Word: bikini
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...three days last week, when the international clouds seemed darkest, Harry Truman was convinced that the atomic bomb tests at Bikini should be canceled...
...Under Bikini's palm and pandanus trees, bright in the South Sea sun and dark in the shadow of the Bomb, primitive man and progressive man held palaver. The U.S. Navy's softspoken, sensitive Commodore Ben Wyatt might well have wondered why progress had to sacrifice this lovely coral atoll, instead of an empty wasteland, a dismal slum or a plaguesome Buchenwald. Bikini's tall, tawny Paramount Chief Juda, manor lord of 160 Christian islanders, took comfort in the will of Heaven...
...simple words, with eloquent gestures, he told Juda and his people of the Bomb. Its power to kill all living things within many miles was beyond belief. But "the U.S. wants to turn this great destructive power into something good for mankind." The Bomb would be dropped on Bikini. For their protection, and for progress, would the islanders help by leaving their home, perhaps forever...
Everyone had carefully refrained so far from inviting UNO's Atomic Energy Commission to the forthcoming test at Bikini. Army & Navy preparations for that provocative display of power went on apace...
Letters to newspapers seldom mentioned it. Those which did were mostly concerned with its subsidiary aspects. Some indignant citizens took pen in hand last week to protest the Navy's plan to expose a group of dogs and goats in the forthcoming tests at Bikini Atoll. A few jittery West Coast housewives made inquiries as to the possibility of the Bikini blast setting up 1) a high wind, 2) a tidal wave, 3) an earthquake. But almost nobody in the country seemed concerned about the chances of the world being atomized later...