ATOMIC WEAPONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26634, 3 December 1947, Page 5

ATOMIC WEAPONS

TESTS IN PACIFIC >• AMERICAN INSTALLATIONS ENIWETOK ATOLL SELECTED Rec. 10 p.m. WASHINGTON, Dec. 1. The Government announced today that installations for experiments and tests for atomic weapons were being constructed on Eniwetok Atoll, in the Pacific. Eniwetok, which is in the Marshall Islands, is a former Japanese mandate, over which the United Nations Security Council granted the United States strategic trusteeship. It is about 2500 miles southwest of Hawaii.

A joint announcement by the State Department, the United States Atomic Energy Commission and the Defence Department said that Eniwetok was selected after careful consideration of all available Pacific islands. Bikini was unsuitable because it lacked sufficient land surface for the instruments necessary to scientific observation. Of the other possible sites, Eniwetok had the fewest inhabitants to be cared for—about 145. Another important factor from the radiological standpoint was that the atoll was isolated, with hundreds of miles of open sea in a 'direction to which winds might carry radio-active particles. The announcement said it was proposed to continue a wide range of field work, designed to establish by experiment results which had been indicated in laboratory studies which had been made in the United States. New fundamental data would be pbtained, and a broader understanding gained of the phenomena of nuclear fission, which would facilitate advances in peaceful as well as military uses of atomic energy. All tests would be conducted with full security restrictions as stipulated by the United States Atomic Energy Act. The area of the installations would be closed as a safety measure, as provided for in the trusteeship agreement, and the natives now living on the Aomon and Biijiri Islands, in Eniwetok Atoll, would be permanently transferred elsewhere. They would select their new homes themselves, would be reimbursed for the lands the United States took over, and would be given all the assistance possible to re-establish themselves. Measures would be taken t 0 ensure that none of the inhabitants of the area was endangered. Lieutenant-general John Edwin Hull will command a joint task force of the armed services, which will conduct the experiments. He has been setting up his command organisation for over two months, but- the secret has been so well kept that not a whisper thereof has reached outsiders.