Engineering Spaces for the Biological Effects of Fission

On 1 March 1954, a powerful thermonuclear device rocked Bikini Atoll in the United States’ Pacific Proving Grounds. Castle Bravo’s dangerously radioactive fallout blanketed nearby Rongelap Atoll like fresh snow. The US Navy quickly whisked away the Marshall Islanders who called the suddenly uninhabitable atoll home. This chapter tells the story of the fisheries biologists who studied radiation in the local food chain and paved the way for the exiles’ ill-fated 1957 return home. The scientists, from the Applied Fisheries Laboratory at the University of Washington, had studied the Proving Grounds since Operation Crossroads in 1946. I argue that their integration into the infrastructure at the Proving Grounds created the material conditions for them to practice biology that was rigorous but never critical of the site’s atomic mission. Holmes & Narver, Inc., the Los Angeles firm serving as the Atomic Energy Commission’s prime contractor in the Pacific, engineered sites that supported very particular Cold War technological and scientific results. This chapter zeroes in on the Eniwetok Marine Biology Laboratory, built by the firm for Operation Castle, as an element of the infrastructure that supported the Proving Grounds’ mission but failed to protect the health of the repatriated residents of Rongelap.