Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.
I have noted previously here that Manhattan Project director Gen. Leslie R. Groves – depicted by Matt Damon in “Oppenheimer” as a tough cookie but smart, and basically a good guy – not only was the prime mover behind the use of the atomic bomb against Japan but in private conversation mocked early evidence of survivors afflicted with deadly radiation disease. Even as more of that evidence emerged in the weeks after the bombings, Groves gave little ground, influencing (due to his stature) the rather casual way the U.S, military and nuclear industrial sites would handle protection for soldiers and workers.
Seventy-eight years ago this week, Groves testified before a special U.S. Senate committee on Atomic Energy. The National Security Archive, which holds the transcript of the hearings, calls Groves’ testimony “bizarre and misleading.” Their summary on one portion:
On radioactivity and the bombings generally, Groves said that he saw no choice between inflicting radioactivity on a “few Japanese” and saving “10 times as many American lives.” He claimed that no one suffered radiation injury “excepting at the time that the bomb actually went off, and that is an instantaneous damage.”
Groves continued to go out on a limb by declaring that it “really would take an accident for … the average person, within the range of the bomb to be killed by radioactive effects.” Going further out on a limb, Groves stated that the victims of radiation whose exposure was not enough to kill them instantly would die “without undue suffering. In fact, they say it is a very pleasant way to die.”
Continue reading “When Shady Groves Mocked Radiation Effects”
