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The Atomic Times: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground
Author:
Michael Harris
Publisher:
Presidio Press
Genre:
Biographies & Memoirs
My Rating:
:
4.5 (8 votes)
Location:
APS
Summary:
A real-life version of Catch-22–the searing and subversively funny memoir of a young army draftee’s experiences during the H-Bomb tests of the 1950s
In late 1955, twenty-two-year-old army private Michael Harris “earned” an assignment to Eniwetok Atoll, ground zero of U.S. Joint Task Force Seven’s Pacific Proving Ground. There, on a desolate stretch of the South Pacific, Harris was part of a grand experiment called Operation Redwing. The biggest and baddest of America’s atmospheric nuclear weapons test regimes, Redwing was one of those strange Cold War phenomena that mixed saber rattling with mad science–while overlooking the cataclysmic human, geopolitical, and ecological effects. But mostly, it just messed with guys’ heads. . . .
Meet the members of Harris’s new nuclear family:
·Major Maxwell, who put safety first, second and third–except when he didn't
·Berko, the wisecracking Brooklyn Dodgers fan who was forced to cope with the H-bomb and his mother’s cookies
·Tony, who thought military spit and polish plus uncompromising willpower made him an exception
·Carl Duncan, who clung to his girlfriend's photos and a dangerous secret
·Major Vanish who did just that
With The Atomic Times, Harris welcomes readers into the company of the brave men of Operation Redwing, where the local lexicon of f-words included such gems as “fallout” and “fireball.” As Harris tells it, daily life at ground zero could have been scripted by a committee comprising Franz Kafka, Sergeant Bilko, Hubert Selby, and Joseph Heller–all working within the constraints of the peacetime army’s unofficial modus operandi, “Hurry up and wait.”
When not playing radioactive guinea pig, Harris’s jobs included editing the base’s daily newspaper, cheekily named The Atomic Times, whose logo was a mushroom cloud and whose motto was “All the News That Fits, We Print.” In a distinctive narrative voice, Harris describes his h-bomb year with unforgettable imagery and insight into how isolation and isotopes change men for better and for worse.
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