The exploding sky
As a teenager in Hawaii, I watched a nearby test of a nuclear weapon. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.
On July 9, 1962, the U.S. conducted one of its last high-altitude tests of a nuclear weapon on Johnston atoll in the South Pacific, 900 miles south of Hawaii. I was a high school student in Honolulu, and while few in Hawaii knew what, if anything, we would see of this test, one newspaper headline read, “N—Blast Tonight May Be Dazzling, Good View Likely.”
People were advised that for the best view they should get to a place with an unobstructed view of the sky. My older brother and I drove from our home in navy housing to Tripler Army Hospital on a hill overlooking Pearl Harbor. The test was scheduled for 11 pm.
Newspaper photographs of the event show a huge sunburst in the sky. I don’t recall seeing that. I remember a sudden bright green flash that turned an ordinary night as bright as noon. We stood in the ghastly green and yellow glow, unlike any sunlight I’d ever seen. Over the next 40 minutes, the sky’s color changed from yellow to red and then a deep blood red that lingered, which seemed appropriate. Then the sky turned icy blue, then indigo, and then it was night again. It remains the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.
