American Experience

While the U.N. debated strategies for control of atomic energy, the U.S. Navy was preparing two highly-publicized nuclear tests. Seven hundred fifty cameras were shipped to Bikini to be used for a major propaganda film. Bikinians had no say about turning their idyllic island into an atomic test site. Forty years later, their home would still be too contaminated to support human life.

All Episodes - Season 1

Episode 1

The Great San Francisco Earthquake

Episode 2

Radio Bikini

Episode 3

Indians, Outlaws and Angie Debo

Episode 4

Eric Sevareid's Not So Wild A Dream

Episode 5

The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter

Episode 6

Do You Mean There Are Still Real Cowboys?

Episode 7

Kennedy vs. Wallace: A Crisis Up Close

Episode 8

Geronimo and the Apache Resistance

Episode 9

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Revisited

Episode 10

That Rhythm, Those Blues

Episode 11

The Radio Priest

Episode 12

Hearts and Hands

Episode 13

Views of a Vanishing Frontier

Episode 14

Eudora Welty: One Writer's Beginnings

Episode 15

The World That Moses Built

Episode 16

Sins of Our Mothers