Category: Atomic and Nuclear weapons

JF Ptak Science Books Post 228

The total number of casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki today exceed the initial figures of  1945–people were of course dying years after the blasts due to excessive exposure to ionizing radiation and other complications.  To understand the long-term affects of the use of these weapons the  National Academy of Science (under the instigation of the Truman White House) created the Atomic Bomb Casualty Committee in 1945.  Its earliest concerns were hematological, but then quickly spread into other areas such as leukemia, radiation cataracts, fertility, aging, mortality and genetics.  By 1950 there were more than 1000 Americans involved in this program, which had begun to whither by 1953 but which lasted until 1982.

This questionnaire comes from the ABCC and published in The Effect of Exposure to the Atomic Bombs on Pregnancy Termination in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the prolific and important Neel and Schull) and published by the Academy in 1956. (The two would address the issue many times, and seem to have summed it up in The Children of Atomic Bomb Survivors, A Genetic Study.  Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1991. The 1947 report of the ABCC may be read HERE.)

This study addressed the question of generational radiation damage and–after 1953–whether and if so how radiation damages DNA.  The issue was whether future generations of children would express increased birth defect ratios as a result of exposure to the bomb.  This questionnaire was given every fifth lunar month to the pregnant women of Hiroshima and Nagasaki–who were made to register their pregnancies with the government–and carried on for six years.   

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Also see the following:

Liebow, Averill.  Encounter with Disaster, A Medical Diary. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1970.

Marston, Robert Q. M.D., and Fredric Solomon M.D., eds.  The Medical Implications of Nuclear War.  Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1986.

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The figures for the dead and injured at Hiroshima and Nagaski, August 1945:

	Hiroshima	Nagasaki
Pre-raid population	255,000	195,000
Dead	66,000	39,000
Injured	69,000	25,000
Total Casualties	135,000	64,000

(Click on image to enlarge)

  

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 224

I just came across these engineering drawings for a detailed survey of the Trinity Site in New Mexico,  location of the first detonation of an atomic bomb (16 July 1945).  The work was completed by Rossana Santos for the DARCOM Recording Project as part of the American Historic Building Survey (Historic American Engineering Record NM-1-B, Department of the Interior).  There are a number of interesting renderings, but the most useful (and scarcest) is the map showing the location of bunkers and instrumentation for the 16 July event. (Click on the images to enlarge.)  This series of drawings pretty much speak for themselves. 

 

JF Ptak Science Books LLC   Post 171

Now we are all sons of bitches—Kenneth Bainbridge, Trinity Director.

There were many profound thoughts in many profound heads there in the desert, at the reaches of the Jornarda del Muerto (“The Dead Man’s Walk”, a formerly nearly-impenetrable stretch of desert in  the Llano Estacado) at the Trinity Test Site, Alamogordo, New Mexico, on 16 July 1945 for the successful testing of the first atomic bomb.  Robert Oppenheimer famously cited the Gita (“Now I am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds…”): Enrico Fermi was so busy with his little and excruciatingly wonderful experiment with strips of paper calculating the effect of the blast (he reckoned a very-close 10,000 tons) that he didn’t actually hear the explosion; Edward Teller thought Tellerian thoughts, and so on.  Actually the observation points (like S-10000 and Campania Hill)were crowded with big brains:  in addition to Oppenheimer, Teller and Fermi were people like Hans Bethe, James Chadwick (whose discovery of the neutron sort of started the whole thing), Richard Feynman, George Kistiakowsky, Phil Morrison, Robert Serber, Vannevar Bush, James Conant, and many others.  The were all thinking pretty big things (except for the occasional if-you-can-believe-it stuff like that which maybe came from Feynman’s mouth, which was “hot dog!”).  I think that Bainbridge’s statement was the best, and truest, summation of the morning’s activities.


In a strong and inestimable claim to naïve weirdness, Edward Teller—at about 5:00 in the morning, waiting for the explosion with the others—broke out a bottle of sunblock lotion, applying it to his face and hands.  The bottle was passed around and was used by others. I can not imagine what must’ve been going through the mind of any observer watching these scientists prepare themselves for the blast, except perhaps for “oh, s___”). 

Just about everyone wrote of the moment in their memoirs or reflections, and I’ve read a lot of them; the description that stands out from the others to my mind, the one that put an understandable spin on an untranslatable moment, belonged to the ueber-literate Morrison.  He wrote that although the flash and the brightness were stupendous, there was something else that was more astonishing—that was the blast of heat from the shock wave that he felt on his face in the cold desert morning. He was 10 miles away from Zero, and in those few moments when the scientists had recreated the birth of the universe, he was an epoch in time away from the 32 simultaneous detonations that set the bomb off 5:29:45 am. 

At almost the same moment as the blast, Little Boy shipped out on the Indianapolis (which would encounter its own horrific date with the future on her return trip) from Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard at San Francisco.

Everyone who knew about the bomb that day knew that the war was over.  The question of course how to make it so. 

I’ve made a number of posts recently relating to the building of and the decision to use the atomic bomb, from the Trinity Test to the Nagasaki bomb, 16 July-9 August, as we are in that time of year when all of this happened, 63 years ago.  To look at all of these post, click here.  Beginning on 6th August I will begin posting a series of 38 documents  (written in 1945 and early 1946) from the Vannevar Bush group tasked with the problem of  the coming proliferation of atomic weapons.  As far as I can determine NONE of these documents have ever been published. The first of these papers to be presented is by William Shockley (nobelist and highly problematic late-life thinker) on the Economics of the Atomic Bomb (1945).

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 188

Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s Diary Entry for 1 August 1945, centering on the publication of Henry DeWolf Smyth’s history of the Manhattan Project (bold is by me as are any statements made between [ ] ):

August 1, 1945
“As soon as I arrived at the Department I called in General Marshall and asked him whether he had received my message through McCarthy and he told me that he had and that the speech had been changed and made in an entirely different form.”

“I then took up with Harrison, Bundy and Groves the third paper to be issued in S-1, namely that of the scientists.  The draft of this paper [Henry DeWolf Smyth’s A general account of the development of methods of using atomic energy for military purposes, which would be known later in the year as  Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, 1945, and then more generally and unofficially as the Smyth Report]  is about two hundred pages long – manifestly so big that I cannot possibly read it now, and I therefore went over the skeleton of it and the pros and cons of making any speech (as to which I am very doubtful) with my three consultants. The aim of the paper is to backfire reckless statements by independent scientists after the demonstration of the bomb. If we could be sure that these could be controlled and avoided, all of us would much prefer not to issue such a paper. But under the circumstances of the entire independence of action of scientists and the certainty that there would be a tremendous amount of excitement and reckless statement, Groves, who is a very conservative man, had reached the conclusion that the lesser evil would be for us to make a statement carefully prepared so as not to give away anything vital and thus try to take the stage away from the others. We debated long over the situation for it is a very difficult question and all of us recognize its difficulty. Rules have been drawn under which this present paper has been formulated. I went over those rules and then postponed the matter until tomorrow when I shall have a talk with Conant, Groves, Bundy, and some of Groves’ assistants on the whole matter. I am of course much influenced by the fact that Groves has reached a decision in favor of the statement.”

(General Groves I believe recognized the expediency of the report as well in spite of his expectedly ferocious adherence to security protocol—the report, while revealing a lot of data, would also establish the limit of publication of information on the Project and on the bomb.  Overall, it was a smart thing to do, establishing the control of the dialog on the subject of the bomb. It was after all Groves (in 1944) who appointed Smyth to the Richard C. Tolman Committee to make recommendations for the post-war development of atomic energy; Smyth recommended publishing a report on the making of the bomb that would be published soon after it was no longer a secret; Groves concurred.  The report was officially released (in 160,000 copies) on 12 August 1945.)

S-1 Executive Committee, Manhattan Project,
September 14, 1942
l. to r.: Thomas Crenshaw, Robert Oppenheimer, Harold C. Urey, Ernest O. Lawrence, James B. Conant, Lyman J. Briggs, E. V. Murphree, Arthur Compton,  Robert Thornton,  K. D. Nichols.

Picture at top is of Smyth with what looks like the advance copy (the famous “lithoprint” edition).

Following are the opening paragraphs of the Smyth report from the Preface and Introduction: 

Preface

“The ultimate responsibility for our nation’s policy rests on its citizens and they can discharge such responsibilities wisely only if they are informed. The average citizen cannot be expected to understand clearly how an atomic bomb is constructed or how it works but there is in this country a substantial group of engineers and scientists who can understand such things and who can explain their potentialities of atomic bombs to their fellow citizens. The present report is written for this professional group and is a matter-of-fact, general account of work in the USA since 1939 aimed at the production of such bombs. It is neither a documented official history nor a technical treatise for experts. Secrecy requirements have affected both the detailed content and general emphasis so that many interesting developments have been omitted…”

First Paragraph of the Introduction:

“1.1. The purpose of this report is to describe the scientific and technical developments in this country since 1940 directed toward the military use of energy from atomic nuclei. Although not written as a “popular” account of the subject, this report is intended to be intelligible to scientists and engineers generally and to other college graduates with a good grounding in physics and chemistry. The equivalence of mass and energy is chosen as the guiding principle in the presentation of the background material of the “Introduction.””

The full text of the report is located HERE.

 

JF Ptak Science Books LLC 


Here are the two basic documents which prepared the actual use of atomic weapons against Japanese targets (written 22 July and 25 July, respectively).    The first was prepared by Colonel John Stone for his superior General of the Army Air Forces Henry H. Hap Arnold, initiated by General George Marshall through General Thomas Handy—updating Arnold on the progress at the Potsdam Conference from which he (Stone)  had just returned.  The next is the only actual signed-off document authorizing the use of nuclear weapons, and comes under the direction of George Marshall’s directive to General Handy:  basically relating that the P{resident had authorized Secretary Stimson who had authorized Marshall to authorize Handy to authorize General Carl Spaatz (Commanding General, U.S. Army Strategic Air Force) to use the weapon. Spaatz is also directed to deliver a copy of the order (“personally”, that is, by hand)  to General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz.
Source: The National Security Archive

JF Ptak Science Books  LLC  Post 186

These are translations of leaflets that were dropped on Japanese cities in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima (as Nagasaki, which would be bombed three days later on 9 August is not mentioned). Both of these are again from the Harry Truman Presidential Library.  The Japanese did not submit to the demand of unconditional surrender as laid out in Potsdam on 26 July, not did they submit when the Soviet Union declare war, nor did they submit after the 9 August bombing of Nagasaki.  They did finally accept the conditions of unconditional surrender surrender on 15 August, signing away the war two weeks later on the USS Missouri, 2 September 1945.  A third atomic bomb was nearly ready for use by the middle of August.   

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 185

I’ve made several posts on the development of the first atomic bomb(s) as we approach the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945).  At this point in 1945, the Potsdam Declaration had been announced demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan, Little Boy was being assembled, and Fat Man had arrived at Tinian Island.  The last bits of the Manhattan Project were being put into place.  One of public relations parts—the first PR involving the use of the bomb–is a document that I’ve never seen before, found at the Truman Presidential Library (and available digitally). 
Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, sent this message to President Truman as the statement to be released by the White House once the (secret) bomb had been dropped (also known as “Use Day”)—an explanation to the American people about what would happen on 6 August.