1945, atomic bomb, controlling the media, corruption, EPA, fake journalism, fallout, favoritism, Japan, journalism, Leslie Groves, litigation, Manhattan project, media, Nagasaki, neutrons, New York Times, nuclear industry, nuclear lies and deception, Nuclear Weapons test, plutonium, Pork Barrel, propaganda, radiation experiments, radiation hair loss, radiation hazards, The Manhattan Project, Trinity Test, US EPA, US government, USA
“Los Alamos scientists discussed the possibility that the atmosphere might be ignited and the entire earth annihilated but dismissed this as extremely remote. Dangers from blast, fragments, heat, and light, once one was sufficiently removed from ground zero, evoked little concern.
Not so with radiation. Prior to Trinity, scientists were well aware that the blast would create potential radiation hazards. Plutonium in the device would fission into other radionuclides. Neutrons would strike various elements on the ground and turn some into active nuclides. This radioactive debris would be swept with fission products into a growing fireball and lifted high into the air. Once in the atmosphere, they would form a cloud of intense radioactivity. Immediate radiation from the explosion and residual radioactive debris initially caused faint worry because of dilution in the air and the isolation of the site, but as the test drew closer planners realized, with some sense of urgency, that radioactive fallout over local towns posed a real hazard. Groves, in particular, feared legal culpability if things got out of hand. As a result, Army intelligence agents located and mapped everyone within a forty–mile radius. Test planners set up an elaborate offsite monitoring system and prepared evacuation plans if exposure levels became too high… Offsite fallout was heavy. Several ranch families, missed by the Army survey, received significant exposures in the two weeks following Trinity. The families, nonetheless, evidenced little external injury. Livestock were not as fortunate, suffering skin burns, bleeding, and loss of hair.” ( pp. 5-6, “The Manhattan Project“, April 2012, Terrence R. Fehner – F.G. Gosling, USDOE – Emphasis added). This means that they had a clear idea of what was going to happen with the bombing of Japan, and especially of Nagasaki, which was also a plutonium weapon.
On first glance, it appears clear that the US needed to hide the existence of the Trinity test from the Japanese during World War II. However, if the Japanese had known that the US had a nuclear weapon, they might have surrendered before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That, of course, would have meant that the nuclear “scientists” wouldn’t have been able to do the real-life impact analysis, which they undertook subsequent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although they had used model cities and had experimented on Atomic Veterans and hapless people who went to the wrong hospitals, in the US and elsewhere (and continued to do so through the 1980s). It was also not the age of instant public mass communication.
The use of the media for hiding the Trinity test was followed by using the media to hide the repercussions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on human life.
Culture is learned through socialization and this fact holds true for institutional culture, as well as families. The nuclear industry has been one of deceit from the beginning, whether it was illegal human experiments or media manipulation. Little appears to have changed, other than that there appear fewer honest voices. As Upton Sinclair said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
Nuclear Pork Barrel and Deceit from the Beginning
The General Groves who participated in the phone call posted here:
https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/top-secret-phone-call-re-radiation-injuries-at-hiroshima-nagasaki-25-august-1945/ wasn’t just any old General. Rather, he was the head of the entire Manhattan Project: “By the end of the war, Groves and his staff expended approximately $2.2 billion on production facilities, towns, and research laboratories scattered across the nation.” At its peak 130,000 people were employed. “Secrecy and fear of a major accident dictated that the production facilities be located at remote sites.” p. 1, “The Manhattan Project“, April 2012, Terrence R. Fehner – F.G. Gosling, USDOE
General Groves seemed to have been primarily worried about lawsuits: “The specter of endless lawsuits haunted the military“. This was probably the motivation behind covering up the true repercussions of Hiroshima-Nagasaki, as well.
“Trinitite, the thin layer of glassy fused earth in the shot crater, was … one of the most popular souvenirs from the Trinity test … the pieces could cause radiation burns when worn in jewelry next to the skin”
(From a CDC LAHDRA document (Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment Project) regarding the Trinity Test: LAHDRA Report, v. 5, 2007, Appendix N, Trinity Test. Original available at LAHDRA .org Redscale color, underlines, blurring of newspaper articles, and box squares by us. The newspaper articles may be read in the original document. Unless copyright was renewed they should no longer be copyrighted, but we opted for caution.)
The nuclear industry has been a deceitful behemoth subsidized by taxpayers, practicing deception from its beginning. It continues to expect and get favoritism, whether turning in EPA comments late and getting posted at the top, while the vast majority remain unposted, or massive subsidies. It is absolutely revolting. https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/industry-says-epa-rule-needs-more-nuke-support/
“Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves, Jr. (17 August 1896 – 13 July 1970) was a United States Army Corps of Engineers officer who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and directed the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Groves
Regarding interference with reporting after Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings:
“In 2004, journalists Amy Goodman and David Goodman called for the Pulitzer Board to strip Laurence and his paper, The New York Times, of his 1946 Pulitzer Prize. The journalists argued that at the time Laurence “was also on the payroll of War Department”” and that, after the atomic bombings, he “had a front-page story in the Times disputing the notion that radiation sickness was killing people.” They concluded that “his faithful parroting of the government line was crucial in launching a half-century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb”.
In their 1995 book Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial, Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell assert, “Here was the nation’s leading science reporter, severely compromised, not only unable but disinclined to reveal all he knew about the potential hazards of the most important scientific discovery of his time.”
Laurence denied that the black rain fallout in Hiroshima was significantly radioactive because it originated from the firestorm that began 30 minutes after explosion, when the radioactive mushroom cloud had been blown many miles downwind.”
“(4) Evans, Harold (2003). War stories : reporting in the time of conflict. Hawkhurst: Bunker Hill. ISBN 978-1-59373-005-5. “During the development of the atomic bomb, project director Gen. Leslie Groves secretly hired William L. Laurence, a highly respected science reporter with The New York Times, to act as the project’s official historian. Laurence eagerly accepted the job – his scientific curiosity and patriotic zeal perhaps blinding him to the notion that he was at the same time compromising his journalistic independence. After the bombing, the brilliant but bullying Groves continually suppressed or distorted the effects of radiation. He dismissed reports of Japanese deaths as ‘hoax or propaganda.”
“(8) Amy Goodman and David Goodman. “The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them”. Hyperion, 2004, pp. 296–298.
(9) Groves, Leslie R. (1983). Now it can be told : the story of the Manhattan Project ([New ed.] ed.). New York, N.Y: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-80189-1. “It seemed desirable for security reasons, as well as easier for the employer, to have Laurence continue on the payroll of the New York Times, but with his expenses covered by the MED”
(10) Laurence, William L. (September 12, 1945). “U.S. Atomb Bomb Site Belies Tokyo Tales: Tests on New Mexico Range Confirm that Blast, and not Radiation, Took Toll”. The New York Times. Retrieved March 18, 2011.
(11) William L. Laurence. Dawn Over Zero : The story of the atomic bomb. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946, p. 224. Quote: ‘mine has been the honor, unique in the history of journalism, of preparing the War Department’s official press release for worldwide distribution’.
(12) Amy Goodman and David Goodman, ‘The Hiroshima Cover-Up: How the War Department’s Times man Won a Pulitzer’
(13) Mitchell, Robert Jay Lifton & Greg (1995). Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial. New York, N.Y.: Putnam. ISBN 978-0-399-14072-3., quoted by Goodman, Amy and Goodman, David, ‘Hiroshima Cover-up: How the War Department’s Times man Won a Pulitzer” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_L._Laurence