No Place to Hide (Bradley book)

In the prologue to the book, Bradley foreshadows the grim truths to which readers are about to bear witness. The U.S.S. Independence, a survivor of the Able and Baker tests, is being towed into San Francisco from Kwajalein, its once mighty hull now reduced to contorted mutilation that looked “less like a ship than a paper bag blown up and burst” having had endured the concussive pulverization of compressed water that traveled one mile per second. [2] Though the ship remained afloat, it had to be towed due to the “invisible poison” of radiation that covered every square inch of the ship. Strictly off limits to anyone, the ship was quarantined off the coast of San Francisco and kept in strict isolation, “a leper.” [2]

Dr. David J. Bradley’s narrative account in 1948’s No Place to Hide, is styled as a travel log–a journal of his observations and responsibilities from May until October 1946 on the Bikini Atoll, each day of significance introduced with a dateline embedded within five distinct sections: Departure; Dress Rehearsal; Able Day; Baker Day; The Count of Ten. A sixth section, Epilogue, serves as his final impressions written in 1983 before a thoroughly worded Appendix concludes the text with elaborations of key terminology that was discussed throughout the text. No Place to Hide gives great focus to the radiation dangers of atomic weaponry. Bradley was part of the team tasked with surveying the aftermath of the test bombs’ destruction with Geiger counters to catalog the “real threat of atomic weapons, namely the lingering poison of radioactivity” (62). Bradley’s team sampled water for radioactivity from the lagoon and the Pacific Ocean and tested marine life for radioactive decay. His journal entries find superficial comfort that fish out of the pacific had no traces of radioactivity compared to those in Bikini Lagoon.

Indeed, scrubbing the ships with “lye, foamite, salt water, soap” had no effect at removing the radioactivity that clung to hulls, so sandblasting was optioned, but the work was tedious and carried a great risk of spreading radioactive dust into the air (131). [2] This early in the atomic age, radiation, contamination, and cleanup were all unknown territory. Bradley gives mention to the overall feeling of disappointment that the bombs did not do more destruction than original estimates had predicted, as many of the ships were still afloat after the 520-foot airburst of the Able bomb, Gilda, (named after Rita Hayworth’s character in the 1946 film of the same name). The bomb had missed its mark by nearly half a mile when it was dropped from the B-29 Superfortress Dave’s Dream. The crew did not have any explanation for the mishap. A U.S. government investigation was launched into the crew and several theories–ranging from faulty ballistic characteristics of the bomb to crew miscalculation–were posed, but the investigation closed without ever finding a reason for the error. [1]

In an introspective epilogue tacked to the original 1948 publication, Baker speaks to the unimaginable consequences of nuclear war on all living souls, and to his astonishment at the horror of nuclear weapons continuing to be a part of global politics since the end of WWII. Baker writes of the absurdity of a one 15-megaton H-bomb when paraphrasing physicist Philip Morrison, who put the bomb’s size in the perspective of a freight train of freight cars each packed with TNT explosives. To equal the force of the 15-megaton bomb, a freight train would need to pack so many boxcars with TNT that 3,000 miles of boxcars stretching from New York to San Francisco would be needed to equal just one 15-megaton H-bomb. At the time of Bradley’s writing of this, each nation had upwards of 50,000 nuclear weapons of varying sizes apiece, when nuclear tonnage outnumbered people one to four (184). [2]

Bradley’s tone changes in the epilogue from the journal entries that appeared hopeful and somewhat naïve about the risks of radioactive poisoning. He notes how the people of Bikini were “lied to, misled, abandoned, and bamboozled” in the 1960s when told they could return to the atoll without a threat of radiation. The atoll is uninhabited to this day due to environmental radioactive contamination. He speaks to the “innocents” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the young men of the army and marines who were made to lie out 2,000 yards from nuclear test blasts to prep them for WWIII conditions. “Sometimes, I wish our government could sit down with a dying veteran,” Bradley laments, “It might better understand the true costs of its war games” (183). [2]

The book was marketed for Bantam by Judith Merril, who found Bradley's prose "a man's book with little appeal for women," leading her to later write her own nuclear war story Shadow on the Hearth from the homemaker's perspective.[5] Scholar David K. Hecht lauds the book, stating that “No Place to Hide is not exclusively concerned with radioactivity; it also gives a detailed account of the preparations and events of the Bikini tests. However, its message focused on this lingering threat.” [7] Hecht goes on to further elaborate:

Owing to his job as a radiological monitor, Bradley focuses much more squarely on radiation dangers than Hersey had; the prologue introduces readers to the Independence, one of the ships in the target area of the tests. He describes the visible damage it took during the two bomb blasts, but quickly changes to a “more impressive” consequence: “the disease of radioactivity lingers on her decks and sides and along her dingy corridors.” He then repeats this comparison, emphasizing that the ship had survived the air blast of Able and the tidal wave of Baker. “But the invisible poison of radioactivity,” Bradley writes, “she could not throw off”. [7]

Hecht was making comparisons to John Hersey’s 1946 book, Hiroshima. Whereas Hersey made the unimaginable act relatable with his book, Bradley noted that it would be hard to make the threat of radiation relatable to people based on the readout on a Geiger counter. In one memorable instance in the book, Bradley has to convince a Navy chief that the ship on which his men had just finished scrubbing and hosing down again and again with soap, lye, and wire brushes, was still just as contaminated with radiation as it was before they started. No person should be aboard its decks. The Navy chief was hard to sell on the Geiger warnings and was baffled at how a thoroughly cleaned ship could still be deadlier than the blast itself. The book alerted the world to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons explosions. [4] [6]

Bradley toured lecturing on the dangers of fallout, including a 1950 lecture at Ford Hall Forum. The book was reissued with an epilogue in 1984.[4]

1. Weisgall, Jonathan M. Operation Crossroads: The Atomic Tests at Bikini Atoll. Naval Institute Press, 1994. Strauss “recommended that the atomic tests be held as soon as possible. ‘If such a test is not made,’ he warned Forrestal, ‘there will be loose talk to the effect that the fleet is obsolete in the face of this new weapon and this will militate against appropriations to preserve a postwar Navy of the size now planned.”’
2. Bradley, David J. No Place to Hide: 1946/1984. University Press of New England, 1984.
3. ^ Robert A. Jacobs The Dragon's Tail: Americans Face the Atomic Age -- 2010 Page 31 "David Bradley's influential 1948 record of Operation Crossroads, No Place to Hide, was essentially a book about fallout. "What happened at Crossroads was the clearest measure yet of the menace of atomic energy," Bradley wrote."
4. ^ Patrick Major, Rana Mitter, Across the Blocs: Exploring Comparative Cold War Cultural 1135755671 2004 "The continuing debate over the consequences of nuclear explosions was entered by David Bradley in 1948 whose No Place to Hide was written in opposition to bland government reassurances that there was no need for the public to worry ..."
5. ^ Dianne Newell, Victoria Lamont Judith Merril: A Critical Study 2012 Page 34 0786489855 "Merril concludes that Bradley's No Place to Hide was, in truth, “a man's book, with little appeal for women,” adding that “few women have read it or will, because the technique you used for relief from strain, the tropical isle stuff, fishing, etc.. "
6. ^ Review- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Nov. 1983 "As the author explained in an interview at Dartmouth College on June 8, 1983, the writing of No Place to Hide was a response to this lack of concern and awareness, aided by the early interest in the project expressed by the Atlantic Monthly "
7. Hecht, D.K. Embracing Mystery: Radiation Risks and Popular Science Writing in the Early Cold War. J Hist Biol 54, 127–141 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-021-09629-6