War & Paradise: The Territories Of The U.S.

Bikini Atoll

You might not know it, but the iconic American bikini owes its name to perhaps the most famous of the Marshall Islands: Bikini Atoll. Louis Réard, the designer of the bikini, likened the bikini’s media explosiveness to the nuclear bomb tests being conducted at Bikini Atoll. Here, 23 bombs were detonated, each one trying to improve upon the lethality of the last. UNESCO has since deemed the atoll as a World Heritage Site, determining that the island represents the dawn of the nuclear age despite “its paradoxical image of peace and of earthly paradise.” But when the bombs dropped, paradise would be the farthest from the truth.