Part 4 (1/2)
R: Do you want me to get you some real straight dope on this, just how it affects them, and call you back in just a bit?
G: Thatas truea”thatas what I want.a Then they talk about the burned portions of the bodies are infected from the inside.
R: Well, of course, any burn is potentially an infected wound. We treat any burn as an infected wound. I think you had better get the anti-propagandists out.
G: This is the kind of thing that hurts usa”aThe j.a.panese, who were reported today by Tokyo radio, to have died mysteriously a few days after the atomic bomb blast, probably were the victims of a phenomenon which is well known in the great radiation laboratories of America.a That, of course, is what does us the damage.
R: I would say this: You will have to get some big-wig to put a counter-statement in the paper.
Groves planned to do just that, but first he needed more reliable information on what was happening in j.a.pan. On September 2 two j.a.panese representatives signed surrender doc.u.ments on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Six days later, on September 8, Stafford Warrenas team landed in Hiros.h.i.+ma. Always eager to please his volatile boss, Warren cabled Was.h.i.+ngton on September 10 and reported: aNumber dead or injured by radiation unknown, but preliminary survey indicates that there are only a small percent of injured survivors.a19 On the same day the cable arrived, Groves led a caravan of thirty-seven reporters and photographers to the Trinity site. Accompanying him were J. Robert Oppenheimer, Louis Hempelmann, and many other scientists and military officers. The scientists and newsmen donned white booties and shuffled alike kittens with paper shoes tied to their feeta across the fused green sand of the Trinity crater.20 The green gla.s.s, which covered an area eight hundred yards in diameter, was strewn with globs of glazed soil. For three weeks the area had reeked of the stench of death from the small desert animals killed in the blast. The site was still so radioactive, an a.s.sociated Press science writer reported, that it made aspending a day and night right in the crater a possibly risky business.a The writer continued: The touras purpose was dual.21 One, to tell the almost incredible story. Two, to show first hand that the facts do not bear out the j.a.panese propaganda that apparently tried to lay the foundation for claims that Americans won the war by unfair means. This New Mexico bomb was big, its effects comparable to those bombs dropped on j.a.pan. What happened here was studied purposely to avoid the chances the actual bombings would inflict bizarre and non-military suffering.
His brown Army uniform rumpled and stained with sweat, Groves allowed the photographers to take a few pictures of the crater, warning them to be quick or their film would fog. He explained that the lingering radioactivity at Trinity was due to the fact the bomb was detonated from a tower at a much lower height than the two bombs dropped on Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki. The j.a.panese bombs were exploded high above the two cities, he said, thus allowing the heat of the blast to carry the radioactive debris upward and away. aThere were evidences of some j.a.panese deaths due to radioactive rays, but the information now available indicates that this number was relatively small,a he told the newsmen.22 Wearing his famous pork-pie hat to ward off the sun, Oppenheimer added that the heights of the j.a.panese detonations were selected specifically to ensure athere would be no indirect chemical warfare due to poisoning the earth with radioactive elements and no horrors other than the familiar ones due to any great explosion.a23 Oppenheimer said that one hour after the blast it was probably safe for rescue workers to enter the area. Satisfied with the p.r.o.nouncements by the two prominent leaders, Life magazine opined: aIt seemed certain that the j.a.panese in Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki had died within the grotesque legality of wartime killing.a24 In reality, Oppenheimer and Groves were engaged in a wholesale distortion of the facts. While it is true that air bursts, such as the Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki explosions, produce less residual radiation than weapons detonated from towers, some radioactivity nevertheless occurs when neutrons are captured by atoms in the air and soil. Radioactive fallout from the two bombs also delivered significant doses of radiation to j.a.panese who lived downwind of the two cities. Furthermore, Groves told members of the Special Senate Committee on Atomic Energy that the weapons were detonated above the j.a.panese cities not to protect the inhabitants from radiation effects but to agive us the maximum possible explosive force.a25 And finally, Grovesas statement that only a few j.a.panese were dying of radiation injuries was patently untrue. Even as Groves and Oppenheimer were walking like kittens across the green sand, a second wave of bombing victims was dying from internal complications caused by severe radiation damage. But it would be years, even decades, before the rest of the world learned the full extent of the injuries because on September 19, General MacArthur prohibited any further press reports on the bombings.26 On September 15, shortly after the publicity show staged by Groves and Oppenheimer, Harry Daghlian died. When General Groves learned of his death, he instructed Los Alamos officials to cut a $10,000 check for Daghlianas mother and sister and to prepare a legal doc.u.ment that family members were to sign releasing the University of California, the War Department, and the federal government from liability. The transaction was completed on the same day as Daghlianas death.
Notwithstanding the optimistic cable he had sent General Groves on September 10, Stafford Warren had found thousands of j.a.panese dying from radiation exposure when his team arrived in Hiros.h.i.+ma. Many had already been cremated. Thousands more were lying on mats, anywhere there was a roof over their heads. Those who could eat and drink were given rice and tea. The floors of the first-aid stations were slick with vomit and b.l.o.o.d.y diarrhea. Outside the relief stations were piles of wooden sandals from cremated patients. aWhen we got there it stunk terribly, and there were flies everywhere,a Warren remembered.27 aThe flies were so bad that we had to close up the windows of the car to keep them out. You would see a man or a woman with what looked like a polka-dot s.h.i.+rt on, but when you got up close, there was just a ma.s.s of flies crawling over a formerly white s.h.i.+rt.a The j.a.panese who were close to the hypocenter and received the largest doses of radiation often began vomiting within half an hour of the bombing. They suffered from severe and b.l.o.o.d.y diarrhea and intense thirst. The downward spiral closely paralleled the symptoms suffered by Harry Daghlian: coma, delirium, and death.
By the time of Stafford Warrenas arrival, the second wave of death had begun taking its toll, due to the lethal effects of the radiation on victimsa bone marrow and gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The bone marrow is the blood-making factory where new cells, called stem cells, are produced. These cells mature and differentiate, becoming red cells, white cells, and platelets. When the whole body is irradiated, the number of cells in the bone marrow drops immediately, sometimes disappearing altogether. The bone marrow can regenerate itself if the damage is not too great. But if the exposure is large and nothing is done to counteract the damage, eventually fewer cells will be circulating in the bloodstream. The loss of red cells will cause anemia and fatigue; the reduction in white cells will reduce the bodyas ability to fight infection; and the lack of platelets can lead to hemorrhages. The effects of radiation on the bone marrow are most noticeable between twenty and sixty days after exposure.
The GI tract, which contains many cells being created and undergoing cell division, also can suffer dramatic damage if the radiation dose is high enough. After 100 rem have been delivered, changes can be seen in the cells lining the mucosa of the small intestine, but the production of new cells will compensate for any cells that are killed or damaged. At doses ranging from 500 to 1,000 rema”the radiation exposures received by many j.a.panese near the hypocentera”the cells that make up the epithelial layer of the small and large intestine are killed or unable to replenish themselves fast enough. Diarrhea and dehydration begin. Bacteria from the intestine can flood into the bloodstream, greatly increasing the risk of infection, called bacteremia, or toxic shock syndrome. With the depletion of white cells, the body is even less able to fend off the infection.
Some of the effects of the bombing would not become visible for weeks, months, years, or even decades. Unlike the bone marrow and GI tract, many organs and tissues are composed of mature cells which are relatively resistant to radiation. These organ systems may not show damage until they require new cells, at which time the stem cells of these organs may be unable to divide. Then the organ may not have all the cells it needs to function efficiently, and its overall performance will be diminished. The result: a shortened lifea”one of the major biological consequences of radiation.
The j.a.panese doctors who were treating the injured with penicillin and transfusions did not yet understand the mysterious sickness that the survivors were suffering from. To their dismay, they discovered that treatment seemed only to increase the suffering. Needle punctures caused aoozing that continued to death,a Warren observed.28 aEven p.r.i.c.ks to obtain blood for blood counts caused oozing that could not be checked.a Warrenas job was not to minister to the sick but to find out whether the two bombs had left any residual radiation, and if so, whether the radiation was causing deaths. Donald Collins, a member of the survey team, said many years later that the group had been instructed by General Thomas F. Farrell, one of Grovesas top aides, that their mission was to aprove there was no radioactivity from the bomb.a29 Apparently they didnat even have to go to the bombing sites to offer that proof because while the team was still waiting to enter j.a.pan, Collins said, awe read in the Stars and Stripes the results of our findings.a Stafford Warren told members of the Special Senate Committee on Atomic Energy that it was impossible to develop meaningful statistics on the death rate because all the records and all the record-keeping organizations had been destroyed. What made the mortality survey even more difficult, he said, were the unreliable memories of the j.a.panese. aIt often took an hour of careful questioning of a patient, even an intelligent one, like a doctor or a nurse, to find out precisely what happened on that day.a30 Our conclusion was that we could trust very little of the factual information that came to us through interpreters, from these j.a.panese, these patients.a He estimated that only 5 to 7 percent of the fatalities were caused by radiation. aI think the radiation has been exaggerated,a he testified.31 (The number of people killed in Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki is still a matter of dispute; the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which had a.s.sessed the damage of the air attacks on Germany and was ordered by President Truman to survey the destruction in j.a.pan, estimated that 140,000 to 160,000 people in Hiros.h.i.+ma were killed or injured and 70,000 killed or injured in Nagasaki.)32 Two weeks after the Manhattan Project doctors began combing the bombed-out cities, a contingent of Navy officers and scientists arrived in j.a.pan to do their own independent survey. That group, which included s.h.i.+elds Warren, the Harvard doctor who would take over the AECas new Division of Biology and Medicine after the war, reached a quite different conclusion: Most of the deaths in j.a.pan were caused by radiation.
s.h.i.+elds Warren was deeply shaken when he saw Nagasaki. To reach the ruined city, his team first drove through miles of terraced hillsides and farming country. Then they pa.s.sed through a tunnel that had been converted to a war workshop. aWhen we came out the other side of the tunnel we s.h.i.+fted from a view of a peaceful countryside to utter devastation,a he recalled.33 aIt was almost like stepping from the eighteenth century say, into the twentieth centurya”the countryside on the one side, and on the other, modern power.a s.h.i.+elds Warren moved from hospital to hospital, examining survivors and studying slides and autopsy notes made by j.a.panese doctors. As he toured the devastated city, he recorded his impressions in a small diary. At the front of the diary are j.a.panese words that he apparently learned while waiting off the coast of j.a.pan for armistice to be declared: ketsueki, blood; fushosha, wounded person; babsudan, bomb; ikutsu, how many.34 Warren sent transmittal letters and specimens from the bombing victims to the Naval Medical Research Inst.i.tute in Bethesda, Maryland. According to Warrenas diary, copies of the letters were also sent to the director of naval intelligence.
Radiating outward for two miles from the hypocenter was a scene of total destruction, he wrote. aRats, flies, mosquitoes killed.35 No larvae on bodies.a aWeeds + a little gra.s.s starting back.a aHorses & dogs died just like people, only protected ones lived. Even moles etc. were supposed to have died.a aNo crawling bugs. No vermin.a With scant medical supplies and no knowledge of the illness, little could be done for the victims. aFew transfusions given, no plasma.36 Used saline freely and injectable vitamin ABC,a Warren wrote. aSkin ripped off & viscera out from blast effect.a aMost had amnesia 1a”2 days.a aBlast broke tympanun.a aHemorrhages came back.a aMuch GI irritation.a aSome complained of heata”enough to ignite clothes, others felt only mild warmth.a aBrightest light they had ever seen.a aSome ocular hemorrhages, 3 blind, others see dimly at about one meter.a He also jotted down the conflicting death tolls that were being reported at the time: a175,000 killed at Nagasaki.a a40,000 killed instantly.a aEstimates dead at 30,000 +.a Sometimes huge, mottled patches of purple appeared on the bombing victimsa skin. Observers reported that blood often poured from nasal pa.s.sages, eardrums, uteruses, and urethra. Ulcers soon developed in gums, throats, and tonsils. Before some patients died, their tonsils and tissues in the throat area became gangrenous. Those who survived the critical period often succ.u.mbed to pneumonia or some other infection, which their weakened immune system could not fight off.
Warren saw the same astounding damage on the internal organs removed during autopsies: lungs filled with fluid; kidneys, liver, and hearts covered with bright red hemorrhages; depleted bone marrow; congestion in the brains; bizarre-looking cells and ma.s.sive nuclei sp.a.w.ned by the huge radiation doses. aThe injuries were diverse and confusing,a he recalled in an article published in September 1946: A greater number of injuries was probably caused by ionizing radiation-blast effects, gamma rays, and neutrons than by any other type of injury resulting from the explosion of the bombs.37 However, since the effects of this ionizing radiation take hours, days, or even weeks to appear, their importance was largely masked by the great numbers killed by flash burn, fire or wreckage of buildings well before the time that symptoms due to irradiation could develop.
Soon after the Manhattan Project team and the Navy group completed their preliminary surveys, the War Department dispatched 195,000 soldiers to j.a.pan to aid in the demilitarization effort and help supervise the cleanup. The first troops arrived in Hiros.h.i.+ma about sixty days after the bomb had been dropped.38 GIs landed in Nagasaki forty-five days after that city had been bombed.
Bill Griffin, a Marine who survived the fierce fighting on Iwo Jima, arrived in Nagasaki on November 1, 1945. Occasionally he was ordered to patrol the bombed-out area. aI donat know what the purpose of it was.39 There were no people. All the people had perished,a he said. aThere were no birds, no wildlife, no crickets, no nothing. Itas hard to explain what complete silence is like. You have to experience it.a Griffin said he saw civilians wearing white coveralls and diversa helmets (aThey were all covered upa) taking radiation measurements of soil and water. j.a.panese who came down from the mountains often wore menstrual pads over their faces to avoid breathing the dust. He said the bombing victims, particularly those who were horribly disfigured by thermal burns, had been whisked out of sight so the American soldiers could not tell people back home what they had seen.
As Bill Griffin and other American GIs patrolled the desolate streets of Nagasaki and Hiros.h.i.+ma, top officials of the Manhattan Project went to Capitol Hill to testify before the Special Senate Committee on Atomic Energy that was investigating the problems related to the development and control of the atomic bomb. Brien McMahon, a freshman Democrat from Connecticut, chaired the hearing. General Groves took a seat at the witness table in Room 312 of the Senate Office Building at 10:00 A.M. on November 28, 1945.
By then Groves knew a great deal more about the effects of radiation on the human body than he did when he placed the two panicked phone calls to Oak Ridge the preceding August. He knew, for example, the details of Harry Daghlianas death. He knew fallout from the Trinity bomb had injured livestock and exposed families such as the Raitliffs to a significant amount of radiation. And he was also aware that thousands of j.a.panese were dying from medical complications caused by radiation from the bomb. Intent upon calming the publicas fears and keeping the Manhattan Projectas laboratories and factories open, however, Groves chose to downplay the dangers from radiation.
aThe radioactive casualty can be of several cla.s.ses,a Groves testified.40 aHe can have enough so that he will be killed instantly. He can have a smaller amount which will cause him to die rather soon, and as I understand it from the doctors, without undue suffering. In fact they say it is a very pleasant way to die. Then we get down below that to the man who is injured slightly, and he may take some time to be healed, but he can be healed.a aDoes that come about through treatment or through time?a Eugene D. Millikin, a conservative Republican senator from Colorado, asked.
aThrough time,a responded Groves. aAnyone who is working with such materials, who accidentally becomes overexposed, just takes a vacation away from the material and in due course of time he is perfectly all right again.a Later in the hearing, when Senator Harry F. Byrd, a Virginia Democrat, asked the general if there had been any aoperating accidentsa during the Manhattan Project, Groves gave a response that was a study in obfuscation: aWe had no operating accidents throughout this project that were directly attributable to the unusual nature of the material that was a fatal accident.41 We had one after the bomb was exploded. We then had one we should not have had; there was no reason for having it. It was like all accidents, industrial or home accidents.a The committee was especially interested in the question of whether the two bombs had left any residual radiation in j.a.pan. In fact, a transcript of the hearing shows that was the first question Groves was asked when he took a seat at the witness table. The general stuck to the line that he and Oppenheimer fed to reporters during the Trinity tour. aThere is none. That is a very positive anone,a he snapped.42 When Richard Russell, a Democratic senator from Georgia, pressed Groves about the injuries, he responded, aThere was no radioactivity damage done to any human being excepting at the time that the bomb actually went off, and that is an instantaneous damage.a43 aLet me ask you,a said Senator Millikin, awould the effect be different had the bomb exploded in the ground?a Groves replied, aIf the bomb had exploded on or near the ground, that is, within a hundred feet or so, the effect would have been the same as at New Mexico, I believe; there you would have had lasting effects for a considerable period of months.44 You would have had a considerable number of radioactive casualties, and I think that you would have had an area which should have been banned from traffic. The first mission given to our organization that went over there was to determine that the cities of Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki were 100 per cent safe for American troops, and to know absolutely that that was a fact so that the men themselves would know everything was all right.a But many of the men who were sent to Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki do not believe that aeverything was all right.a Not long after Bill Griffin was discharged, his skin flaked off and his hair and teeth fell out. One of his grandsons was born with a club foot; another appears to have an impaired immune system. Griffin is certain that he received a significant dose of radiation while in Nagasaki and that the exposure damaged his reproductive cells. aWe were the first issue of guinea pigs.a Other soldiers stationed in the bombed-out cities said they developed rare cancers and blood disorders, or suffered from premature heart attacks, chronic fatigue, lung diseases, and inexplicable skin afflictions. Many believe their diseases and illnesses are due to the radiation they received in j.a.pan. For decades the Defense Department has vigorously denied that occupation troops were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, maintaining the doses ranged from a afew tens of millirema to a aworst casea dose of up to one rem.45 The Pentagonas desire to prove the two j.a.panese bombs left no residual radiation became one of the prime motivating factors in the atomic maneuvers that began at the Nevada Test Site in 1951. Thousands of troops were marched through the swirling radioactive dust at Ground Zero over a decade or so. Instead of quelling fears, however, the militaryas strategic plan backfired and thousands of soldiers came to believe that they, too, had been used as unwitting guinea pigs by their government.
12.
THE QUEST CONTINUES.
When the news of the Hiros.h.i.+ma bombing reached Los Alamos, the scientists rejoiced. Some raced to the telephone and booked tables at La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe. Others stayed at Los Alamos and celebrated. They subst.i.tuted dynamite for fireworks and snaked through the streets banging garbage-can lids. aEverybody had parties, we all ran around.1 I sat on the end of a jeep and beat drums and so on,a recalled Richard Feynman, a math wizard and future n.o.bel laureate.
As the devastation from the bombings became better understood, some of the scientistsa elation began turning to guilt about the past and fear about the future. No one better demonstrated these conflicting emotions than J. Robert Oppenheimer. Deeply fatigued and more emaciated than ever, he departed Los Alamos in mid-October of 1945. In a ceremony before he left, he warned his colleagues: aIf atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the a.r.s.enals of a warring world, or to the a.r.s.enals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiros.h.i.+ma.a2 General Groves selected Norris Bradbury, a Berkeley-trained physicist who had worked on the explosives aspects of the plutonium bomb, as the interim laboratory director. Bradbury agreed to take the job for six months, but those six months eventually turned into twenty-five years.3 While politicians, military leaders, and even the scientists themselves debated the future of the atomic bomb at public forums and congressional hearings that would continue for the next year, the physicists, chemists, metallurgists, and explosives experts who had built the bombs drifted from day to day, uncertain of their future.
But the projectas second string of scientistsa”the medical researchers who had been shunted to the sidelines while the great bomb-building drama unfoldeda”seemed moved to redouble their efforts at this stage. If anything, the Trinity fallout, the deaths in j.a.pan, the demise of Harry Daghlian, had made it even more imperative to obtain accurate information on the effects of radiation. In addition, nose counts and urine counts taken from Los Alamos workers that summer had shown that some employees had been seriously overexposed to plutonium. Were those workers going to come down with the same grisly cancers the radium dial painters had developed? The thought terrified Louis Hempelmann. The contamination was so severe, he warned Joseph Kennedy, athat the situation seems to be getting completely out of hand.a4 Ebb Cade, Arthur Hubbard, and Albert Stevens were more or less on their own as the cataclysmic events of the summer of 1945 unfolded. Toward the end of his hospital stay, Ebb Cade developed infectious jaundice. But by the time he was discharged, athe patient was ambulatory and in good condition,a an Oak Ridge physician observed.5 Ebb moved back to Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife after he was released from the hospital. On Sundays, he brought sacks of oranges to his nieces and nephews. He encouraged them to stay in school and warned them to be careful when they got behind the wheel of a car. aWe just loved to talk to him,a recalled his niece, Mary Frances Cade Derr.6 aHe would throw his head back and laugh with us.a On April 13, 1953, almost exactly eight years to the day of the injection, Ebb Cade died of heart failure. He was sixty-three years old. His brothers and sisters outlived him by decades. One sister, Nanreen Cade Walton, lived to be more than one hundred years old and went to Was.h.i.+ngton in 1979 to speak with the House Select Committee on Aging. On the eve of her 107th birthday, she told a reporter, aI believe the old days was pretty hard but these days are more wicked.a7 Arthur Hubbard remained in fair condition until August of 1945, when he began complaining of chest pains. Despite the radical surgical procedures he had undergone, the cancer continued to spread rapidly. Confused and in considerable pain, he died on October 3, five months after the injection. Twelve hours after he died, his body was autopsied and his organs harvested and examined for plutonium deposition. The hottest parts were his bone marrow and liver, but scientists were convinced the injection had not affected the disease or hastened his death. They did note that the plutonium did not seem to concentrate in the tumor area, an observation that seemed to rule out the possibility that the radioactive substance could be used for therapeutic purposes.8 Albert Stevens began painting houses again but was soon forced to give it up. aIt got to the point where he wasnat strong enough anymore,a his daughter said.9 Periodically he returned to UCSF for follow-up visits. Robert Stone ordered that a GI series be done without charge whenever Albert returned to the clinic. He had no specific complaints except for his inability to gain weight. Ten years after he was injected, a radiologist noted arather markeda degeneration in the lumbar region of his spine and several degenerating discs.
Albert was to live nearly twenty-one years after he was diagnosed as terminal and injected with a so-called lethal dose of plutonium. His long survival rate is astonis.h.i.+ng considering the amount of radiation he received. In 1995 two Los Alamos scientists calculated that Albert received a dose equal to 6,400 rem during his lifetime.10 That translates to 309 rem per year, or 858 times what the average person receives during the same period.
Just how the plutonium affected Albertas day-to-day health is unknown. The radiation probably caused his bones to thin and become brittle. But it was his heart that gave out first. On January 9, 1966, he died of cardiorespiratory failure in Santa Rosa, California, twelve miles from the town of Healdsburg where he had brought his ailing wife and children so many decades before. He was seventy-nine years old. His body was cremated, and his ashes were placed in a bronze urn and stored in a niche in Santa Rosaas Chapel of the Chimes.
The Manhattan Project medical doctors were not satisfied with the data they had acquired from the three injections. Ebb Cadeas impaired kidney function may have skewed his excretion results, and for some unknown reason, Albert Stevens was excreting plutonium much more slowly than the other two patients. The physicians and scientists soon developed a list of things they needed to find out: What was the minimum amount of plutonium necessary to produce damage in the body? How could it be quantified and detected in wounds or lungs? Did diet affect plutoniumas distribution? How was the liver damaged after intravenous injection? Did existing kidney damage diminish the elimination rate? And as a corollary, should people with kidney damage be excluded from working with plutonium?
The human experiments and ongoing animal studies had only confirmed fears that plutonium was indeed more carcinogenic than radium.11 On May 21, 1945, less than two weeks after Albert had been injected, Wright Langham wrote a letter to Hymer Friedell recommending that the so-called tolerance dose for plutonium be lowered to one microgram. Although Langham agreed with Friedell that the limit was probably much too conservative, he nevertheless supported it because athe medico-legal aspect will have been taken care of, and of still greater importance, we will have taken a relatively small chance of poisoning someone in case the material proves to be more toxic than one would normally expect.a12 Toward the end of June 1945, after the Manhattan Projectas Medical Section had received data on Albert, it officially lowered the tolerance dose to one microgram.13 (In 1949 a group of researchers recommended that the tolerance dose be lowered again, to one-tenth that amount, or 0.1 microgram, after former Met Lab scientist Austin Brues presented results of a rat study suggesting plutonium was fifteen times more damaging than radium. Wright Langham and other scientists vigorously opposed the adoption of such a conservative standard, arguing, among other things, that it would produce aserious delaysa in the labas plutonium operations. The AECas s.h.i.+elds Warren struck a compromise and lowered the maximum permissible dose to 0.5 micrograms.) Sometime in the summer of 1945, the Manhattan Project Medical Section decided to inject more humans with plutonium. In making the decision, the doctors probably were thinking about overexposures that had already occurred as well as exposures that might occur in the future. Stafford Warren knew as early as April of 1945, even before the successful detonation of the Trinity bomb, that the Manhattan District would continue in some shape or form. aIt has been indicated by properly qualified individuals that the operations of the Manhattan Engineer District should and will continue on for peacetime purposes,a he wrote in a letter decla.s.sified in 1995. In short, plutonium and its hazards were not going to go away.14 Over the next two years, an additional fifteen patients would be injected with plutonium: two in Chicago by Robert Stoneas group; another two in San Francis...o...b.. Joseph Hamiltonas group; and eleven patients in Rochester. Before the program ended in the summer of 1947, a total of eighteen people would be injected with plutonium without their informed consent.
13.
THE ROCHESTER PRODUCTION LINE.
On September 5, 1945, just three days after j.a.pan formally surrendered, Los Alamos chemist Wright Langham sat down with scientists working at the Manhattan Annex, the secret research facility at the University of Rochester to plan the most comprehensive set of plutonium injections yet undertaken. This new round of injections would be a collaborative effort. Langham would supply the plutonium; the Rochester doctors, the patients. According to doc.u.ments made public in 1994a”1995, the Rochester segment of the plutonium experiment was part of a larger, planned study in which fifty patients were to be injected with radioisotopes of plutonium, polonium, uranium, lead, and radium.1 Rochesteras Manhattan Annex was originally located across the street from the medical school and connected by a tunnel. There, as at all Manhattan Project sites, secrecy was closely guarded. Constructed in five months, the Annex employed 350 people by the end of the war. Its activities were s.h.i.+elded from intruders by Army guards, and the occupantsa backgrounds were thoroughly investigated to make sure athey were loyal American citizens, that they were discreet, and that they could be depended upon to keep secret work which contributed toward the development and production of the atomic [bomb].a Rochester was far from the noisy industrial plants and hectic laboratories of the Manhattan Project.2 Oddly enough, though, the cold, industrial city had numerous links to the bomb project. Rochester was the home of George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak Co. A subsidiary of his company, the Tennessee Eastman Corp., was the first operating contractor of the gigantic Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge where enriched uranium was produced.