Laboratories of the American Century: How Coral Atolls Became the Testing Grounds for American Environmental Theories

The coral atolls of Micronesia, rarely considered in global geopolitical history, were the staging grounds for multiple defining events of the mid-twentieth century. Micronesia, acquired by the United States from Japan during WWII, was consolidated into the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI), a highly militarized zone where select atolls were converted into nuclear testing grounds and others used as vital bases to extend American influence to Asia. Concurrent with testing, American administrators attempted to modernize the TTPI. To aid managers operating in an understudied environment, the U.S. Navy funded Scientific Investigations in Micronesia (SIM), a series of ecological investigations meant to produce total understanding of atoll ecology. Assumptions towards the atoll environment generated during WWII and atomic testing, however, influenced ecologists’ research, causing initial SIM reports to affirm what both administrators believed: atolls were simplistic, isolated, natural laboratories most eminently suited for nuclear destruction. As SIM matured, researchers pursued increasingly eclectic subjects, establishing increasing distance from their sponsors’ assumptions. This growing independence culminated in Raymond Fosberg, SIM’s premier researcher, who developed and applied ecosystem theory to atolls. Ecosystem theory, an emergent model for describing environments, depicted the world (atolls included) as interconnected by global cycles of microscopic compounds that shaped and were shaped by macroscopic organisms. As a model, ecosystem theory is a direct predecessor to contemporary environmentalism and drew inspiration from the Castle Bravo weapons test—specifically nuclear fallout’s ability to travel across and link “isolated” atolls— and systems thought, which defined High Cold War military strategy. Fosberg, through his connection to several prominent ecologists including Rachel Carson, was a vector for SIM to influence contemporary environmentalism. Through SIM, atolls became incubators where American ecology, weapons tests, and military thought melded together. The atoll was more than the foundation of U.S. power in the Pacific: atolls were the laboratories of the American Century