How does this encounter make you feel?
Vice Admiral Blandy pushes a knife into an ‘atomic explosion’ cake
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Bright emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Quiet emotions
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Heavy emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Sombre emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Vice Admiral Blandy pushes a knife into an ‘atomic explosion’ cake
Date
1946
Description
Creator of the image: A photographer from the Harris & Ewing Studio
Date of the image creation: 5 November 1946
Medium: Photograph
Persons depicted: Admiral William H.P. Blandy, ‘Mrs Blandy’, and Admiral Frank J. Lowry.
Tuesday the 5th of November 1946 was a festive occasion at the Officers Club of the Army War College in Washington, D.C.. ‘Operation Crossroads’, the post-World War II version of the Manhattan Project, was big news, and the Joint Army/Navy Task Force, which co-ordinated the explosion of multiple atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll, were in the mood to party. After clearing out the island’s entire indigenous people with a mix of coercion and spurious promises, the United States created a ‘blank slate’ on which to stage their great adventure. They proceeded to detonate many nuclear bombs on Bikini: a total fission yield of 42.2 megaton, a number that comes to the same as about 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for twelve years.
This joyous occasion would have slipped quietly into oblivion if it weren’t for the presence of a photographer from Harris & Ewing Studio. The photograph depicts the Task Force commander Vice Admiral William H.P. Blandy, his wife ‘Mrs Blandy’, and Rear Admiral Frank J. Lowry. The ‘Atomic Admiral’, with the tokenistic assistance of his wife, pushes a knife into an elaborately crafted cake, sculpted to resemble a mushroom cloud. To put the icing on the celebration, this custom-order confectionery was delivered from interstate. The Washington Post published the photo under the heading ‘Salute to Bikini’, accompanied by a caption stating that the cake was made of ‘angel food puffs’.
The publication of this picture stirred some controversy. One of the first persons to respond was Unitarian minister Arthur Powell Davies. From the pulpit at the All Souls Church, Davies thundered:
‘I have with me here in the pulpit this morning a page from a newspaper. From a very fine newspaper. It contains a picture — as it seems to me, an utterly loathsome picture. If I spoke as I feel I would call it obscene. I do not blame the newspaper for printing the picture, or the photographer for taking it. What fills me with bitterness is the fact that such an event could take place at all … I only hope to God it is not printed in Russia — to confirm everything the Soviet government is telling the Russian people about how “American degenerates” are able to treat with levity the most cruel, pitiless, revolting instrument of death ever invented by man.’
In the same year as the atomic cake — and of comparable tastelessness and far greater cultural impact — the French engineer Louis Réard decided to name his newly created range of scant, two-piece women’s swimwear after the nuked atoll. He hoped that the reference to nuclear weapons would create an ‘explosive commercial and cultural reaction’. Then, a decade later in 1957, the spirit of the atomic cake and the bikini combined forces to reach hitherto unimagined heights of tastelessness. This sublime pinnacle was reached with the crowing of Lee Merlin in Los Vegas as ‘Miss Atomic Bomb’. Wearing a fluffy mushroom cloud on the front of her bikini, Merlin was crowned in a ceremony that coincided with the detonation of a nuclear warhead in Nevada as part of Operation Plumbbob.
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