Psychopath General Groves Told U.S. Senate Radiation Sickness Was “A Very Pleasant Way to Die”

[FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer]

EVERY fucking WORD which comes out of the BODILY ORIFICES of the EVIL
WASPs is a LIE.

EVERY fucking WORD.

Pathological lying, deception, spin and twisting everything, every day
in every issue.

How and WHY the fuck do WASP women breed even more EVIL WASP VIRUS?


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https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2022-08-08/77th-anniversary-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-bombings-revisiting

77th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings: Revisiting the Record

Contemporaneous Japanese Reports of Deaths and Lingering Sickness from
Radiation Confounded Manhattan Project Leaders Who Treated them as
“Propaganda”

General Groves Told U.S. Senate Radiation Sickness Was “A Very Pleasant
Way to Die”

But a U.S. Navy Report Found the “Atomic Bomb is the Most Terrible Agent
of Destruction Known to Man”

Reexploring the Manhattan Project and the Problem of Radiation Effects,
1944-

Washington, D.C., August 8, 2022 – After years of research and planning,
U.S. officials and scientists overseeing the Manhattan Project were
startlingly unprepared for the emergence of evidence of the long-term
effects of radiation generated by the atomic bomb – even after the
Trinity test in July 1945 and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 77
years ago this week, according to documents posted today by the National
Security Archive.

Moreover, the head of the project, Gen. Leslie R. Groves, was so worried
about public revulsion over the terrible effects of the new weapon –
which a Navy report later in 1945 called “the most terrible agent of
destruction known to man” – that he cut off early discussion within the
MED of the problem. Later, he misleadingly told Congress there was “no
radioactive residue” in the two devastated cities. In doing so, he
contradicted evidence from his own specialists whom he had sent to Japan
to investigate. Groves even insisted that those who had been exposed to
radiation from the atomic explosions would not face “undue suffering. In
fact, they say it is a very pleasant way to die.”

This publication supplements an earlier National Security Archive
posting on “The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II.” It
incorporates records on the radiation problem as perceived during 1945
that have been declassified for decades but are not easily available.
Included are the initial secret and top secret Manhattan Project and
U.S. Navy reports on the medical effects of the atomic bombings. Using
information from U.S. investigations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and from
Japanese doctors and scientists, these were the first official U.S.
reports to discuss in detail the terrible course of radiation sickness.
Reexploring the Manhattan Project
and the Problem of Radiation Effects, 1944-1945

By William Burr

When the Roosevelt administration began the Manhattan Project in 1942,
the goal was a deliverable atomic weapon that could be used in World War
II to defeat Germany and possibly Japan. The project raised tremendously
complex political, scientific, engineering and logistical challenges but
by spring of 1945 the objective was in sight. As preparations for the
first atomic test were underway, medical experts raised the special
dangers of radioactivity—that the test would create health hazards.
Thus, when the U.S. tested the first bomb on 16 July 1945, Manhattan
Project Chief Medical Officer Dr. Stafford Warren stated in a top secret
report that, “the dust outfall from the various portions of the
[mushroom] cloud was potentially a very serious hazard over a band
almost 30 miles wide extending almost 90 miles northeast of the site.”
Warren further reported that a few days later there was still “a
tremendous amount of radioactive dust floating in the air.”

On 6 August 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three
days later, it exploded an atomic bomb over Nagasaki. Soon reports from
Japan disclosed deaths and disease from unknown causes that turned out
to be radiation sickness. Distressed by news that cast a bad light on
the new weapon, Manhattan Engineer District (MED) chief General Leslie
R. Groves told an adviser that the reports were “propaganda” that had to
be dispelled. While medical specialists that he sent to Japan told him
otherwise, Groves would remain in denial going as far as to tell U.S.
Senators that there was “no radioactive residue” at the bombed cities
and that radiation sickness was a “very pleasant way to die.”

This published collection supplements the previous National Security
Archive posting “The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II” by
presenting key documents from 1944-1946 that provide a close look at the
problem of radiation effects of the atomic detonations—from the first
weapons test (“Trinity”) to military use in Japan. The documents in this
collection were declassified years ago, some as far back as the 1970s,
but not all are readily available online. A review of these records
offers fresh insights on a number of important issues that are relevant
to this day.

One theme in the collection is how MED leaders, who were planning for
the first atomic test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, found it necessary to
authorize health and safety protocols to ensure that the event did not
contaminate project workers or anyone living nearby. Top officials such
as General Groves initially pushed back against the warnings of
radioactive fallout, but the uncertainty about the physical effects of
the test and pressure from Stafford Warren prompted him to approve
recommended safety measures.

Another topic in the collection concerns U.S. government reactions to
radiation sickness in post-attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki. U.S. reactions
to reports from Japan ranged from outright denial of radiation disease
to acknowledgement that the reports were accurate. The scientists who
worked to produce the first atomic bomb were preoccupied with building a
weapon of extraordinary power with massive explosive yield . That its
effects could produce long-term illness was surprising to many, who
thought that the blast effects would be the primary cause of deaths.
Within a month after the bombings, U.S. teams were in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki collecting evidence of radiation sickness. Nevertheless,
General Groves remained in denial as indicated by his later Senate
testimony.

Also included in today’s posting is the report of a witness to the
bombing of Hiroshima, Johannes Siemes, a German Jesuit priest and
university professor. Siemes met MED scientists in Tokyo and his
first-hand account, which discussed the impact of radiation sickness and
raised questions about the ethics of using atomic weapons, was
circulated among U.S. officials in Japan. The posting also publishes the
initial MED and U.S. Navy reports on the medical effects of the atomic
bombings, using information from Japanese doctors and scientists. Both
reports included the Siemes narrative, which journalist John Hersey
would later use as a source for his famous New Yorker article, “Hiroshima.”


Radiation Safety in the Manhattan Project

For the Manhattan Project leadership, radiation safety was never a
priority compared to the foremost goal of producing a deliverable
weapon, but plans to produce large quantities of fissile material made
health and safety protocols essential. Plutonium, which had never
existed before in nature, was especially dangerous, although the press
of wartime work led some scientists to take fatal risks. Early in the
history of the MED, project leaders organized a Health Division at the
Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory (Metlab), the unit that had
responsibility for fissile materials production at Site X (Clinton,
Tennessee) and Site W (Hanford, Washington). The division established a
standard of 0.1 roentgen (r) per day as an upper limit for full-body
exposure, the standard that had been widely accepted in the radiation
industry. It was a more or less arbitrary number and a relatively high
level of exposure compared to standards adopted in 1946 and later. In
any event, most workers at those sites did not know the secret purpose
of their work or what the hazards were, but they were monitored
nevertheless. By 1944, if not earlier, MED health officials developed
safety standards for Site Y (Los Alamos) where scientists were working
with plutonium to develop implosion bomb technology.[1]

Months before the Trinity test, some MED experts understood the
“hazards” of radioactive fallout, which encouraged them to recommend
special precautions to minimize risk to the public and to avoid legal
problems. While General Groves had worried about legal issues, his main
concern was security and preventing leaks, and he was exasperated when
MED officials argued for special precautions for the first test. Thus
when an MED doctor brought the radiation safety plan to Groves, the
latter complained, “What's the matter with you, are you a Hearst
propagandist?” It took more convincing before Groves signed off on the
plan. The precautions, of course, were necessary; as noted, the Trinity
test produced radioactive fallout that could have endangered many had it
gone in a different direction.[2]


U.S. Teams Sent to Japan to Investigate Weapons Effects

After a uranium bomb, “Little Boy,” was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August
1945, President Harry S. Truman announced to the world that the U.S. had
used an atomic weapon. A few days later, on 9 August, a plutonium
implosion weapon was dropped on Nagasaki. Very quickly, Groves and his
advisers authorized plans to send MED medical experts to Japan to
investigate weapons effects in both cities and to determine whether
occupation troops could safely enter those cities. In early September, a
few weeks after the surrender, an MED group led by Brigadier General
Thomas Farrell arrived in Japan, with a medical team led by Colonel
Stafford Warren. Motivated to some degree by interservice rivalry, the
Navy and the Army also sent teams, led respectively by Naval
intelligence officer Captain C.G. Grimes and Colonel Ashley W.
Oughterson. For the Navy team, the last to arrive, Captain Shields
Warren, (unrelated to Stafford Warren) directed medical studies.[3]

In the weeks after the atomic bombings, reports emanated from Japan
about mysterious lingering deaths of survivors who had not been injured
by blast or fire effects. While not initially described as radiation
sickness, the Japanese were soon discussing “a-bomb disease,” although
occupation authorities would clamp down on media coverage. MED health
experts were well aware of the biological consequences of radiation
exposure, but there were many unknowns about the impact of ionizing
radiation on living tissues. And MED physicists were far from well
versed on the problem. Physicist Norman Ramsey (Scientific and Technical
Deputy to Captain William “Deak” Parsons) initially dismissed the
Japanese reports as “propaganda.” Like others at Los Alamos, his
priority had been building a deliverable weapon with huge explosive
effects which, he assumed, would kill instantly anyone who otherwise
might have died from radiation exposure. As Ramsey later put it, they
would have been “killed with a brick first.” Ramsey and others learned
that some near ground zero were in strong structures that made them
“accidental survivors of the blast effects” and vulnerable to radiation.[4]

The reports from Japan gave a damage control aspect to the MED team sent
to Japan. Groves’ deputy, General Thomas Farrell expected to prove that
the reports were groundless and in a press briefing on 8 September, he
reportedly dismissed Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett’s accounts
of radiation sickness as “propaganda.”[5] Nevertheless, Farrell’s
reports and the more detailed studies by doctors on his staff,
confronted Groves with uncomfortable facts. According to Farrell,
“Summaries of Japanese reports previously sent are essentially correct,
as to clinical effects from single gamma radiation dose.” Moreover,
Stafford Warren’s interim study on the medical effects of the explosions
reported that “delayed effects” involving severe symptoms “were due to
radiation.”

Reports from the Navy team provided information on radiation effects,
including “residual radioactivity” produced by fission products
deposited on the ground. With the MED denying some information to the
Navy team, the latter found ways to compensate—for example, by using
reasonably accurate Japanese estimates of the height of burst of the
detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japanese measurements of
potentially dangerous residual radioactivity in Nagasaki’s Nishiyama’s
district. All of this information was marked as top secret in the Navy
reports, although the estimated heights of burst, along with other
weapons effects information, were officially declassified in 1948 by the
Atomic Energy Commission.[6]

The “residual radioactivity” problem was associated with what became a
controversy In Japan over the impact of fallout. While not as severe as
the fallout from the Trinity test, the blasts produced what became known
as “black rain”—radiation-laced raindrops that fell on residents of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was a theme in Masuji Ibuse’s extraordinary
novel, Black Rain (1969). During the decades that followed the atomic
bombings, people who had been exposed to black rain, but who were
outside the geographic zones that had been the basis for determining
survivor benefits, made compensation claims nonetheless. When their
claims were denied, they filed lawsuits, which dragged on eventually
producing a major court victory in July 2021 (a decision that the
Japanese government did not appeal).

Elements of the investigative teams sent by the Army, Navy, and MED
eventually merged into what became known as the “Joint Commission for
the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan,” which
also included Japanese scientists and other staff. In 1946 the Joint
Commission produced a secret six-volume report, which the Atomic Energy
Commission published in 1951, with a first volume that included detailed
eyewitness accounts by residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The work of
the Joint Commission set the stage for the long-term research conducted
by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), which developed from an
authorization signed by President Truman in November 1946.[7] Based in
Japan, the ABCC conducted additional studies on the medical and
biological effects of the bombings. The ABCC lasted until 1975 when it
became a private organization, the RERF, the Radiation Effects Research
Foundation.[8]


Uncertain Knowledge of Atomic Bomb Casualties

Studies of the health effects of the atomic bombings would continue, but
knowledge about key issues remain uncertain. The total number of deaths
in both cities is unknowable, with only guesswork possible for totals in
the higher and the lower ranges. The lower estimates are based on
reports prepared after the bombings; the higher estimates are from a
1977 re-estimate. For Hiroshima, the estimated deaths are in the range
of 70,000 to 140,000, while for Nagasaki, the number is between 40,000
and 110,000. The fatalities include American and Allied prisoners-of war
who were held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time.[9]

Just as uncertain is knowledge of the numbers in both cities who died or
suffered from radiation sickness in the weeks, months, and years that
followed the bombings. In 1946, Stafford Warren estimated that radiation
sickness were six to eight percent of the deaths, but the U.S Strategic
Bombing Survey projected even more, 15 to 20 percent, although the
numbers could be higher. In 1984, the journalist Peter Wyden published
an estimate of 20,000 deaths from radiation sickness and 20,000
additional injuries. That exposed people experienced a greater than
usual incidence of leukemia mortality in the years that followed is
incontestable.[10]

While official medical reports about radiation sickness would remain
classified for years, some information broke out. When the issue of
radiation sickness came up in Senate hearings in November 1945, General
Groves may have decided to mislead his audience rather than disclose
what he may have seen as a secret [see Document 24]. All the same,
factual information about radiation sickness was being circulated in
Japan despite the censorship efforts of U.S. occupation authorities, and
would soon be available from other U.S. sources, official and otherwise.
In June 1946, the White House released the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey
report on the atomic bombings, and its disclosures about radiation
sickness and its course provided the substance for articles in The
Washington Post and The New York Times. Only weeks later, in August, the
writer John Hersey put faces on the victims of radiation disease,
including a German Jesuit priest, when the New Yorker published
“Hiroshima” based on his earlier research and interviews in Japan.
Hersey’s article included striking information on radiation sickness and
its impact on identifiable individuals.

Behind the veils of secrecy, President Truman had already imagined human
faces when confronted with the fact of massive civilian casualties in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After reading about “all those kids” that had
been killed in the attack, Truman decided that no more atomic weapons
would be dropped over Japan without his express approval, Suspecting
that atomic bombs were not even usable and deciding that they were too
terrible to be left under military control, Truman secretly asserted his
commander-in-chief authority so that he would have final decision-making
power over any proposals for combat use.[11]

President Truman’s atomic command-and-control decisions in the last days
of World War II remained secret for years, as did the records of the
MED. It was not until the 1960s, 70s, and 80s that sufficient archival
material became available for historians and social scientists to write
knowledgeably about the first use of atomic weapons and their radiation
effects. It also took years for U.S. government officials to publicly
acknowledge that nuclear weapons tests and explosions produced harmful
radioactive fallout. The Atomic Energy Commission insisted that fallout
posed no health risks, but its position was undermined by another
incident involving Japan, the exposure of the crew members of the
fishing boat Lucky Dragon to the effects of the 1954 multi-megaton
Castle Bravo test. That incident played a key role in bringing the
fallout problem to light, though not without more denials. It would take
almost another decade, however, before the U.K., the U.S., and the
Soviet Union did something about the problem by agreeing to halt
atmospheric testing in 1963 (although China and France continued for
years).[12]

That was all in the future. In Japan, the survivors of the attacks would
struggle for recognition and social support. In the United States the
“Hiroshima maidens” would stir public interest but looking back at the
bombings had little appeal. While the Truman administration would
release some information about radiation sickness—such as in reports of
the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey—it, along with former officials, had
little interest in a searching examination of the first use of nuclear
weapons. The Hersey article had encouraged others, including Saturday
Review editor Norman Cousins and journalist Leland Stowe, to raise
questions about the morality of the bombings and the decisions to use
the bomb, thus distressing Harvard University President James B. Conant,
a former top MED adviser, who firmly supported combat use of the bomb.
Stimulated by Conant (and former MED adviser) Karl Compton and former
Secretary of War Henry Stimson hoped to curb debate by publishing major
articles in The Atlantic and Harpers that argued in favor of the
necessity and legitimacy of the bombings. While eventual releases of
primary sources would complicate the picture, the Compton and Stimson
arguments held sway for years.[13]

Note: Thanks to Professor Barton J. Bernstein, emeritus, Department of
History, Stanford University, for helpful comments. Special
acknowledgements to the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Testing Archive,
and to librarians at Special Collections, University of California Los
Angeles Libraries, and the Medical Historical Library, Harvey
Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University.