BOMBS AT BIKINI 



authorization of the President and Congress.* They re- 

 iterated that the Tests were not designed to prove or 

 disprove anything, but merely to find the facts. They 

 pointed to charts showing that the planned target 

 arrays bore no resemblance to fleets in harbor or at sea, 

 but were designed specifically to produce the optimum 

 amount of technical data. Continual effort was made 

 to deflate predictions of catastrophes. 



The last key to good public relations was provided 

 when authorization was arranged for inviting press 

 and radio to send representatives to Bikini. The Joint 

 Chiefs of Staff recommended such a course on January 

 10, 1946, and the Secretaries of War and Navy gave 

 their endorsement on February 5 ; final approval came 

 from the White House on March 14. Actual attend- 

 ance was as follows : 



Test A Test B 

 Representatives of U. S. press, radio, 

 pictorial services, magazines, etc. 114 75 



Foreign press, one representative from 

 each nation having membership in UN 

 Atomic Energy Commission, plus two 

 representatives from Great Britain 10 8 



* Even the task of keeping the public informed was made a 

 joint activity. On March 8, 1946, the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested 

 that individual Services cease expressing to the press their own 

 fragmentary news and asked that they channel all news releases 

 through the Task Force Commander's central puhlic relations 

 group. 



36 



