Fascinating staple-bound souvenir book: 'Panamint Parade of the Bikini Bums', approx. 200pp. 4to., [n.p., n.d., likely printed aboard ship in 1946]. The USS PANAMINT was an amphibious force flagship, a floating command post with advanced communications equipment and extensive combat information spaces which had previously seen combat at Okinawa. In 1946 she served in the Joint Army-Navy Task Force I's 'Operation Crossroads', the atomic bomb test at Bikini, as floating headquarters for congressional, scientific, and U.N. observers. This volume is a period history of her service at Bikini for the first two atomic bomb tests in June-July, 1946. The volume first has a large section of biographical information and photographs of all of the dignitaries and scientists, American and foreign (and Russian!) who attended the tests aboard the PANAMINT. There is also a chronology, multiple candid photographs, images of the explosions and maps of the vessels exposed to the blasts, messages from officers, and even ridiculous poetry and teh song 'We Are the Bikini Bums' making light of the entire affair. PANAMINT entered the lagoon at 1300 hours on the day of the first blast, likely exposing those onboard to a large dose of radiation.