Because of changing winds, the government knew hours in advance that a 1954 hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific likely would contaminate populated islands but proceeded with the explosion anyway, defense documents indicate.
The documents, some of them declassified more than a decade ago but not widely made known, were presented Thursday at a congressional hearing examining whether victims of fallout in the Marshall Island chain should be granted additional compensation.Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, said he considers the 1954 test akin to deliberately experimenting with humans, knowing they would be exposed to dangerous radiation.
The U.S. government over the years has acknowledged 239 islanders had been affected by the tests but has claimed it had no further information on casualties. Miller said, however, some government documents now show the radioactive fallout was much wider than previously acknowledged and that hundreds more people - including some U.S. servicemen - were affected.
The March 1, 1954, hydrogen bomb test known as "Bravo Shot" was part of a series of detonations in the Bikini Atoll of the Marshall Islands as the United States sought to catch up to the Soviet Union, which had exploded a hydrogen bomb a year earlier.
The bomb's fallout was to have been directed north and northeast, away from the cluster of populated islands to the south and southeast.
But 12 hours before the scheduled test, meteorologists warned "conditions were getting less favorable" because of changing wind directions, according to government documents cited at a hearing of the Natural Resources investigations subcommittee.