Chapter 1 



Research at Enewetak Atoll: A Historical Perspective 



PHILIP HELFRICH' and ROGER RAYf 



'Hawaii Institute of Marine Biologi^. Uniuersiti/ of 

 Hawaii, Kaneoke. Hawaii 96744: 

 fNevada Operations Office, U. S^ Department of 

 Energi^, Las Vegas, Nevada 89114: current 

 address is 10252 Hatherleigh Dr., Bethesda. 

 Maryland 20814 



INTRODUCTION 



The Pacific theater of operations in World War II 

 brought millions of military personnel to the tropical 

 Pacific, and their activities on the Pacific Islands afforded 

 close contact and awareness of the physiography and 

 natural history of these small dots of land scattered in the 

 vast expanse of ocean. This enhanced awareness, coupled 

 with a recognized need by the military establishment for 

 increased knowledge of Pacific Island areas, led to 

 government-sponsored investigations, complemented by 

 efforts of many individual scientists whose interest had 

 been stimulated by wartime visits to these islands. In the 

 postwar period, two activities of the U. S. government 

 focused further interest on the coral atoll of the tropical 

 Pacific and influenced the future of research at Enewetak 

 Atoll (Figs. 1 and 2). The origin of the spelling "Eniwetok" 

 is lost but would appear to be a phonetic rendering of 

 what the people called their atoll. In 1973 it gave way to 

 the current spelling, consistent with written Marshallese, 

 and meaning "island which points to the east." 



World War II demonstrated the importance of these 

 small, scattered land masses to any military confrontation 

 in the Pacific basin. After the war, the U. S. Navy moved 

 to develop a series of permanent bases from among the 

 many temporary wartime bases and outposts which had 

 been established across the Pacific. With the prominent 

 role of the Navy in developing and maintaining these 

 bases, it is not surprising that the Navy's research arm, 

 the Office of Naval Research (ONR), inaugurated a scien- 

 tific program in the late 1940s aimed at a better under- 

 standing of atoll morphology and of all aspects of island 

 life from microorganisms to human inhabitants. The ONR 

 funded a series of expeditions in conjunction with the 

 Pacific Science Association, many of which were to atolls 



in the central and western tropical Pacific. Arno Atoll in 

 the southern Marshall Islands and Onotoa Atoll in the Gil- 

 bert Islands (now Kiribati) were subjects of intensive inves- 

 tigation in 1950 and 1953, respectively. Scientists 

 involved in these atoll studies contributed to the establish- 

 ment of the Eniwetok Marine Biological Laboratory (EMBL) 

 on Medren Island, Enewetak Atoll, in 1954. 



The second postwar activity which served to focus 

 attention on the mid-Pacific area was the atomic wcafwns 

 testing program in the northern Marshall Islands. Two 

 atomic weapons had inflicted mortal damage upon Japan 

 and had brought a precipitous end to the war in the 

 Pacific. Military planners and strategists knew very little 

 about this new and awesome strategic resource. Thus, an 

 area was sought which might accommodate full-scale test- 

 ing of atomic weapons. Neil Mines (1962) in his book 

 Proving Ground describes the process of choosing the 

 northern Marshall Islands as the testing site. First Bikini 

 Atoll and then Enewetak Atoll became test sites, to be 

 known together as the Pacific Proving Ground. National 

 security considerations soon led to research and develop- 

 ment testing and, with the impetus of the cold war, to the 

 testing of thermonuclear weapons in these islands. In all, 

 between 1946 and 1958, 43 nuclear devices were tested 

 at Enewetak and 23 on Bikini — events which were to have 

 profound and lasting environmental, social, and cultural 

 effects upon these two atolls as well as others nearby. The 

 nuclear testing program provided a setting, a focus of 

 interest, and an opportunity for research in the northern 

 Marshall Islands which eventually led to the establishment 

 of the EMBL. 



THE WEAPONS TESTING PROGRAM 



Soon after the 1946 tests at Bikini (Operation 

 Crossroads), which had been designed to assess the mili- 

 tary significance of atomic weapons, the United States 

 Congress created the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), a 

 civilian agency charged with responsibility for the research, 

 development, testing, and production of nuclear weapons. 

 This new agency was to become host and manager of the 

 Pacific Proving Ground and, later, sponsor of EMBL. 



Operation Crossroads was largely a seaborne opera- 

 tion, with logistic support from the naval base at 



