Crossword Dictionary

BIKINI 

Bikini, an atoll in the Ralik (western) chain of the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean. The atoll was used for peacetime atomic explosions conducted for experimental purposes by the United States between 1946 and 1958.

Lying north of the Equator, Bikini is 225 miles (360 km) northwest of Kwajalein and 190 miles (305 km) east of Enewetak Atoll. It consists of a ring of about 20 small coral islands whose average elevation is only some 7 feet (2.1 metres) above low tide level. The area of the group amounts to little more than 2 square miles (5 square km) of dry land, distributed about the edges of an oval lagoon 25 miles (40 km) long and 15 miles (24 km) wide. The largest islands are Bikini and Enyu (or Eneu). The atoll was known before World War II as Escholtz Atoll. It was administered by the United States from 1947 as part of the U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands under a United Nations trusteeship until it became part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in 1979.

After Japan had been driven from the Marshall Islands in 1944, the islands and atolls, Bikini among them, came under the administration of the U.S. Navy. In 1946 Bikini became the site of Operation Crossroads, a vast military-scientific experiment to determine the impact of atomic bombs on naval vessels. The tests made it necessary to first relocate the atoll’s 166 native Micronesians to Rongerik and then to Kili Island, about 500 miles (800 km) southeast of Bikini. The world’s first peacetime atomic-weapons test was conducted at Bikini on July 1, 1946. A 20-kiloton atomic bomb was dropped from an airplane and exploded in the air over a fleet of about 80 obsolete World War II naval vessels.