own them, but they wanted to.
The problem was that there was a bunch of people
living on these islands.
Oh, and by the way, this isn't 1893.
You can just show up and steal islands anymore
without people getting sort of pissed off.
So Harry Truman, what do you do?
You send in this guy.
- Mr. Ben Wyatt.
- Thank you, thanks.
- The guy's name was Ben Wyatt.
No, no, no, no, not, not that one.
It's a different one from the 40s,
and he is on a mission to obtain this Atoll from the locals
so that the U.S. can turn it into their nuclear playground.
One of the secret reasons why the U.S. picked this island
wasn't just because of the weather and the lagoon,
it was also because these people had already been visited
by Christian missionaries.
They were used to white people arriving to their country
and trying to convince them of things,
and this became really useful.
So one Sunday after church,
he gathers all the local Bikinians
to ask them if they would like to leave their island,
and he promises them,
"This will be temporary.
"We just need it for a little bit."
And people are like, "Okay."
But don't worry, Ben is prepared for this.
He's got something in his back pocket.
He starts to compare the Bikinians
to the children of Israel, the chosen people,
saying that this is their duty to leave the islands
so that the U.S. can pursue their noble aim
of testing nuclear weapons.
- [Newscaster] The United States government
now wants to turn this great destructive power
into something for the benefit of mankind.
- He's just buttering them up with Jesus,
and it is so blatant.
- Everything being in God's hands, it must be good.
- So eventually, we're not really sure how it all went down
with whatever backroom deals, but under the condition
that these people would be able to come back,
they agreed to leave the island,
to hand them over to the U.S.
"But wait, don't go yet", says Ben Wyatt.
After the deal is made, he invites a film crew
from National Geographic to stage a reenactment
of the whole scenario to make a film for a month.
- Crossroads scene 25, take one.
- They had these shoots in the churches
that they had to have the people there
go to church several times
so that they could get it from different angles.
- [Narrator] First they sing their own version
of "Glory to God in the Highest."
(speaking foreign language)
- They made this huge propaganda film
and guess who it was for?
The American people.
It was like, "Look, United States,
"yes we're taking over this island,
"but look at how happy these people are.
"They love this.
"Look at how cool Ben Wyatt is
"with his charismatic, convincing, persuasive Jesus talk."
So the U.S. is one step closer
to having their nuclear playground.
They ship away these natives to nearby islands
with no food, water or shelter,
and then the bombs begin.
- [Announcer] It is now 30 seconds to zero time.
(bomb explodes)
They dropped their first nuke on the Bikini Atoll
on June 30th, 1946.
These were much bigger bombs than were dropped in Japan,
and unlike the original tests, which were very secret,
the U.S. now wanted the world,
or the Soviet Union, to know about it.
It was like a giant PR campaign, the opposite of top secret.
- [Radio Announcer] The radio station will be broadcasting
from Bikini.
- And it totally worked.
Soon the whole world was like,
"What?
"The U.S. is testing atomic bombs
"on a random atoll in the middle of the Pacific?
A few days after this first test on Bikini,
a French fashion designer released his new swimsuit.
It was a two-piece women's swimsuit that, wait for it,
revealed a woman's belly button.
Highly scandalous.
There was a ton of outcry, it was highly controversial,
and when he announced it, he saw an opportunity
to ride this publicity wave happening
from the nuclear tests,
so he named this swimsuit the bikini.
(groovy music)
It was radical, it was scandalous, it was controversial,
but it totally worked.
- The question: should bikinis be banned?
- He and his swimsuit got tons of attention,
both good and bad.
- Do you think bikinis should be banned?
- Well, I most certainly do.
- No, definitely not, no.
- Rather than wear a bikini, why wear anything at all?
- But the naming of the bikini is just the beginning
of how these nuclear bombs started shaping
and influencing popular culture.
Children's toys, comics, cartoons, superheroes,
alcoholic drinks, beauty pageants, songs.
The word atomic was everywhere.
People started saying, "You're the bomb" as a compliment.
People calling someone "Atomic" now meant you're hot.
And all the while, the tests on Bikini
got bigger and more frequent,
way way bigger than anything that happened in Japan.
You know, that bomb that killed over 350,000 people.
Yeah, these bombs were way bigger
and people started to get scared,
so much show that the commander for these Bikini tests
had to get up in front of the nation
and dispel some of these fears,
like whether or not the bomb would blow up the whole ocean.
- The bomb will not start a chain reaction in the water.
- Or whether or not it would turn the ocean into gas.
- Converting it all to gas, letting all the ships
on all the oceans drop down to the bottom.
- One of the leading theories
was that this bomb was so intense
that it would crack open the Earth
and the core would leak out,
and it would be the end of gravity.
- It will not blow out the bottom of the sea
and let all the water run down the hole.
It will not destroy gravity.
I am not an atomic Playboy.
- Wait, what, what did she just say?
- I am not an atomic Playboy.
- Oh my God.
(Johnny laughing)
So it turns out this guy was in love
with what was happening on Bikini.
He was just so into this.
And after the first test, he staged a giant celebration,
in which a literal nuke shaped cake was produced.
And it turns out that some people didn't like the fact
that this guy was celebrating the advent
of this destructive weapon,
especially surrounded by women, quote,
"Dressed to the nines."
And so, because of all of this partying
and the cake and whatever, he was dubbed the atomic Playboy,
which is just an amazing title.
- I am not an atomic Playboy.
- Okay, but there's one more very important way
that these nuclear tests on Bikini influenced our culture,
and it's not swimsuits, and it's not even SpongeBob
who lives in Bikini Bottom
and occasionally has a run-in with nukes.
- Atom by atom!
Uh oh.
(bombs exploding)
- It's what happened in February 1954,
when they tested this guy, a particularly huge bomb,
a thousand times larger than Hiroshima.
When this bomb was detonated in Bikini,
a Japanese tuna fishing boat named Lucky Dragon was nearby.
I mean, it wasn't nearby,
but it, for this bomb, it was in range.
It received a large dose of radiation,
and the crew of 23 men returned to Japan,
where they were hospitalized.
It was reported that some of the tuna from their boat
was sold and consumed by Japanese citizens.
- [Newscaster] The ship's cargo of tuna fish
was found to be radioactive
and had to be buried in the ground.
- You have to understand, radiation is a freaky thing.
It is this invisible force that destroys your cells
without you ever seeing or feeling anything at first.
This panic spread
and Japan's fishing economy took a giant hit.
Japanese citizens were horrified.
- [Newscaster] Throughout the towns and villages of Japan,
the people, young and old,
are adding their signatures to this appeal.
Stop the experiments, outflow the bomb.
- And when activists created a protest film,
which took place on an island
that has a very similar resemblance to Bikini.
And then near this island, a monster named Gojira is born.
He comes out of the ocean, quote,
"Emitting high levels of H bomb radiation."
Are you getting where we're going here?
The first thing that the monster does
after emerging was destroying a tuna boat
labeled Lucky Dragon.
I mean, this is totally on the nose.
It's not a hidden symbolism film.
This film was a pointed protest at all of these tests
and the effects that they were having
on the local people, ecology and economies.
And it helped mobilize a fierce anti-nuclear movement
in Japan that was already there
because of what Japan had already experienced.
Oh, and the film was actually pretty good.
So the film actually came to the U.S. too.
It was dubbed over in English for U.S. audiences,
but it was renamed to Godzilla
and it was edited to remove
all of the overt anti-nuclear symbols.
The government's like, "We can't have that happening.
"We're putting so much work into the PR
"of projecting how good nuclear weapons are.
"No way some protest film from Japan
"about a monster is gonna derail this."
So Godzilla lost its protest appeal
and became just another monster movie.
- [Announcer] Dynamic violence!
Savage action!
Spectacular thrills!
- In the years following World War two,
this is the total amount of explosive force detonated
between the U.S. and Soviet Union.
But when broken down by location,
you can see that 87% of this explosive force
took place right here.
So many bombs were dropped here,
including one named Castle Bravo,
which was literally a thousand times more powerful
than the one dropped on Hiroshima.
There's no way we can fathom this really,
but we can sort of try to do a thought exercise
to understand how powerful these bombs are.
If you detonated this here in Washington DC,
90% of the population of DC and Baltimore and Philadelphia
and New York would disappear in just three days.
Okay, so unsurprisingly, back in Bikini,
the locals never got to go back.
That was never the intention.
It was all a lie,
as much of a lie as the propaganda film itself.
Even if they did go back, it would be a death sentence.
A recent study found that this group of islands
is more radioactive than the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
But guess what?
No one cared.
No one cares.
When told about this radioactivity in the Pacific,
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said, and I quote,
"There are only 90,000 of them out there.
"Who gives a damn?"
What an asshole.
So this story explains how we got the name
for the swimsuit, the bikini,
why SpongeBob lives where he lives
and why we use the word bomb as a compliment.
But it also teaches us a deeper lesson
about what lengths we will go to retain power,
or as some frame it, to maintain peace.
That's a complicated paradox to entangle,
especially when this peace that we're talking about
relies on the potential of absolute destruction.
The race to build and test these nuclear weapons
led to the U.S. not taking the risk on their own soil.
Instead, doing what we've done so expertly
for many many decades,
exporting that risk and those consequences
to faraway places, to places where we can manipulate
and lie to the people and then pollute their oceans forever.