Amchitka and the Bomb: Nuclear Testing in Alaska

Amchitka and the Bomb: Nuclear Testing in Alaska. By Dean W. Kohlhoff. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002. x, 166 pp. $25.00, ISBN 0-295-98255-1.)

The Aleutian island Amchitka holds the dubious distinction of being the only nuclear test site in a national wildlife refuge. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) set off three separate nuclear blasts beneath the island's surface, damaging its fragile ecosystem. How this situation came to be is the subject of Dean W. Kohlhoff's well-researched book, Amchitka and the Bomb. Kohlhoff demonstrates that Amchitka's sad story was the result of the island's unique history and America's Cold War insecurity.

Amchitka's environmental preservation seemed assured when, in 1913, William Howard Taft set aside three million acres in the Aleutian chain as a wildlife reservation. As a result, Amchitka's wildlife populations boomed,...