Bidding “Farewell to Bikini”:
National Geographic and United States’
Atomic Testing in the Pacific
Men Otemjej Rej Ilo Bein AniJ (Everything is in the Hands of
God)
—Juda, Bikini Atoll, 1946
Civilization and the Atomic Age had come to Bikini, and they
had been in the way.
—National Geographic, Bikini Atoll, 1946
In this essay, I will examine how National Geographic magazine
represented United States’ atomic testing in the Pacific. I am especially
interested in the magazine’s coverage of the atomic tests—code named
“Operation Crossroads”—at Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946. The fact that
these were the first atomic explosions after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that they
were widely publicized and anticipated, and even more significantly, that they
were in a remote island locale with “exotic” natives, directly appealed to
National Geographic. It combined two of the magazine’s longstanding
fascinations, human conquest of nature (nuclear fission) and the primitive (the
Marshallese) is a most dramatic fashion: atom and anthropology came together
on the atoll in a singular way.
I have chosen to focus on National Geographic not only because I was
a devoted reader of the magazine while growing up (my parents still have every
issue since 1959 and are trying to co