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 officers with technical or scientific backgrounds to be assigned to radsafe work. The officers were to be available by 1 September to begin intensive training designed to prepare them to replace the existing monitor personnel no later than 1 November so that study of the BAKER results and decontamination of the ships for test CHARLIE would not be delayed (Reference C.10.10). On 10 August, CJTF 1 ordered his rear echelon element in Washington to secure approval from the Chief of Naval Operations, Navy Bureau of Personnel, and the Navy Surgeon-General for a program to be set up by JTF 1 to train 100 new monitors. He also indicated that these new radsafe personnel might be needed to help monitor the drydocking of task force ships returning to the United States (Reference C.10.12). Most radsafe personnel left Bikini for the United States on 16 August aboard USS Henrico (APA-45), leaving a much reduced radsafe organization on Haven to continue radsafe work at Bikini (Reference C.9.206, p. VII-(C)-24). Personnel traveling on Henrico probably were mostly civilians returning to their campuses and laboratories or military officers at the end of their terms of service. Under discussion by 20 August was a proposal to add 25 members from West Point's class of 1946 to the group to undergo monitor training (Reference C.10.13). The training program was to start on 9 September at the Navy Department in Washington, with field work at Alamogordo and on the target ships at Kwajalein or Bikini. After their training, the new monitors would be assigned to JTF 1 (Reference C.0.2). One attendee wrote he received 4 weeks of instruction in "basic radiology" in Washington D.C., and did laboratory work at the Radiation Safety Laboratory, San Francisco Naval Shipyard, Hunters Point, California, before reporting to the Radiological Safety Section at Kwajalein (Reference B.0.8).

The potential radsafe needs created by Test CHARLIE disappeared, however, when President Truman cancelled that test on 7 September.

OCEANOGRAPHIC SURVEY

While radsafe planning and organization of the Radiological Safety Section went forward in the United States, important radsafe preparations also took place at Bikini. Beginning on 10 March 1946, civilian and military scientists at Bikini aboard USS Bowditch (AGS-4) conducted detailed oceanographic, biological, and geological surveys of the atoll. From the radsafe perspective, their most important work was an effort to chart the currents in the atoll's lagoon. This information was needed to estimate what might happen after BAKER when a large amount of radioactive contamination would be dispersed in the lagoon and perhaps into the surrounding ocean. The safety of the task force and the ability of its recovery teams to reenter the target area were involved (Reference A.1, p. 92).

After the shorts, the radsafe section monitored the radiation level in the lagoon water through the use of drone boats, PGMs, and LCPLs (Reference A.2, p. 100). Monitors accompanied scientists collecting fish, coral, and samples of the bottom. ON 9 August, a monitor with a collection party found the first bottom sample so radioactive he ordered it pitched over the side (Reference A.2, p. 108). Highest recorded activity on a bottom core sample was 0.929 microcuries/gram in newly deposited sand and mud from the first 6 inches of the core (Reference C.9.209, Annex J, Figure 7).

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