This Little Pig Came Home

Of all the 3,352 animals exposed to the atom-bomb blast and radiation in the 1946 Operation Crossroads, none won greater fame than Pig No. 311. A wriggly, 50-lb. shoat, No. 311 was locked in the officers' head (toilet) of the Japanese light cruiser Sakawa. Hours later, after the Sakawa had sunk, No. 311 was found swimming gamely in the radiation-polluted waters of Bikini Lagoon. She was irritable, and had a low blood count, but 'within a month she seemed to have recovered.

Last week, the Navy's Medical Research Institute at Bethesda, Md. announced that it had given No. 311 as thorough and exhaustive a going-over as any pig ever had. Now grown to a hulking 600-pounder, she will live out her days at Washington's National Zoological Park. Then the Navy medics want the carcass for an autopsy, just in case they have missed something. Pig No. 311 appears to be normal in every way except one: she is sterile. Was this the A-bomb's fault? Said a Navy spokesman cagily: ". . . Not necessarily . . . Ordinarily, enough gamma rays to cause sterility also will kill the victim."

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