[ Turns out Oppenheimer’s boss lied, repeatedly, about radiation
poisoning.]
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A NEW, CHILLING SECRET ABOUT THE MANHATTAN PROJECT HAS JUST BEEN MADE
PUBLIC  
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Fred Kaplan
August 8, 2023
Slate
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_ Turns out Oppenheimer’s boss lied, repeatedly, about radiation
poisoning. _

Maj. Gen. Groves and J. R. Oppenheimer view the base of the steel
tower used for the first atomic bomb test near Alamogordo, New Mexico,
on Sept. 11, 1945., Bettmann

 

Newly declassified documents reveal that Gen. Leslie Groves—director
of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret operation that built the
atomic bomb during World War II—misled Congress and the public about
the effects of radiation. He did so initially out of ignorance, then
denial, and finally, willful deception.

The documents also show that some scientists in the project, including
J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos lab where the bomb
was first tested, kept mum about Groves’ lie rather than dispute him
or confront the general directly.

The cache of documents—the latest in a series of once secret and
top-secret material about the A-bomb obtained over the years by the
National Security Archive, a private research organization at George
Washington University—was released on Monday, within days of the
78th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in the
wake of the release of _Oppenheimer_, the wildly (and deservedly)
successful film that has grossed $500 million
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its hit theaters just three weeks ago.

One of the new documents the archive obtained is a memo by four
scientists, titled “Calculated Biological Effects of Atomic
Explosion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,”
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Sept. 1, 1945. (The bombs were dropped on Aug. 6 and 9 of that year.)
Until this memo was written, it had been assumed the A-bomb’s
victims would be killed by its blast and its heat. But this memo
concluded that at least some of the deaths had been caused by
radioactive fallout, days or weeks after the explosions.

And yet, the day before the memo’s date, at a press conference in
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Groves said radiation had caused no deaths and
that claims to the contrary—some published in Asian
newspapers—were “propaganda.” In a memo to Oppenheimer, George
Kistiakowsky, the Los Alamos scientist who coordinated the biological
report, said that Groves had “stuck his neck out by a mile
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so he hesitated to pass the study along.

Even by then, enough was known about radiation poisoning to have made
Groves stop short of dismissing the claims so strongly. The
archive’s documents show that, back in April, three months before
the first test of the bomb in New Mexico, medical experts with the
Manhattan Project warned of a toxic “cloud
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that could spew “radioactive dust” over a wide radius for “hours
after the detonation
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Some urged Groves to evacuate the area around the test site, which he
resisted, not wanting to attract media attention. One scientist
remembered years later that Groves “sniffed” at the warning and
said, “What’s the matter with you, are you a Hearst propagandist?
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(Hearst was the leading newspaper chain of the day, often specializing
in sensational reports.)

On July 21, five days after the test, Stafford Warren
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the Manhattan Project’s chief medical officer, wrote to Groves that
“the dust outfall from the various portions of the cloud was
potentially a very serious hazard over a band almost 30 miles wide
extending almost 90 miles northeast of the site,” adding that there
was still “a tremendous amount of radioactive dust floating in the
air.” (Recent studies
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based on computer modeling, suggest that radioactivity from the first
atomic test spread much farther, affecting 46 states and parts of
Mexico and Canada.)

Yet Groves ignored Warren’s findings.  On July 30, in a memo on the
likely effects of an atom bomb dropped on Japan, he wrote Gen. George
Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of staff: “No damaging effects are
anticipated on the ground from radioactive materials.” (This was a
deceptively written sentence: at the time, few thought much fallout
would linger “on the ground,” but it was widely known that it
could rain down from the sky and scatter across the air, which humans
could breathe or soak in.)

Groves’ awareness of this danger is clear in an Aug. 25 excerpt from
his diary, in which he wants to know if it’s safe to invite the
press to come survey the test site (this, more than two months after
the first test). One of the scientists told him that it “wouldn’t
be so safe
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if the journalists stood as close as 100 feet from where the bomb had
gone off. Reporters did come on Sept. 11 and were given “white
booties” to protect them from possible radiation.

It’s possible that, even at this point, Groves simply didn’t
believe the worst about radiation. On the same day as his diary entry
about inviting reporters, he had a phone conversation
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a fellow officer at Oak Ridge about Japanese radio broadcasts
reporting cases of radiation sickness. Groves said this was all
“propaganda” and that the sickness was more likely caused by
“good thermal burns.”

Still, Groves sent a team of inspectors to the two bombed cities to
determine the impact of radioactivity. He wrote Gen. Marshall
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casualties from radiation were “unlikely,” but the “facts” had
to be established.

This makes sense. Before the bombs were dropped, most scientists
assumed that blast and heat would be the dominant effects. Radiation
would be a footnote; anyone who received a lethal dose of radiation
would be close enough to the explosion to die from the blast or the
heat.

However, as was later discovered, the A-bomb’s “secondary
effects”—radiation, smoke, fire in particular—could, under
certain circumstances, spread even farther than the effects of blast
and heat.

As early as the first inspectors’ report—the one that Kistiakowsky
at first withheld from Groves but eventually passed along to
him—there was notation of “freak survivors
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within the blast radius who later died of radiation sickness.

On Nov. 27, months after the memo about the biological effects of the
atomic explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Stafford Warren
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the project’s chief medical officer, wrote Groves with even more
definitive proof. Of the roughly 4,000 patients admitted to hospitals
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he wrote, “1300 or 33% showed effects of
radiation and, of this number, approximately one-half died.”

Nonetheless, three days later, in testimony before the Senate Special
Committee on Atomic Energy, Groves was asked if there was any
“radioactive residue” at the two bombed Japanese cities. Groves
replied, “There is none. That is a very positive ‘none
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”

Groves further claimed that no one in the two cities suffered
radiation injury “excepting at the time that the bomb actually went
off.” He added that it “really would take an accident for … the
average person, within the range of the bomb, to be killed by
radioactive effects.”

Finally, in a comment that sealed his reputation among his critics,
Groves said that irradiated victims who died not right away, but after
some time, would do so “without undue suffering. In fact,” he
said, “they say it is a very pleasant way to die.”

Groves discounted, downplayed, then denied the reports about radiation
sickness because, like many at the time, he thought that nuclear
weapons would be the centerpiece of U.S. defense policy (as indeed
they were for the next few decades) and that the American public would
rebel against them if they were seen as something like poison
gas—and thus beyond a moral threshold.

By this time, Oppenheimer had recently departed from Los Alamos, but
he remained on government advisory boards. Like many scientists, he
had underestimated the effects of radiation, but he was now well aware
of the inspectors’ studies and of Groves’ false comments. Heralded
as “the father of the atom bomb,” he felt blood on his hands, as
he famously confessed to President Harry Truman. But he said nothing
about Groves’ lies—at least not in public.

Some were not so silent. On Dec. 6, 1945, one week after Groves’
testimony, Philip Morrison
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a Manhattan Project scientist who was on the team that surveyed the
bombs’ damage in Japan, testified before the same committee, citing
the facts about radiation, directly contradicting Groves’ blithe
assurances. Morrison went on to become a professor of physics at MIT
and an activist in the community of scientists—many of them veterans
of the Manhattan Project—who advocated nuclear arms control and
disarmament.

Maybe someday someone will make a movie about him.

_Fred Kaplan is he author of The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the
Secret History of Nuclear War
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* Atomic Bomb
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* Radiation poisoning
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* Oppenheimer
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* disinformation
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