Sovereignty at Crossroads

During the summer of 1946, a joint US Army-Navy taskforce detonated two nuclear bombs at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Operation Crossroads was both the first postwar series of atmospheric nuclear detonations and the most heavily publicized. Hundreds of radio, print, and film journalists observed and reported on the series as part of a coordinated military publicity campaign intended to bolster public support for the armed forces. The media program, however, catalyzed sharp critiques about the United States' exclusive jurisdiction over nuclear weapons and its decision to detonate them abroad during peacetime. This paper argues that public controversy over the series powerfully exposed the stakes of US weapons and blasting for sovereignty, colonialism, and the postwar international order.