The Firecracker Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement Book

On my recent (and only) trip to Alaska, a friend took us to a wonderful play about the history of Alaska as seen through Inuit eyes. The play transformed my entire view of Alaska and the Arctic and gave me an exciting new approach to our entire trip. This book continues that experience. It tells the story of the United States' AEC attempt to use Alaska as a testing ground for nuclear weapons. It tells the story of how we (as a people, as a nation) have not been able to see the world except through our own narrow perspective. We saw Alaska as a barren land with nothing there and hence a great place to test nuclear explosions. Of course, Alaska and the Arctic are not barren and there are people, animals, plants and an entire culture there, but we couldn't/can't see it. I was impressed with the some of the academics at the University of Alaska - e.g. professors of biology- and that some were willing to sacrifice jobs and lifestyle to a higher moral purpose. I wonder if I would have been able to make such a noble choice.

My favorite chapter was probably The AEC Meets the Eskimos. I loved the information/stories about the Inuit and their fascination with tape recorders. This was/is an oral culture and the tape recorder was a perfect technology for them. Be sure to read the Epilogue, the Afterword, and the Methodology sections. I often read these sorts of sections first, but this time my advice is to wait and read them after you have finished the main portion of the book.

The book occasionally shows bias (since it is also my bias it is easy to overlook), but it is based on oral history interviews and a large set of documents, some only recently released (the book was originally published in 1995 so the word recently here is means 20 plus years ago). I very much appreciate the work of the author to do interviews and visit sites before people died. I appreciate his attempt to be fair.