Popular Culture Review
34
howling and yelling. Then suddenly, there was total silence—
no sound except the sound of people crying, dogs barking, and
waves breaking on the ocean side of the island. We picked
ourselves up from the ground, amazed we were still alive
(Barker, 52).
“A Way of Life Lost,” 1986
In June 1986, National Geographic finally returned to Bikini with an
essay corresponding to the fortieth anniversary of Operation Crossroads entitled
“A Way of Life Lost: Bikini.” The essay focused on the dispossession of the
Bikinians, their struggle to someday return from exile, and the manifold
problems facing them (such as diabetes, poverty, unemployment). Included was
a map referring to the Bikinians as “nuclear nomads.” The essay even carried
some of the photographs from the 1946 essay. “A Way of Life Lost” was the
first time National Geographic mentioned the Bravo test and the tremendous
fallout poured on the Marshallese and the unfortunate crew of the Fortunate
Dragon}^
Despite the different tone, the essay carried much the same message
and maintained much the same narrative style as its 1946 progenitor: awe at the
power of the atom (e.g., “the device exploded at an altitude of about 500 feet.
For a wrathful moment then, it seemed as if the sun had risen for a second
time”), and nostalgic lament for a simple people overcome by the Atomic Age.*"^
When examined alongside the 1946 essay, “A Way of Life Lost” reads like a
tragic before and after story:
As wards of the U.S. government, [the essay notes] they now
receive food from the Department of Agriculture, such as
peaches soaked in heavy syrup. Diabetes is a major concern
among the Bikinians, and such food only adds to the problem.
They also suffer from despair, and so their comments to
outsiders are weighted with complaints.'^
And again,
as wards of the U.S. government since birth, they [young
Bikinians] have become addicted to welfare. They are fed and
housed, and their illnesses tended to, more or less. There is no
turning back now to fishing and gathering for the Bikinians. It
is too late. They like Spam.”'^
There is a familiar tone of fatalism and loss of paradise: the Bikinians, noble
savages, “memorable brown beasts”—expelled from the garden.
Consider this final passage:
More than 50 percent of the deaths last year were of children
under five. Small Styrofoam caskets are neatly stacked on the
floor of a store on Majuro, as if on display for a weekend