{"id":43769,"date":"2023-08-30T06:32:22","date_gmt":"2023-08-30T14:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=43769"},"modified":"2023-08-30T06:32:51","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T14:32:51","slug":"general-groves-and-the-radiation-hoax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/30\/general-groves-and-the-radiation-hoax\/","title":{"rendered":"General Groves and the Radiation ‘Hoax’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

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As I’ve noted in previous posts \u2013 and in my recent books Atomic Cover-up<\/a><\/em> and The Beginning or the End<\/a><\/em>–the U.S. after dropping the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki was confronted with a unique publicity (not to mention, moral) problem. \u00a0 Reports from Japan warned of a mysterious new disease afflicting survivors of the twin blasts.\u00a0 Some in Japan were already dubbing it “radiation disease,” which was what Robert Oppenheimer some of our other bomb-makers privately expected (though unmentioned in the Christopher Nolan movie) \u2013 but still, officials and most in media in U.S. mocked the idea.\u00a0 No one from the West had yet reached either city.<\/p>\n

Seventy-eight years ago this week, however, one of the most horrific, if revealing, conversations of the nuclear era took place.<\/p>\n

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Gen. Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, had received a telex the day before from Los Alamos, as scientists asked for information on those shocking reports from Japan. Groves responded that they were nothing but “a hoax” or “propaganda.”\u00a0 The top radiation expert at Los Alamos also used the word “hoax.”<\/p>\n

Knowing that the press would be seeking his official response, Groves called Lt. Col. Charles Rea, a doctor at Oak Ridge hospital (part of the bomb project).\u00a0 According to the official transcript, Rea called the reports of death-by-radiation \u201cpropaganda,\u201d \u201chookum,\u201d and “kind of crazy” and Groves joked, “Of course, it’s crazy–a doctor like me can tell that!”<\/p>\n

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But Groves knew it wasn’t crazy and he grew agitated as he read passages from the Japanese reports.\u00a0 He even asked, seriously, if there was “any difference between Japanese blood and others.”\u00a0 Both men ultimately seized on the idea that everything was attributable to burns \u2013 or “good thermal burns,” as Rea put it.\u00a0 \u201cThey are getting the delayed action of the burn,\u201d he advised. Groves replied, “Of course we are getting a good dose of propaganda” \u2013 and blamed some of our scientists and our media for giving the reports any credence.<\/p>\n

Groves even bragged, “We are not bothered a bit, excepting for \u2013 what they are trying to do is create sympathy.” Adding: \u201cThis is the kind of thing that hurts us.\u201d (See PDF of transcript<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But Rea hinted that he knew Groves was merely denying reality, admitting finally, “Of course, those Jap scientists over there aren’t so dumb either.”\u00a0 Still, in a second conversation that day with Groves, Rea advised: “I think you had better get the anti-propagandists out.”\u00a0 One of the great quotes of that time.\u00a0 He also advised, \u201cYou will have to get some big-wig to put a countet-statement in the paper.\u201d (That big-wig would end up being\u2026. Oppenheimer, again not mentioned in the Nolan movie.)<\/p>\n

Five days later, on a visit to Oak Ridge, Groves publicly labelled the reports from Japan propaganda and added, “The atomic bomb is not an inhuman weapon.”<\/p>\n

Groves’ top aide, Kenneth D. Nichols (featured as a key Oppenheimer antagonist in the Nolan movie), would admit in his 1987 memoirs that “we knew that there would be many deaths and injuries caused by the radiation.\u2026”<\/p>\n

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