Half Life Dennis ORourke, 1986

On March 1, 1954, the United States dropped a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, which came under American trusteeship after World War II. Radioactive fallout from the powerful test, called Bravo, spread over hundreds of miles, settling in the form of whitish particles on three tiny atolls downwind from the blast. The consequences for the 236 inhabitants of Rongelap and Utirik Atolls, 28 American servicemen monitoring the explosion on Rongerik Atoll and 23 fishermen on a Japanese trawler that had not been warned away from the area are the subject of Dennis O Rourke s troubling documentary. It leaves you troubled by what it tells, the way it tells it and what it fails to tell.