Castle Bravo: America's Deadliest Nuclear Mistake

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Before sunrise on March 1st, 1954, 29-year-old Japanese fishing master Yoshio Masaki stood on the deck of his boat.

He was near the Marshall Islands, halfway between Hawaii and Australia.

Most of his crew were downstairs in their bunks, trying to get some rest.

They'd just finished releasing the ship's hundreds of fishing lines, a backbreaking task that began every morning at 3 a.m.

Masaki was tired too, but he still had work to do.

It had been a rough couple of weeks for his crew.

Their ship was called Lucky Dragon No.

5, but they hadn't had much luck on their fishing expedition.

They'd been caught in a few storms and almost swallowed up by the choppy seas.

Masaki and his men couldn't wait to get back to their homeport of Yaizu.

But first, they had to do one final fishing run.

Masaki looked up at the inky sky through a brass telescope.

He spotted Antares and used the star to calculate the boat's location.

He was glad to see they were on the right track.

They had decided to go south where the seas were calmer in search of yellowfin tuna.

The ship's radio man had warned Masaki that atomic tests had recently been conducted in the area.

There was a restricted American military zone nearby, so they charted their course to stay about 90 miles outside of it.

Masaki wanted to steer clear of water that might be brimming with toxic radiation.

He set his navigation device down, thinking about how nice it would be to sleep in his own bed again and enjoy a home-cooked meal.

Then suddenly, he saw something strange.

It was an eerie flash of bright light.

as if someone had flipped a switch to illuminate the entire ocean.

Masaki's eyes widened as the light turned from white to yellow, then red, and a dark pulsing orange.

It looked like the sea was on fire.

He stood there, paralyzed with fear.

He wondered if he was about to die.

This was probably an atomic bomb, like the ones the Americans had detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As Masaki tried to pull himself together, he saw his crew scramble up to the deck.

The strange light had woken him up.

Masaki needed to be a leader and stay calm for them.

He yelled at them to start pulling in the fishing lines.

After a few minutes, the fiery colors in the sky faded.

Masaki felt a wave of relief.

Then he heard a series of roaring blasts.

He braced for impact as the lucky dragon shook violently.

His men dropped and lay face down on the deck to protect themselves, terrified they were about to die.

To Masaki, it sounded like the Marshall Islands were sinking into the sea.

His worst nightmare was coming true.

Despite his efforts, they had wandered into a nuclear test zone, after all.

He wasted no time shouting orders.

They had to head back to Japan immediately.

Their lives were at risk.

But as the crew hauled in their fishing nets, Masaki noticed a strange white substance falling from the sky.

It looked like snow, only it was grittier and ashier.

Instead of melting, it stuck to his skin.

Masaki flinched as one of the particles landed in his eye.

It burned like acid.

Some of the the men complained they were getting dizzy.

One of them leaned over the ship's railing to throw up.

Masaki told him to keep calm and pull the lines in as quickly as they could.

But inside, he was terrified.

They were 2,500 miles away from Japan, in the middle of the ocean.

And if this was nuclear radiation, it was too late.

They'd already been exposed.

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From Balin Studios and Wondery, I'm Luke Lamana and this is Redacted Declassified Mysteries, where each week we shine a light on the shadowy corners of espionage, covert operations, and misinformation to reveal the dark secrets our governments try to hide.

This week's episode is called Castle Bravo, America's Deadliest Nuclear Mistake.

In 1945, when the U.S.

dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they effectively ended World War II.

These attacks devastated both cities and killed about 200,000 people.

Many died instantly, and others lost their lives later due to the long-term effects of radiation, often suffering from painful illnesses like leukemia.

The United States knew the terrible impact of these powerful new bombs, but the very next year, it began testing to expand its own nuclear arsenal.

Its goal was to stay ahead of the growing arms race with the Soviet Union.

The government identified the Marshall Islands, a remote area of the South Pacific, as the ideal test site.

Over the course of a decade, the U.S.

would detonate dozens of nuclear bombs there.

These tests might have demonstrated American nuclear dominance, but they would also reveal something else entirely, how little control the U.S.

had over these weapons and the terrible costs paid by the unknowing victims whose lives those weapons touched.

In May 1946, a decade before the Lucky Dragon's crew was exposed to radiation from a nuclear blast, a 22-year-old woman named Mary woke up on the tiny island of Rongarik in the South Pacific.

Her baby was crying again.

She rushed to soothe him before he woke up the rest of the family in their cramped house.

But no matter how hard she tried, there wasn't anything she could do.

The baby was desperately hungry, and so was she.

Just two months earlier, on March 7, 1946, Mary had climbed aboard a U.S.

Navy ship at Bikini Atoll, 125 miles away.

That day, she and the other 167 inhabitants of the island were forced to leave their homeland behind.

When the ship set sail, they waved handkerchiefs and sang hymns.

Tears streamed down Mary's face as she watched her island disappear into the distance.

She was devastated to leave the only home she and her family had ever known, but she hoped they would be back soon.

The Americans had promised everyone the move to Ronkarek would only be temporary, and besides, it was for the greater good.

Their isolated homeland was the safest place in the world to test nuclear weapons.

Their sacrifice could help prevent a future world war.

The king of Bikini Atoll, a man named Judah, had agreed to the relocation.

He said everything was now in the hands of God, so even though Mary was sad about leaving, she had chosen to put her faith in her leader.

Now, as her baby cried, she wasn't feeling so sure.

Life on Rongarik was nothing like she'd imagined.

This new island was one sixth the size of Bikini, and compared to her home, this place was barren.

Even before coming here, people said an evil spirit had poisoned the island, making its fish and fruit dangerous to eat.

The U.S.

government had given them canned food, but those supplies were quickly running out.

The Navy had built cisterns to collect water.

but there just wasn't enough for everybody on the island.

Mary got up and mixed the last spoonful of powdered milk she had for the baby.

Her head ached from dehydration, and it was hard to do anything when her stomach was screaming with hunger, but she had to find a way to feed her family.

Mary tied her son onto her back and headed outside to collect coconuts.

As she walked around the tiny island, Mary spotted several other malnourished mothers looking for coconuts too.

But the few trees dotting the shore were bare.

Mary felt a pit form in her stomach.

The Americans had lied to them.

They had agreed to leave their island, but they'd never really had a choice.

King Judah had spoken for them, hoping to get in the Americans' good graces.

And now, even though the move was supposed to be temporary, Mary felt trapped.

On the morning of July 1st, 1946, Wayne Guthrie stood in a crowd of eager journalists on the deck of the USS Appalachian.

He was a veteran reporter for the Indianapolis News.

He checked his watch and felt the rush of adrenaline as the big moment was almost here.

Just a year after World War II, the U.S.

was about to detonate an atomic bomb in Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands.

Dubbed Operation Crossroads, it would be the first test of its kind.

The military's press team presented it as a bold demonstration of America's strength and science.

The U.S.

had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, but the Soviets were amping up their own programs.

If they managed to build bigger, better nukes, the U.S.

would be at risk of annihilation.

This bomb they were testing this afternoon was the kind that would protect Americans in future wars.

Or maybe it would be so powerful that the mere threat of it could prevent another war from happening in the first place.

For the last two weeks, Guthrie and over 100 other journalists had been living aboard the USS Appalachian, preparing to cover the story.

Guthrie had been selected from thousands of reporters who'd applied.

It was clear to him that this was a historic moment, one that could solidify the U.S.

as a global superpower.

At the same time, these new weapons made him nervous.

He wondered if the scientists had truly learned how to control them.

And while the general mood on the ship was upbeat, Guthrie knew there were some scientists who were skeptical.

They'd warned that the bomb could cause an earthquake or the ocean to boil.

The American government didn't share those worries.

Their goal was to publicize the event as widely as possible.

As the ship chugged toward Bikini Atoll, Guthrie and the other reporters were briefed on the basics of nuclear physics, the region's history, and how to keep themselves safe when the bomb went off.

Finally, the moment they'd been waiting for arrived.

In this first test, a B-29 bomber would drop an atomic bomb onto a fleet of U.S.

test ships anchored in Bikini Lagoon.

The goal was to see how much devastation it could inflict on enemy ships.

Guthrie peered out from the press deck.

His protective goggles were dark, but he could still see the brightly painted target fleet.

He heard a voice crackle over the loudspeaker, repeating, bomb away, bomb away.

Guthrie held his breath, and then he saw a blazing red fireball explode into the sky.

Soon after, Guthrie heard the blast.

He looked up at the mushroom cloud billowing high above the ships.

The sky turned a brilliant red, then orange.

He'd never seen such vivid colors.

It was like a million Fourth of July fireworks exploding all at once.

Guthrie was relieved that his worst fears about the bomb hadn't come true.

There was no earthquake, and the sea remained calm.

But when the smoke cleared, he was surprised to see the test fleet was mostly still intact.

This supposedly all-powerful bomb had only sunk a handful of the target ships.

Even the palm trees on Bikini Atoll were still standing.

The government's onboard press team scrambled to explain away what the journalists had just seen.

The test had missed its target by half a mile, but they said things couldn't have gone better.

Guthrie looked at the other reporters on the deck, trying to gauge their reactions.

Was it possible that at this crucial moment in the arms race, America's secret superweapon had been a total nud?

Seven hours after the disappointing test, Dr.

Robert Connard stepped off a patrol boat onto the deck of one of the target ships waiting in Bikini Lagoon.

The water was eerily calm, but as he climbed onto the ship, the doctor felt nauseous and started to gag.

He was overwhelmed by the stench of blood and burned animal fur.

It was gruesome, but it wasn't a surprise to either Connard or his team.

Connard was a government scientist in his early 30s, and he had just been trained in a brand new field called atomic medicine.

His job was to study the impacts of radiation on humans.

A month earlier, servicemen had loaded a Navy ship with 5,000 rats, 200 goats, 200 pigs, 200 mice, and 60 guinea pigs.

The team had tagged each animal with a number to track its reactions to the bomb's effects.

Connard wanted to know what would happen to them and whether they would survive radiation exposure.

The government had received numerous letters from animal rights defenders protesting the sacrifice of these animals, but Connard's team team needed to analyze what these bombs could do to human beings, and testing animals first seemed like the best approach.

Connard walked along the deck to check on his test subjects.

His stomach lurched as he took in the gory scene.

He estimated that about 10% of the animals had been killed instantly by the blast.

Others were alive but hemorrhaging.

His heart sank as he saw a badly burned goat taking shallow breaths.

A pig lay nearby, struggling to stand.

Connard recognized the signs of gamma radiation exposure.

As a scientist, Connard knew how to separate his emotions from the research.

He focused on logging each animal's condition and arranging medical care for those that needed it.

But even for him, this was rough.

The journalists had written that the damage caused by the bomb was unimpressive, but Connard knew that wasn't the whole story.

After all, he was face to face with the bomb's victims, and the impacts were severe.

He shuddered to think of the destruction it would cause to humans.

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Nearly a decade later, on January 10, 1954, a young sailor aboard the USS Curtis looked back towards land as the ship pulled away from Port Chicago in California.

A harsh wind lashed his face, and he knew it would be weeks before he saw home again.

The sailor and his shipmates were starting a long journey to Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

They had a top-secret mission, to deliver the key components of a hydrogen bomb, the most powerful bomb ever built.

It would be used in a test codenamed Castle Bravo.

The sailor wished his family had been able to see him off at the port, but this wasn't a normal Navy ship.

They were operating under wartime orders.

That meant traveling in secret.

There were four Navy destroyers guarding them at all times.

At night, the ship's outside lights were shut off to help prevent it from being detected.

By the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union was catching up in the nuclear arms race.

It had tested its first atomic weapon a few years earlier, in 1949.

The U.S.

no longer had a monopoly.

That's why the government had adopted such a secretive approach.

The young sailor didn't have the clearance to know much about the bomb, but he knew they were carrying something very dangerous and was told it would keep him and his family safe from the Russians.

He just hoped that was true.

About a month later, on February 28th, 1954, John C.

Clark, the chief of the Castle Bravo firing team, stepped into Building 70 in the Marshall Islands.

It was the command center for the hydrogen bomb test, which was scheduled to take place the next morning.

The military had taken significant precautions to protect Clark and the other scientists.

The bunker was 22 miles from the bomb site.

Its walls were three feet thick and bolstered with another 10 feet of dirt and sand to protect the men from any radioactive fallout.

The building was even surrounded by a moat in case it got rocked by a tidal wave from the blast.

That day, Clark and the rest of the Castle Bravo team were making their final preparations.

The USS Curtis had safely delivered its cargo to the Marshall Islands.

Clark had inspected everything.

Now, he was silently going through his final checks again.

aware that the tiniest error could be devastating.

It was a familiar feeling for Clark.

He was a top scientist in the government's nuclear labs in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

He had overseen the detonation of almost every atomic bomb since the end of World War II.

Bombs didn't make him nervous.

He knew how they worked.

But this one was different.

It was the first hydrogen bomb that the United States could actually weaponize.

The previous age bomb, called Ivy Mike, had been too heavy to drop from an aircraft.

Now, this one could easily be deployed.

Clark just hoped they would never have to use it.

To prove the U.S.

still had the upper hand in the arms race, this Castle Bravo test needed to go off without a hitch.

Just six months earlier, the Soviets had tested their own hydrogen bomb and claimed it could easily be dropped by a plane too.

Pressure was mounting on the US.

Clark looked around the bunker at all the equipment, standing at the ready to fire and monitor the blast.

Tomorrow, he and a team of eight men would be on duty to support the operation.

Clark was feeling good about the test.

The only X factor was the weather.

Wind could be their enemy.

It could spread radiation far and wide.

At first, the weather conditions looked good, but the recent forecast had taken a turn for the worse.

Now there were high-altitude winds blowing right toward Rongolap Atoll, straight toward the islanders who had been evacuated there.

But Clark's boss, Dr.

Alvin Graves, the scientific director of the operation, wasn't concerned.

He believed the winds weren't moving fast enough to spread fallout to populated islands.

They were expected to reverse direction a few hours later and blow any lingering radiation away from inhabited areas.

Graves wasn't too worried about the health risks of radiation anyway.

He thought they were overblown.

After all, he'd been exposed to high levels of radiation during an accident at Los Alamos 12 years earlier, and the only damage he'd suffered was a bald spot.

Clark and his team sat up in the middle of the night, waiting for word from Graves.

It would be his call whether to go forward with the test.

Around 3 a.m., the bunker's radio crackled to life.

It was Graves.

The final weather briefing was over.

He gave them the green light.

The test of the biggest bomb in history was a go.

Soon after Graves' order, everyone in Building 70, on the ships, and at weather stations synchronized their clocks to global standard time.

The test was scheduled for March 1st, 1954, at 6.45 a.m.

Clark sent one of his team members up to the roof to seal the air conditioning vents with metal plates.

After he returned, the bunker's hatch slammed shut.

The nine men were now sealed in.

Clark felt confident they had done everything right.

He gave the go-ahead to start the automatic firing sequence.

He and his team watched in silence as the lights on their machine switched from red to green.

At 6.44, one of Clark's colleagues announced H-1 minute.

The team listened as their timer made its final countdown.

4.

3.

2.

1.

They waited anxiously for several moments.

Inside the windowless bunker, there was no way for them to know how the explosion went.

Clark radioed Graves to find out.

Graves was upbeat.

He had watched the blast from a ship 40 miles away.

He told Clark that Castle Bravo was a success.

Clark breathed a sigh of relief and braced for a sharp ground shock.

Soon the building began to rock slowly.

He grabbed the control panel to steady himself.

Fifteen minutes later, Clark gave the go-ahead to open the bunker door.

The men emerged cautiously to take a look outside.

Clark marveled at the white mushroom clouds still lingering in the sky.

Then he heard his Geiger counter start to crackle.

Radiation levels were rising.

That same morning, John Anjan, the mayor of Rongolap Atoll, was drinking coffee on the beach with his neighbor.

His wife, Mijua, sat inside their thatched home nearby, nursing their one-year-old son.

As John sipped his coffee, a sudden flash of light lit up the sky.

He'd never seen anything like this before.

A strange mix of red, yellow, and green.

Then, John felt the fierce hot wind hit his body, almost knocking him over.

He raced inside to his wife and son.

She was holding the baby, looking terrified.

Both of them knew the Americans did nuclear testing in the area.

That was why so many Marshalese had been displaced in the past decade.

But John was the mayor of the island, and he had not received a warning about any kind of test.

Then, they heard what sounded like a massive thunderclap as a blast wave hit the island.

John braced himself against the wall of his house.

He peered out and saw window flaps had been ripped right from his neighbors' homes.

The baby started screaming.

John looked over at his terrified wife.

He rushed outside.

He spotted some of his neighbors crying in fear.

They asked him what was happening.

They wanted to know if a war had come to their island again, just like a decade earlier when the U.S.

captured the Marshall Islands from Japan.

But there was nothing he could say to reassure them.

He just looked up at the sky above him, which was now white with smoke.

Standing outside the bunker at Building 70, Clark looked down at his Geiger counter.

It showed 8 milliRundkin per hour, less than a typical X-ray, but the counter kept creeping up.

It wasn't a dangerous level yet, but it was more than they expected to see this far away from the bomb.

Clark felt a chill run down his spine.

He'd been told the wind would blow the fallout away from them, but that clearly wasn't happening.

When the counter hit 50, Clark felt his palms start to sweat.

The levels were rising fast.

A dose of 75 milliruntin could cause radiation sickness, and 450 could be fatal.

Clark yelled for everyone to get back inside the bunker and to stay away from the windows.

The men huddled in a corner of the building behind a wall of sandbags.

Clark radioed Dr.

Graves at the command ship and told him he was worried about how quickly the radiation was climbing.

He needed to get his men out of there before they were impacted.

But Graves told him evacuating on helicopters wasn't an option yet.

The radiation levels outside were too risky to attempt a rescue right now.

They would have to stay put, at least for the next few hours.

When the helicopters finally arrived, Clark prepared his team for the evacuation.

They wrapped themselves tightly in bed sheets, cutting holes for their eyes.

This would keep the radioactive dust off their bodies.

They rushed outside as the helicopters landed and quickly climbed aboard.

As they lifted off, watching the island grow smaller in the distance, they breathed a sigh of relief.

They'd managed to escape this hell zone and were on their way back to the ship.

A safety officer checked them for radiation.

Luckily, none of the men had been exposed to harmful levels.

The next day, Clark learned that the bunker had saved their lives.

The explosion was more than twice as large as scientists had estimated and 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

If the men had stayed outside, they would have died from radiation exposure.

But for the islanders who had no bunkers, the worst was yet to come.

By 1 p.m.

on the day of the blast, Mijua, the wife of Mayor John Angen, was gathering leaves to weave a mat while her baby was playing nearby.

Suddenly, she noticed white flakes falling from the sky.

Mijua had never seen snow, but she figured it must look something like this.

She felt a wave of anxiety run through her.

She knew this had to be connected to the eerie lights and the thunderclap from earlier.

Soon the ashy powder was everywhere.

It covered the leaves of the coconut trees, the thatched roofs of their houses, the fish drying in the sun on wooden racks.

The islanders had never seen anything like this.

Mijua watched as children scooped up piles of the ash with their fingers.

Some people stuck their tongues out to taste the flakes as they fell.

Mijua then felt raindrops striking the top of her head.

Normally, this would have been good news.

There hadn't been much rain lately, and the island badly needed water.

But now the rain was spreading the ash, contaminating their barrels of drinking water.

Mijua rushed to bring her son out of the rain.

He'd been rolling around in the ash, playing.

Like the other babies on the island, he didn't wear clothes when it was hot out, so there was white powder all over his body and in his hair.

Mijua did her best to scrub it off.

She wasn't sure what this stuff was, but it made her uneasy.

Later that afternoon, Mijawa saw her husband John scratching his skin.

The white powder had fallen on him too, and he told her it was itchy like a buckbite.

Feeling thirsty, he went to get some water from the barrel, but he noticed it was yellow.

He warned his wife and the neighbors not to drink it.

Some people ate fish for dinner and said it tasted bitter.

Others felt nauseous after eating.

They all wondered if it had something to do with the strange white powder.

That evening, as the family got ready for bed, John took a walk on the beach.

By now, it was dark, and the white ash glowed under the moonlight.

He decided that tomorrow he would call a meeting of the island council.

He guessed the Americans must be behind whatever happened that day, but he hadn't heard anything from them.

John knew he had to get some answers and protect his family and his island.

He didn't know it yet, but this was only the start of a long quest for justice.

Castle Bravo exposed the Marshall Islands to intense levels of radiation.

A few days after the test, the people of Rongolap were evacuated to a different island and the U.S.

provided medical care.

But they suffered from radiation burns, hair loss, and long-term health complications, including high rates of thyroid disease and cancer, miscarriages, stillbirths, and severe birth defects.

John and Mijua Anjan's son, who was only a year old when the bomb went off, died of leukemia at the the age of 18.

Mijua was also diagnosed with cancer.

Decades after Castle Bravo, John Anjin fought for accountability from the U.S.

government and became a staunch advocate against nuclear weapons.

He died in 2004 at the age of 81.

U.S.

officials would have preferred to keep the Castle Bravo disaster a secret.

But the Japanese fishermen on the Lucky Dragon No.

5 made it international news.

They were more than 80 miles away from the blast site and were thought to be outside the danger zone.

But one of the crew died a few months later after he became sick from radiation poisoning.

The nuclear fallout was so extensive that it reached Japan, Australia, India, and even parts of the United States and Europe.

The entire world, but the Marshall Islanders in particular, are still living with the consequences.

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From Balin Studios and Wondery, this is Redacted: Declassified Mysteries, hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

A quick note about our stories.

We do a lot of research, but some details and scenes are dramatized.

We use many different sources for our show, but we especially recommend the book Blown to Hell, America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders by Walter Pincus.

Pacific, Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers by Simon Winchester, and the article, Castle Bravo, from the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

This episode was written by Susie Armitage, sound design by Ryan Patesta.

Our producers are Christopher B.

Dunn and John Reed.

Our associate producers are Ines Rennie Kay and Molly Quinlan Artwick.

Fact-checking by Sheila Patterson.

For Balin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt.

Script editing by Scott Allen and Luke Baratz.

Our coordinating producer is Samantha Collins.

Production support by Adri Siegel.

Produced by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive producers are Mr.

Ballin and Nick Witters.

For Wondery, our senior producers are Laura Donna Palavota, Dave Schilling, and Rachel Engelman.

Senior managing producer is Nick Ryan.

Managing producer is Olivia Fonte.

Executive producers are Aaron O'Flaherty and Marshall Louie.

For Wondery.