30.
DISPATCH FROM GROUND ZERO.
The sampler pilots returned to Nevada in the spring of 1953 along with thousands of ground troops for one of the longest and dirtiest test series yet. Eleven atomic bombs were detonated during Operation Upshot-Knothole. Seven were dropped from towers, three from airplanes, and one was fired from a cannon. With so many detonations, the military leaders had ample opportunity to try out the new aofficer volunteera program, a project in which officers witnessed the blasts at close range. Itas not known how many officer volunteers partic.i.p.ated or whether they suffered any long-term effects. President Clintonas Advisory Committee estimated that fewer than 100 people were involved.1 One of the partic.i.p.ants was Robert Hinners, a young Navy captain, who hunkered down with seven other officer volunteers in a trench 2,000 yards, or a little over a mile, from Ground Zero when Shot Simon was exploded on April 25, 1953. Simon had an aofficial yielda of forty-three kilotons, but Hinners estimated the yield to be fifty to fifty-five kilotons. Other records support his numbers.
The military allowed the eight officer volunteers to observe the explosion 2,000 yards closer to Ground Zero than the Army had concluded was a safe distance for bombs in the thirty-five- to forty-kiloton range. Hinners estimated that he and his fellow officers received 13.6 roentgens of radiation, but a memo decla.s.sified in 1995 stated the officers probably received a24 rem initial gamma plus neutron radiation.a2 (Neutrons are at least ten times more effective at causing biological damage than gamma radiation.) Hinners prepared a report on his experience for the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, which provides an extraordinary firsthand account of the light, the radiation, and the dust from an atomic detonation witnessed at close range. The following are some excerpts from his account: 3. Prior to final acceptance as a member of the group, each officer was required to personally and individually compute the effects to be expected in an open trench on the basis of the expected yield of 35 to 40 KT, and to recommend a distance for positioning the group which would not exceed the effects criteria which had been established for this exercise.3 Each officer also was required to execute a certificate confirming his volunteer status.a In submitting my own forms, I recommended a distance of 2,000 yards.
4. General Bullock reviewed the computations at a briefing conference held in his office on the day before the shot. Since there was substantial agreement between all of the officers of the group as to the 2,000 yard distance, this distance was approved by the General.a Trenches previously had been prepared at 500-yard intervals, so that the final decision could be made with some flexibility on the basis of the weather conditions and any other lastminute considerations having any bearing on the predicted effects. At the final briefing, General Bullock also informed us that although there had been a rather complete press release on the volunteer program following the first Desert Rock V exercise, more recent security restrictions precluded public release of the exact distance at which we would be positioned relative to Ground Zero or of any of the other details of our position and observations.a 8. On the morning of the shot, we rode to the forward area on one of the buses of the regular troop observer convoy. The Army psychologists accompanied us as far as the main troop positions at the 4,000-yard point. Our group continued on alone by truck to the general vicinity of the 2,000-yard position, arriving there about one hour before shot time.a We remained above ground until about 15 minutes before shot time, at which time we entered our trenches. There were two trenches in line, each about 20 feet long, 3 feet wide and 6 feet deep, with their adjacent ends separated by about five yards of unexcavated earth. One was reinforced with a solid wood lining on the front and rear faces and cross-braced with wood timbers at about 4-foot intervals. The other one was unrevvetted. Each trench had a row of sandbags placed flat on the ground around its top perimeter, and had a loose fill sloped to about a 45 degree angle at each end to facilitate climbing in and out. We were permitted to choose our respective positions. I chose the unrevvetted trench, along with two other officers of the group. Both trenches were bare of any equipment except for several shovels.a 10. The following is a summary of the various effects as we observed them at 2,000 yards from Ground Zero, in the positions described: a. Lighta"The intense white light was the first manifestation of the explosion, and seemed to persist for at least six seconds, as it continued well beyond the time of arrival of the shock wave. I was wearing Navy safety goggles with clear gla.s.s lenses, as I was carrying a high-range experimental type of radiation survey meter and had hoped to get an early reading of the prompt nuclear radiation by opening my eyes very slightly. This proved to be impossible; I not only could not see the meter scale or pointer, but could not even see the profile of the instrument, the bottom of the trench, nor any other surrounding objects. There was nothing but white light on all sides. However, I had no sensation that it was hurting my eyes; it merely blanked out all vision for the duration of the fireball. When the fireball finally cooled off and the light gradually diminished, I had no sensation of any momentary flash-blindness; so far as I could tell, my eyes adapted to the rather dim early morning light (which was further reduced by the heavy dust cloud) as fast as the fireball disappeared.
b. Earth shocka"This was the second manifestation of the explosion to be felt at our position, and in our case never exceeded a rather slight trembling motion. I was squatting on the b.a.l.l.s of my feet with one shoulder braced lightly against the forward wall of the trench. In spite of this rather unstable position, at no time did I lose my balance due to ground motion, nor did I feel any appreciable ground shock against my shoulder.a c. Heata"There was no sensation of heat in the trench; not even on my face, which was entirely exposed except for the small area covered by the frames of my safety goggles.a d. Nuclear radiationa"The first reading which I was able to obtain on my survey meter was exactly 100 r/hr. I estimate this to have been at about 8 seconds after the detonation, as soon as the light had diminshed enough for me to regain my sight. At this time, the pointer on the instrument was moving smoothly downward. The decrease in the reading was fairly rapid at firsta"down to 50 r/hr. during the next 10 seconds or soa"but the rate of decrease then gradually slowed down so that it required about one additional minute for it to drop down to a reading of between 20 and 25 r/hr. I was calling the readings over to the group leader in the other trench and at this point he directed us to leave the trenches. I watched the meter as I climbed out, and it moved up to 40 r/hr. as I left the trench for the open ground. We stopped briefly to examine some sheep which had been tethered in a dugout, in shallow trenches, and in the open in the vicinity. As we did so, I noticed that the meter reading was gradually increasing, so that it was again up to about 50 r/hr. by the time we started walking down the road away from Ground Zero. It was then about four or five minutes after the burst. During all this time, particles of sand or other debris were continually raining down on our helmets; the sound resembled light sleeting.
11. As we walked away from Ground Zero, the survey meter reading steadily decreased, but whenever we stopped to look at something, it would gradually increase again which indicated that a substantial amount of fallout was still being deposited at those distances (between 2,000 and 2,500 yards from Ground Zero). After we had walked for about a quarter of a mile, we were met by our two evacuation trucks; by this time the instrument reading was down to about 10 r/hr. The reading continued to decrease rapidly as we moved away from Ground Zero by truck, and was down to less than 1 r/hr. by the time we reached the main body of troops at the 4,000-yard position 14. The princ.i.p.al effects visually observed above-ground after we had emerged from the trench were: a. Sheepa"Those in the vicinity were singed to a dark brown color on those portions of their bodies which had been exposed to line-of-sight thermal radiation, but they were all on their feet and showed no other evidences of physical injury.
b. Treesa"A large Joshua tree just outside our trench was partly broken off and on fire.a Other Joshua trees were burning on all sides of our position.
c. Dusta"The dust was sufficient to make the visibility very poor beyond a hundred yards or so in any direction, but was not heavy enough to be suffocating. I did not feel the need of putting on my gas mask, and did not use it.
15. A stop was made for a monitoring check at the Desert Rock station across from the control point on our way back to camp. It was found that sweeping off our clothing and shoes with a broom was sufficient to bring the reading down to an acceptable level.
16. Following our return to camp, we were given an aexit interviewa by the Army psychologists, and filled out questionnaires, Tab [illegible]. With respect to the question concerning the ability of the troops to carry on immediately after emerging from trenches under these conditions, it was the consensus of opinion that there should have been no difficulty except a reduction in efficiency for about the first five minutes due to the heavy dust cloud and resultant poor visibilitya.
31.
THE INVERTED MUSHROOM.
A young Army lieutenant shepherded his platoon into a trench 1,700 yards behind the officer volunteers on the morning that Shot Simon was being readied for detonation. The desert was blanketed in darkness. Two miles away, a small light glowed at the base of the 300-foot tower cradling the bomb. Normally the weapons were exploded about thirty minutes before sunrise.1 That way the flash from the bomb would trip the photoelectric cells that started the recording equipment and give the sampler pilots enough daylight to see the mushroom cloud.
The lieutenant, identified only as S.H., was the last man to march down the ramp into the five-foot-deep trench.2 He had been warned by his commanding officer not to look at the blast. Just twenty-two years old and two months out of officersa training school, the lieutenant found the temptation irresistible. As the loudspeaker counted down the last seconds, S.H. turned and glanced over his left shoulder. At that very moment, Simon was exploded in a fury of light and sound.
Before the young officer had time to blink, the light flooded into his eyes. His pupils, which were dilated for night vision, instantly absorbed more than fifty times the energy they would have during daylight. The flash bleached his retinas, turning the world white. Momentarily blind, S.H. staggered down into the trench to join his platoon. When his sight began to return, his men resembled white shadows. His vision remained blurred for the rest of the day, and his left eye began to swell. That evening when he tried to read, the print appeared distorted and a spot on the page seemed to move with his eyes. When he reported the problem to the camp medical officer the following day, he was whisked to a hospital in Fort Hood, Texas, immediately.
At the military hospital, he was placed on a salt-free diet and administered cortisone and atropine. The swelling in his left eye decreased markedly. But radiating tension lines soon appeared around the burn, suggesting that he might suffer a retinal detachment in the future. The lieutenant was released from the hospital about four weeks after the accident. Soon after his hospital discharge, he was separated from the service. Branded forever onto his left retina was a small blind spot. When an eye doctor from Brooklyn, New York, examined the young manas eyes two years later, he discovered something astonishing: The blind spot resembled an ainverted mushroom.a Long before the inverted mushroom appeared on the young lieutenantas eye, scientists had been concerned about the flash from the atomic bomb. At Trinity, observers had been cautioned to wait a few seconds before looking at the fireball through pieces of dark welderas gla.s.s. Everyone heeded the instructions except Richard P. Feynman, the future n.o.bel laureate.3 Feynman climbed into a truck, reasoning that the windshield would protect his eyes from the harmful rays. aIam probably the only guy who saw it with the human eye,a he later wrote.4 One historian said Feynman was temporarily blinded, but Feynman doesnat mention such a problem in his autobiography.
Radiation emitted by the cyclotron and other sources were also extremely damaging to the eye. Early in his tenure at the AECas Division of Biology and Medicine, Shield Warren was confronted with the unsettling news that cyclotron workers were developing cataracts at an alarming rate. aCalls about cyclotron eyes,a he jotted in his diary December 19, 1948. The eyes of eleven scientists were examined.56 Three had very severe cataracts, four had mild ones, and four had none. The findings prompted the AEC to begin a preliminary investigation of 1,000 people in Hiroshima who were believed to have been within 3,000 feet of the hypocenter. Forty acertaina cases of radiation cataracts and an additional forty asuspecteda cases were found.7 Military leaders had grave concerns about the effects of the atomic flash on soldiers and airmen. How could soldiers fight wars if the enemyas A-bombs blinded them? How could pilots fly? aShould the central vision of a soldier or airman be temporarily disabled and the visual acuity reduced below 20/400, he becomes useless as a fighting man and easy prey to the enemy and potentially a danger to his own forces,a a doc.u.ment decla.s.sified by Los Alamos in 1995 states.8 Like all light, the energy from an atomic flash pa.s.ses through the lens of the eye, where it is projected in an upside-down image on the retina, a layer of tissue at the back of the eyeball. The retina, which acts much like a piece of film, contains the rods and cones that turn light into an electrical impulse that is then carried to the brain by the optic nerve. Because of the focusing ability of the eye, retinal burns occurred at far greater distances from Ground Zero than skin burns. William Jay Brady, the scientist who worked at the Nevada Test Site for many years, said he was injured twice by the flash from atom bombs. His eyes felt like they had sand in them for the first two weeks or so. Then afloatersa or black spots, appeared in his vision, which remain to this day.
The aflashblindnessa experiments began almost simultaneously with the first atomic maneuvers in the fall of 1951 and were conducted through at least 1962. They continued even after the military officers and their scientific colleagues knew with certainty that the flash from the atomic bomb could cause permanent eye damage and even blindness.9 The Air Force School of Aviation Medicine in San Antonio, Texas, today known as the School of Aeros.p.a.ce Medicine, was the lead investigator in the early experiments. Scientists at the school were particularly interested in the effects of flashblindness because one of its most renowned scientists, Hubertus aStrugia Strughold, had suffered a retinal burn during an eclipse. aThatas the thing that gave us curiosity,a recalled retired Air Force Colonel John Pickering, who joined the school in the 1940s and subsequently became director of medical research.10 As it happens, Strughold was a German scientist who had directed the Third Reichas Aeromedical Research Inst.i.tute in Berlin during World War II. He was brought to the School of Aviation Medicine in 1947 under the auspices of a controversial project that became known as Operation Paperclip. Hundreds of German scientists were imported into the United States, courtesy of Operation Paperclip and its related programs, to work on scientific and industrial projects. Many of the foreign scientists, including Strughold, were alleged to have had connections with the n.a.z.i Party. Some were accused of partic.i.p.ating in the human experiments conducted in the concentration camps. Strughold, who died in 1986 in San Antonio, repeatedly denied that he had any connection to the n.a.z.i Party or the concentration camp experiments. But a 1947 intelligence a.s.sessment report on Strughold observed, aHis successful career under Hitler would seem to indicate that he must be in full accord with n.a.z.ism.a11 Scientific reports and personnel records on file at the National Archives show that at least three Paperclip scientistsa"Heinrich Rose, Paul A. Cibis, and Konrad Buettnera"were involved in flashblindness research at the School of Aviation Medicine.
Heinrich Rose, a diminutive scientist with blond hair and blue eyes, worked for Strughold when he was in the Luftwaffe from 1939 to 1945. He was an expert in visual acuity, night vision, and depth perception, all problems of vital concern to the U.S. Air Force.12 According to intelligence reports, Rose was a member of the n.a.z.i Storm Troopers from 1933 to 1935 and achieved the rank of Sanitatsoberscharfuhrer, or asanitary red cross corporal.a13 A den.a.z.ification court in Heidelberg, Germany, cla.s.sified him as a afollowera after the war and fined him 500 Reichmarks.
But in an affidavit for an immigrant visa, Rose stated that he had been urged to join the Storm Troopers by the local party leader in Berlin who was also his supervisor at the hospital where he was doing an internship. aWhile a member of the SA [Storm Troopers], I did not partic.i.p.ate in any other activities than in those of a medical nature,a he wrote.14 According to a security report prepared by U.S. Office of the Military Government, Rose was a member of the n.a.z.i Party from 1937 to 1945. But Rose said in an affidavit he was not a party member, and no records were found indicating party membership.1516 The Air Force awarded Rose the Exceptional Service Award, its highest civilian honor, ten years after his arrival in the United States for his studies on visual aids in aircraft landings, depth perception, night-vision training for pilots, and flash-blindness arising from atomic bomb explosions.17 Paul Cibis, whose last name also appears as aZibisa on some military records, was brought to the United States some time after 1949. Cibis was aespecially qualified in the field of time relationships and vision,a wrote Walter Agee, a brigadier general working in the Air Forceas Directorate of Intelligence.18 aHis services are also desired in connection with studies in relation to the recognition and identification of aircraft flying at supersonic speeds. Dr. Zibis is further qualified in studies on the adaptation to darkness and has recently published a paper of fundamental importance in this field.a Konrad Buettner, a slender, serious-looking scientist with a ruddy complexion and brown hair, arrived in the United States in June 1947. His records state that he was a member of the n.a.z.i Storm Troopers from 1934 to 1938, the n.a.z.i Party from 1933 to 1939, and a major in the Luftwaffe from 1939 to 1945. At the height of the war, he was involved in experiments studying the pressure changes on pilots pulling in and out of dives and the aclimatizationa of airplane cabins and c.o.c.kpits.19 Buettner, who eventually moved on to the University of Washington in Seattle, said he joined the Storm Troopers and the n.a.z.i Party aunder pressurea from party organizations.20 He said he was expelled from the Storm Troopers and resigned from the n.a.z.i Party. aWhen invited to reenter the party during the war, I declined,a he stated in an affidavit for an immigrant visa.
One of Buettneras colleagues described him as a dedicated scientist who cared little for amaterial advantages.a21 But another remembered his avery elegant dwellinga and how he apaid all the expenses for social festivities among his circle of friends.a22 A security report states that Buettner was not in asympathy with n.a.z.ism but of necessity maintained a discreet silence.a23 From 1931 to 1947 Buettner, a meteorologist, conducted experiments at the University of Kiel on the effects of heat, cold, and moisture on human beings. According to Buettneras personnel records, his research included aExperiments with human beings in Arctic (Norway), subtropic (Sahara), and tropic (Bel. Congo), climate, climatic chambers and in aircraft.24 Erythema and solar-ultraviolet aerosol and static electricity (dust, fog, and salt crystals.)a Buettner was a.s.signed to two projects when he arrived at the School of Aviation Medicine. One involved the development of clothing and goggles to protect against intense heat. The second was the acorrelation of skin temperature with pain threshold of skin.a25 Part of the second project involved determining how aWhite and Colored Human Skina would react to the atomic flash. For his experimental subjects, he used pigs because their skin behaves like human skin.
Focusing an intense beam of light on the black skin of young anesthetized pigs, Buettner observed that ablisters began to rise after 2.2 seconds, and they exploded with a light popping noise after 4 seconds.a When the beam of light was aimed at the white skin on the same pig, Buettner found no signs of blistering even after ten seconds. aIts significance in civil defense,a he said of the finding, ais obvious when one considers the close microscopic similarity of black pig and heavily pigmented human skin.a26 The first flashblindness experiment took place during the 1951 Buster-Jangle series. Approximately twenty-five volunteers watched the blast from a C-54 aircraft nine miles from Ground Zero.27 Some subjects wore goggles; others were given no eye protection. The initial study concluded that air crews who witnessed atomic detonations during daylight did not suffer any aserious visual handicap.a During the 1952 Tumbler-Snapper test series, the armed forces wanted to conduct flashblindness experiments at night in order to adetermine accurately what temporary or permanent effect the flash of an atomic explosion has on the human eye.a2829 The AEC, which had demanded a written release from the military during the first experiment, had reservations about the second but eventually agreed to the militaryas demands.30 A light-tight trailer was constructed and hauled to a location ten miles from Ground Zero.31 With twelve portholes punched into one side, the trailer bore a crazy resemblance to an oceangoing vessel that somehow had washed up on the Nevada desert. Inside the trailer, twelve stools on runners were positioned in front of the portholes. Directly behind the stools were visual charts, aircraft instruments, and other devices designed to measure the visual acuity of the test subjects after they witnessed the flash.
The portholes were fitted with shutters that exposed the left eye of each subject to the detonation. Half the subjects wore protective goggles while the other half did not. aThe shutters remained open 2 seconds which allowed maximum bleaching of the retina and then the shutters closed.a32 The experimental subjects then turned on their stools and attempted to operate the aircraft instruments.
The experiment was aborted after two shots when two men developed retinal burns. Air Force Colonel Victor Byrnes stated in a formerly cla.s.sified report that both men had acompletely recovered.a34 But a scientific paper published three years later suggests that wasnat the case.33 That article disclosed that five of six people who suffered eye injuries from watching atomic blasts had developed a permanent blind spot or scar tissue. aConsequently, we a.s.sume that in these areas visual function is permanently destroyed,a the authors wrote.35 The injuries should have discouraged further experimentation, but the School of Aviation Medicine forged ahead with even more elaborate preparations for the 1953 Upshot-Knothole tests, the series during which S.H.as eye was imprinted with the upside-down mushroom. Before the test series began, Heinrich Rose and Konrad Buettner calculated that at night the flash from a twenty-kiloton bomb could produce retinal burns forty miles away. aDue to the concentration of the energy in the image formed on the retina, skin burns and retinal burns follow different laws,a they wrote.36 The light-tight trailer was again used for the experiments. But instead of remaining stationary, it was moved from distances ranging from seven to fourteen miles from Ground Zero. Once again the shutters opened briefly to expose the subjectsa left eyes. But this time the partic.i.p.ants viewed the detonations through a double filter that reduced the light transmitted to the retina by 75 percent. Only one person, an officer with darkly pigmented eyes and the initials C.B., sustained a aslight retinala burn.37 The injury occurred during aClimax,a the largest shot in the Upshot-Knothole series and the largest nuclear weapon detonated in Nevada up to that date. The trailer was seven miles from Ground Zero at the time of the May 31 explosiona"the shortest of the distances at which the trailer was deployed.
The School of Aviation Medicineas John Pickering said he volunteered for one of the experiments and signed a consent form before the study began. aWhen the time came for ophthalmologists to describe what they thought could or could not happen, and we were asked to sign a consent form, just as you do now in the hospital for surgery, I signed one.38 Iam d.a.m.ned sure everybody in that trailer signed one.a At the same time the human experiments were being conducted in the trailer, the School of Aviation Medicine was also coordinating a ma.s.sive flashblindness experiment with rabbits. About 700 rabbits were trucked to the test site and placed in boxes at two, three, five, eight, ten, eighteen, twenty-seven, and forty-two miles from Ground Zero.39 The rabbitsa heads were fixed through openings in the boxes so that they could not look away from the fireball. Moments before the bomb was detonated, alarm clocks woke the animals from their slumber. With their long ears twitching lazily, the rabbits were gazing toward Ground Zero when the searing white light flooded into their eyes.
When scientists decapitated the rabbits and removed the eyes, they made some shocking discoveries: The light was delivered so rapidly that tiny explosions occurred on the surface of the animalsa retinas.40 The fluids in the eyes of the animals closest to Ground Zero began boiling and turned to steam.41 The flash had burned deep holes into the eyes of the animals stationed at eight miles or closer to Ground Zero, and retinal burns resembling a ayellowish white plaquea appeared at greater distances.42 In all, more than 75 percent of the rabbits sustained retinal burns, with some burns detected in animals as far as forty-two miles from the blast. Heinrich Rose, Paul Cibis, and two military officers cautioned, aOne must consider the possibility of an atomic flash burn occurring directly on the optic nerve head.43 This would, if of sufficient size, result in complete blindness of the affected eye.a The flash from the hydrogen bomb was even more dangerous. Following Shot Bravo, which was detonated in 1954 at the Pacific Proving Ground, the deputy commandant of the School of Aviation Medicine sent an urgent message to the Atomic Energy Commission. aIt can be a.s.sumed that all persons who viewed the actual fireball without eye protection have received permanent chorio-retinal damage,a wrote Colonel John McGraw.44 McGraw also disclosed that air crews flying at high alt.i.tudes within 1,000 miles of the detonation could have received retinal burns and urged that people who were within 100 miles of Ground Zero be examined by competent eye doctors. aIt must be emphasized,a he concluded, athat an immediate examination is of utmost importance. Such early data would greatly add to our present knowledge of this economically important eye injury in the human.a The injuries from the flashblindness experiments caught the attention in 1954 of Colonel Irving Branch, an official at the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project headquarters in Washington, D.C. In a letter to the a.s.sistant Secretary of Defense, Branch noted that in two instances volunteers were injured. aBecause of the implications involved due to these injuries, it is felt that a definite need exists for guidance in the use of human volunteers as experimental subjects,a he wrote.45 Attached to Branchas memorandum was an unsigned note that began: In Nov. 53, it was learned that there existed a T/S [top secret] doc.u.ment signed by the Secretary of Defense which listed various requirements and criteria which had to be met by individuals contemplating the use of human volunteers in Bio-medical or other types of experimentation.46 Since this information was of particular importance to this office in cla.s.sifying and/or releasing information on the Flash Blindness programs at weapons tests, attempts were made to learn the nature of these requirements.a It was learned that although this doc.u.ment details very definite and specific steps which must be taken before volunteers may be used in experimentation, no serious attempt has been made to disseminate the information to those experimenters who had a definite need-to-know. The lowest level at which it had been circulated was that of the three Secretaries of the Services.a Incredibly, the doc.u.ment that was being so closely guarded was a version of the Nuremberg Code, the principles guiding ethical human experimentation that had been handed down by the U.S. judges presiding over the trial of the n.a.z.i doctors. Defense Secretary Charles Wilson had signed a memorandum embracing the principles on February 26, 1953. The provisions contained in the Wilson memorandum were circulated in uncla.s.sified Army doc.u.ments beginning in 1954, but the Wilson memorandum itself was not decla.s.sified until 1975.
Although records are sketchy, the flashblindness experiments apparently stopped for four years and then were resumed by other military groups during Operation Plumbbob, a 1957 test series conducted in Nevada, and Dominic I, a test series conducted in 1962 in the Pacific.474849 At least sixteen human subjects appeared to have been used in the Plumbbob experiment and three in the Dominic study. Official reports do not say whether any injuries occurred. Rabbit experiments also continued during the high-alt.i.tude nuclear shots detonated in the Pacific Ocean. John Pickering said that rabbits on barges 325 miles from Ground Zero got retinal burns from the flash.50
32.
BODY-s.n.a.t.c.hING PATRIOTS.
The fallout from the bomb tests drifted down over the Earth. The radioactive debris found its way into starfish, sh.e.l.lfish, and seaweed. It covered alfalfa fields in upstate New York, wheat fields in North Dakota, corn in Iowa. It seeped into the bodies of honeybees and birds, human fetuses and growing children. The atom had split the world into apreatomica and apostatomica species.
At Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and AEC headquarters in Washington, scientists were growing uneasy. Could the fallout from the bombs already detonated be creating a health hazard? If not, how many more bombs could be detonated before the human race would be put at risk? In the summer of 1953, as the radioactive debris from the Upshot-Knothole tests gusted across the continent, a group of military and civilian scientists convened at the RAND Corporation headquarters in Santa Monica, California. Willard Libby, a brash scientist who pa.s.sionately supported the testing program and would be awarded the n.o.bel Prize seven years later for the radioactive carbon dating technique, chaired the meeting. The group decided the only way they could properly ascertain worldwide hazards from fallout was by collecting and a.n.a.lyzing plants, animals, and human tissue from the four corners of Earth. Thus was born Operation Sunshine, one of the most bizarre and ghoulish projects of the Cold War. The source of its name is a matter of debate, but some say it was derived from the fact that fallout, like sunshine, covered the globe.1 According to a 1995 General Accounting Office study, Operation Sunshine was the largest of fifty-nine atissue a.n.a.lysis studiesa conducted by atomic scientists during the Cold War.2 Collectively, the body parts of more than 15,000 humans were used in those studies. In countless instances, scientists took the corpses and organs of deceased people without getting permission from the next of kin.
For Operation Sunshine alone, approximately 9,000 samples of human bones, entire skeletons, and nearly 600 human fetuses were collected from around the world. Since the project was initially cla.s.sified secret, researchers concocted acover storiesa that they used in order to acquire human samples from abroad. The military later began its own top-secret collection program of human urine, animal milk, and tissue samples under the guise of a anutritionala study.
Willard Libby believed that anext to weapons,a Sunshine was the AEC as most important mission.34 aThis statement is made in all seriousness,a he once told fellow Sunshiners, abecause if the problems surrounding fallout are not properly understood and properly presented to the world, weapons testing may be forced to stopa"a circ.u.mstance which could well be disastrous to the free world.a Raised on a ranch in northern California, Libby entered the University of California at Berkeley on the advice of his father, a successful farmer with only a third-grade education. One of his teachers while he was an undergraduate was J. Robert Oppenheimer. Although he enjoyed Oppenheimeras lectures, Libby still thought of Oppenheimer as aan active Communista when he was interviewed for an oral history project in 1978.
After receiving his bacheloras degree in 1931 and his Ph.D. in 1933, Libby remained at Berkeley and taught cla.s.ses.5 In 1940, he joined a team of Manhattan Project researchers at Columbia University who were trying to develop a method to separate uranium isotopes. He went on to serve as a member of the AECas General Advisory Committee and as an AEC commissioner. The commission appointment came about because of his support of the H-bomb, he said. aFor some reason, Oppenheimer had decided against the hydrogen bomb, and I fought him, tooth and nail.6 And I won. Thatas why I was appointed to the AEC.a Following the 1952 Mike detonation, it took weaponeers nearly two years to develop a slimmed-down hydrogen bomb that could be delivered by airplane. The perfected weapon, code-named Bravo, was detonated on March 1, 1954, at the Pacific Proving Ground. With a yield of fifteen megatons, Bravo was the largest bomb ever detonated by the United States.7 Not only did it endanger the eyesight of observers within 1,000 miles of Ground Zero, but it also dumped large amounts of fallout on several inhabited atolls and on a j.a.panese fishing vessel. A number of American soldiers and scientists were exposed as well.
Two days after the shot was fired, 236 Marshall Island residents were finally rescued. A number of them were found to be suffering from severe radiation sickness. The crew of the f.u.kuryu Maru No. 5 (Fortunate Dragon), a j.a.panese fishing boat that was only eighty miles from Ground Zero at the time of the detonation, also suffered from acute radiation sickness. The fallout from Bravo covered the trawleras decks with a deep white powder that was so thick that the men left footprints when they walked on it.8 The fishermen pulled in their nets and headed for home. But before they did, they rinsed down the decks, a precautionary measure that probably saved the lives of many of them. According to j.a.panese scientists, the crew members received anywhere from 200 to 500 roentgens. Aikichi Kuboyama, one of the crew members, died seven months later.
The Bravo shot and five subsequent hydrogen bomb blasts in the Castle series had a combined yield of forty-eight megatons and distributed fallout over the globe. The fallout triggered an international furor that was to increase in intensity in the ensuing years and eventually culminated in an end to above-ground testing. Prime Minister Nehru of India, Albert Schweitzer, Albert Einstein, and Pope Pius XII were among those who called for an end to nuclear tests. As recently as 1994, the Bravo shot and what the AEC knew about an unexpected wind shift prior to the blast were the subject of a hearing before the House Natural Resources investigations subcommittee.
Ten months after the Bravo fallout disaster, Libby and his fellow scientists met in Washington, D.C., for a cla.s.sified conference to discuss the latest Sunshine findings.9 By that time researchers had a.n.a.lyzed some fifty-five stillborn babies from Chicago, one from Utah, three from India, and three adult human legs from Ma.s.sachusetts. According to a transcript of the conference, which was decla.s.sified in 1995, Libby told the group that they needed to procure more human samples, particularly from children. Although he didnat explain why, Libby said the asupplya of stillborn infants had been cut off and ashows no signs a of being rejuvenated.a10 He added, aIf anybody knows how to do a good job of body s.n.a.t.c.hing, they will really be serving their country.a11 Libby then turned his attention to the radioactive strontium acc.u.mulating in the oceans. Atomic scientists had believed the sea was an ainfinite sinka but were discovering that wasnat true. Soluble fission products from the bombs probably would remain in the top 100 meters of sea water aessentially indefinitely,a Libby said. Then he returned to the question of procuring human bodies: I donat know how to s.n.a.t.c.h bodies.12 In the original study on the Sunshine at Rand [Corporation] in the summer of 1953 we hired an expensive law firm to look up the law of body s.n.a.t.c.hing. This compendium is available to you. It is not very encouraging. It shows you how very difficult it is going to be to do it legally. We may be able to helpa"I speak now of the Commissiona"in that we hope to downgrade the Sunshine cla.s.sification. At least the existence of the project I hope we will get away with revealing. Whether this is going to help in the body s.n.a.t.c.hing problem, I donat know. I think it will. It is a delicate problem in public relations, obviously.
J. Laurence Kulp, a scientist at Columbia Universityas Lamont Observatory, rea.s.sured Libby that researchers could obtain bone and tissue samples from humans of all ages in Houston and other cities. aDown in Houston they donat have all these rules,a he said.13 aThey intend to get virtually every death in the age range we are interested in that occurs in the city of Houston. They have a lot of poverty cases and so on.a (Kulp told a reporter in 1995 that the term abody s.n.a.t.c.hinga was ameant to be a joke.a)14 With a casualness most people reserve for the weather, the Sun-shiners often talked about the number of bombs that could be detonated before mankind would be wiped out. One scientist had calculated that 100,000 weapons the size of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki could be detonated before the adoomsdaya level was reached. But AEC scientist Forest Western told fellow Sunshiners he didnat believe fallout would kill everyone: I think you will find a few Eskimos or a few Patagonians or a few people in some isolated part of the earth who will keep the race going.15 They might not populate the earth with just the descendants we would like to see. They might not be highly civilized like we are. They might not know anything about atomic warfare, for example. But I think the concept of wiping the race out with nuclear weapons is a little bit far-fetched.
The Sunshiners focused on strontium-90, one of the hundreds of fission products released during an atomic detonation. Strontium-90 was considered a abad actora because it is deposited in human bone and has a half-life of twenty-eight years.16 In other words, half of the radioactive strontium released during the 1954 tests would have decayed by 1982; half the remaining radioactive strontium would decay by 2010; and so on.
Strontium-90 is chemically similar to calcium and is readily a.s.similated in the bones of growing children who drink contaminated milk. For that reason, the Sunshiners were particularly interested in procuring the body parts of young children. Eventually they learned that children on average had three to four times more strontium-90 in their bones than adults.17 Scientists soon realized that other fission products could cause biological damage. One was radioactive iodine. The British were the first to detect radioiodine in the urine of children. Then it was discovered in animals near the Nevada Test Site. The military found radioiodine in their personnel in Hawaii and Washington. And finally Lester Van Middlesworth, a former student of Joseph Hamiltonas, detected it in cattle thyroids.
Van Middlesworth, an enterprising scientist, was working in his laboratory in Memphis, Tennessee, in the spring of 1954 when a Geiger counter began ticking frantically. The device had picked up radioactivity from the thyroid gland still in the head of a slaughtered steer that had been grazing on Tennessee gra.s.s. Van Middlesworth suspected immediately that the radioactivity in the steeras thyroid came from the fallout from the 1954 Pacific tests. Hundreds, then thousands of thyroid glands begged from packing plants confirmed his hypothesis. aWe knew in one week the entire country was contaminated,a Van Middles-worth said.18 an.o.body believed you could contaminate the world from one spot. It was like Columbus when no one believed the world was round.a Van Middlesworth informed his mentor, Joseph Hamilton, of his suspicions.19 Instead of sharing Van Middlesworthas alarm, the older man attempted to throw his former student off the track. aDr. Van Middles-worth is a very energetic and enterprising young man with a penchant for rather abruptly making decisions,a Hamilton told an AEC official in a June 18, 1954, letter. aI saw the possible implications of what he brought to my attention and attempted to subdue his marked degree of enthusiasm by suggesting the traces of radioiodine in the Memphis area might have arisen from airborne contamination from the Oak Ridge National Laboratories.a Hamilton thought he had successfully diverted Van Middlesworthas attention but later learned his former student had obtained some thyroid glands from the Armour Packing Co. in San Francisco. aAgain I indicated a lack of interest in the topic feeling that this was probably the best way such matters should be handled,a Hamilton wrote.
An AEC official thanked Hamilton for aplaying downa the matter with Van Middlesworth.20 But the AEC eventually embraced Van Middles-worthas findings and began sending him thyroid glands from throughout the world. From those thyroids, Van Middlesworth could not only detect above-ground atomic blasts set off anywhere in the world but could also estimate the size of the explosions. aIt was not as helpful as high-alt.i.tude airplanes, but it was a biological indication of what was going on,a Van Middlesworth said.21 Although the weapons scientists admitted the atomic tests carried some health risks, they invariably underestimated the danger. Los Alamos chemist Wright Langham, in a paper apparently written sometime after the 1956 presidential elections, calculated that fallout might produce an additional thirty cases of leukemia and ten cases of bone cancer per year.22 aThere is no doubt but that the world population is receiving a small exposure to radioactive materials originating from nuclear weapons testing.23 Fission products from bomb detonations have and are depositing over the surface of the earth.a these effects may result in an increase in genetic mutations, shortening of life expectancy and increased incidence of leukemia and bone sarcoma,a he wrote. The paper said nothing about the hundreds of other radioisotopes released by the bomb, including radioiodine.
As the fallout controversy raged, the scientists continued to collect their human samples, often covertly. Some 1,165 human thyroid glands were collected during autopsies around the world and sent to the Oak Ridge Inst.i.tute for Nuclear Studies for a.n.a.lysis.24 A human finger, which had been amputated after being pierced with plutonium metal, also was sent to Oak Ridge. With the help of a cooperative local pathologist, scientists at the Hanford Reservation a.n.a.lyzed the plutonium in the tissues and organs of nearly 350 people who lived near Hanford or worked at the nuclear facility. University of Utah researchers examined the tissues of some 75 residents to determine radioactivity from the weapons tests. At a uranium processing plant in Cincinnati, Ohio, the kidneys, livers, and spleens of workers were taken during autopsy and a.n.a.lyzed for uranium deposition. But one of the most extensive and long-lived body parts collection programs of the Cold War began at Los Alamos in 1959 after a plutonium worker named Cecil Kelley was fatally injured in a criticality accident.
Cecil was on his way to a New Yearas Eve party on December 30, 1958, when someone called and asked him to fill in at the DP West Site, a facility where plutonium was chemically separated and recovered from waste products. Reluctantly he agreed. Snowy footprints crisscrossed the technical area and the Sangre de Cristos were beginning to take on their luminous, other-worldly color. From somewhere came the spicy scent of burning pin on wood. The building where Cecil worked resembled a huge boiler room. Large steel tanks containing varying amounts of plutonium in solution stood about the room and hundreds of pipes crossed the ceiling.
Just ten minutes earlier there had been about a half-dozen maintenance workers in Room 218, but they had left when their 4:30 P.M. shift ended. Cecil pulled on a pair of shapeless coveralls. He was thirty-eight years old, an ex-paratrooper and infantryman who had worked as a ski guide and instructor in Sun Valley, Idaho, before joining the Army in 1940. Afterward he had worked as a plutonium processing operator from 1946 to 1949, and again from 1955 through 1958.
Cecil mounted a small stepladder and looked down through a viewing window into one of the tanks.25 Normally the tank contained only a small amount of plutonium, but for some reason approximately seven and one-half pounds of plutonium had been washed into the vessel.26 The plutonium was sitting in a layer of organic solvents at the top of the tank.
Still looking through the viewing window, Cecil reached out and flicked a switch on the side of the tank that rotated a paddle inside the vessel. It was a simple, mechanical movement, which he had performed at least seventy-five times before. As the stirrer began turning, the liquids on the bottom were pushed outward and up the walls of the tank.27 A bowllike depression formed in the middle of the tank and the plutonium solvent rushed into the bowl. With a lot more plutonium molecules jostling each other, the solvent suddenly went critical. A chain reaction had begun.
A blue haloa"the same blue halo that had anointed the brows of Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin when they were fatally injureda"filled the room. A m.u.f.fled thump was heard as the 225-gallon tank jumped about three-eighths of an inch. Cecil either fell or was knocked to the floor. He got up, turned the stirrer motor off, then turned it on again. A rumbling noise came from the tank and he ran outside into the snow screaming, aIam burning up. Iam burning up.a28 Scientists later calculated that between 10,000 and 12,000 rad struck Cecilas head and chest area.29 The neutrons and gamma rays ripped through his body, turning the sodium in his blood, the phosphorous in his hair, the calcium in his bones, and the silver-mercury fillings in his mouth radioactive. Two men working nearby took Cecil to a shower, pa.s.sing by the tank where the chain reaction had occurred. One of them turned off the stirrer. By then Cecil could no longer stand. The workers laid him on the floor while they waited for an ambulance. A lab nurse observed he was in shock and unconscious but awith a nice pink skin.a Cecil was almost dead when he arrived at Los Alamos Medical Center a few minutes later.30 His eyes were so red they looked as if they had been damaged by a welderas arc. His lips were dusky blue. aThe skin of the chest and abdomen was reddened as though it had been exposed to sunlight and received a first degree burn,a his medical records state.31 The strange sunburn also covered his back.
The hospital doctors and nurses tried to make Cecil as comfortable as they could. aI was on call at the time.32 I had never seen anything like it before,a said John S. Benson, a physician who still lives in Los Alamos. aHe was miserable and scared. We were unhappy that he was in such a sad state. We were trying to make him comfortable.a The emergency room nurses were initially unable to check Cecilas blood pressure because he was so restless and agitated. Dr. Benson later wrote in his admission note, aWhen seen in the E.R. physical examination was impossible due to the fact that the pt. retched violently every few moments and was hyperventilating to the extreme, was quite restless and very agitated.33 His lungs were clear but pulse and blood pressure were not obtained. He was pale, moist, although he had taken a cold shower prior to being brought over.a As Cecil thrashed wildly in the emergency room, a contingent of Los Alamos scientists arrived at the hospital and hurriedly began gathering the adata.a Using a tongue depressor, chemist Don Petersen, a friend of Wright Langhamas, sc.r.a.ped Cecilas vomit from the floor and his explosive diarrhea from the walls.34 aWe werenat going to lose anything but the groans,a Petersen recalled in a deposition taken in 1997 by an attorney representing Cecilas family in a lawsuit.35 Numerous blood samples were taken and all of his urine was saved, including three ccs squeezed from his bladder after death. A portable Geiger counter placed next to him showed that he was emitting some 15 millirad per hour.
The ma.s.sive irradiation of Cecil Kelley provided Los Alamos scientists with their third aexperiment of opportunity.a36 Once again they could chronicle what happens to the human body when a bomb was exploded without the confounding effects of burn and blast. But there was an even more intriguing experiment they could pursue once Cecil was dead. They planned to harvest his organs to find out whether the plutonium he had acc.u.mulated in his body matched the predictions derived from exposure records and Wright Langhamas mathematical equations extrapolated from the plutonium injectees.
Langham, who had risen from his lowly Manhattan Project status to become one of the movers and shakers in Operation Sunshine and the worldas authority on plutonium, coordinated the collection and a.n.a.lysis of data. When Cecilas wife, Doris, got to the hospital, Langham met her at the doors to the emergency room.37 Do you know anything about this? he asked her.
Yes, she knew a lot, she responded.
Then you know heas not going to live, she recalled Langham telling her.
aI knew from the very beginning that he wasnat going to live,a Doris said in an interview in 1994. aHe was retching in the hospital emergency room. They wouldnat let me in. I was right outside the door. I donat know what they gave him. Morphine, I suppose. They settled him down and took him upstairs.a Cecil was taken to a private room where he was laid in a bed supported by ashock blocksa and enclosed in an oxygen tent. A saline solution dripped into his veins. Thorazine was administered to curb the nausea. Hot water bottles were placed on his swelling arms. Still, the pain and restlessness continued. At 6:30 P.M. Dr. Benson noted that Cecil was suffering from asevere chillsa"still retching, shocky, restless, moaning.a38 Gradually the vomiting and nausea subsided. Cecil began taking small sips of water but could not urinate and complained of severe pain in his right upper abdomen. A nurse wrote, aHe described it as a hard knot in his lowest rib which wouldnat relax.a By midnight Cecil was coherent enough to give his group leader a description of what had happened. He described the heavenly blue glow that had filled the room and the rumbling sound he heard from the tank. Sometime after the interview, he vomited on the floor. The floor was measured for radioactivity. Wrote Benson, aVomitus area monitored and is aO.K.a a Don Petersen, who retired from the laboratory in 1990 but still serves as an advisor to the Armyas chemical and biological warfare programs, said in his deposition that doctors were having trouble stabilizing Cecilas blood pressure. The only way they could keep the blood pressure up was to administer fluids. But as Cecilas body began to shut down and his kidneys failed, the infusion of liquids began creating other problems.
Doris, who was allowed into Cecilas room after he had been stabilized, remained at his bedside through most of the ordeal. She said her husband knew he was dying. He told her to take good care of their two children, a seven-year-old daughter and a boy about eighteen months old. His brother from Indiana arrived about 3:00 A.M. and they talked quietly for an hour or so.
Cecil occasionally napped or dozed as the hours ticked away. His right arm, then his left arm, began to swell from the I.V.as. About 7:00 A.M. the next morning, a nurse rubbed his back and changed his linen. She noticed that an inflamed area had appeared on his right arm.
At 5:00 P.M., some twenty-four hours after the accident, the doctors decided to do a sternal bone marrow biopsy. Several physicians said the biopsy probably was done to determine whether Cecil was a candidate for a bone marrow transplant, which was still a new procedure in the late 1950s. But a doc.u.ment provided to his wife and daughter during the discovery stage of their lawsuit suggests the procedure was simply another way to collect data on the effects of radiation. Writing to a colleague a week after the accident, Los Alamos doctor Thomas Shipman observed: From the very beginning it was obvious that this man had received a ma.s.sive dose.39 We are currently estimating it in excess of 12,000 rem. He died in thirty-five hours, but I am sure would have died in two or three hours had we not treated his shock. He was in a state of profound shock on admission to the hospital and this was the princ.i.p.al problem as far as treatment was concerned. Because of the size of the dose, it seemed obvious that he would die a central nervous system death, so we never seriously considered bone marrow transfusions.
The operating room equipment was taken to Cecilas bedside. His chest was scrubbed with soap, water, alcohol, and draped in a sterile cloth. Then an incision was made over what was thought to be his sternum. A agood deala of material was removed, but it did not seem to include any bone marrow.40 The doctor suddenly realized he had made the incision in the wrong place. That wound was closed with fine silk sutures and another incision made. Cartilage, a small piece of muscle, and aa great deal of red marrow was obtained for slides,a physician W. R. Oakes later wrote.
Dorisas stomach churned as she witnessed the procedure: aWhat they pulled out was slop.41 They put a syringe in his chest and pulled it out. It was just mush.a Cecil lived another ten hours. The nausea and cramping came and went. His arms and legs continue to swell. Six hours before his death he mumbled to a nurse his chest felt as if ait was beginning to thaw out.a But then the restlessness and thrashing set in again. He complained of pains in his chest, abdomen, and arms and finally grew so agitated that he pulled the intravenous needles from his arms. He was sedated with morphine and luminal. He began having afrog typea respirations, which gradually became slower over the next fifteen minutes. aPulse un.o.btainablea"heart tones quite distant a respiration had ceaseda"no responsea"p.r.o.nounced dead at 3:15 A.M.,a Benson wrote in Cecilas medical chart.42 It was New Yearas Day of 1959, exactly thirty-four hours and forty-five minutes since the accident occurred. In the hospital room at the time of Cecilas death were physicians John Benson, Robert Grier, and Clarence Lushbaugh, a laboratory pathologist who would soon perform the autopsy. Several visitors who were en route to Los Alamos, including Louis Hempelmann, who had overseen the medical care of Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin, were contacted and told to go back home.43 Hempelmann said he would be available for consultations by telephone if anyone needed him.
After his death, Cecilas corpse was dragged by sled through the snow to a steel-lined building that contained a whole-body counter. aHe was so loaded with everything, the counter just went berserk,a recalled Earl Kinsley, an Air Force health physicist a.s.signed to the lab at the time of the accident.44 At 6:00 A.M. on Newas Year Day, Clarence Lushbaugh began an autopsy.45 Lushbaugh was struck by the waterlogged appearance of Cecilas tissues. (The physicians had been pumping fluids into him to keep up his blood pressure and had anearly drowneda him in their efforts, Thomas Shipman would later write.46) Lushbaugh dutifully recorded the two incisions on Cecilas chest and the anumerous needle puncture marksa on his forearms and lower legs. Not surprisingly, he found some of the same kind of hemorrhages that Stafford Warren and Shields Warren had observed years earlier on the j.a.panese atomic bombing victims. The abdominal cavity, the gastrointestinal tract, and the heart were covered with small hemorrhages. aRigor mortis is exceptionally strong and the muscles more contracted than usual,a Lushbaugh wrote. Cecilas heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, adrenal glands, stomach, colon, lymph nodes, gonads, and brain were removed and stored for later a.n.a.lysis.
Following the accident, telegrams poured into Los Alamos from all over the world. They were not sympathy messages but requests from researchers who wanted bits and pieces of Cecilas body for study. Clarence Lushbaugh shipped Cecilas brain in a wide-mouthed mayonnaise jar to the Armed Forces Inst.i.tute of Pathology.47 When Lushbaugh was asked in a deposition who gave him authority to send the brain there, he responded, aG.o.d did.a Scientists at the Armed Forces Inst.i.tute of Pathology compared Cecilas brain to the brains of monkeys that were also being blasted with huge doses of radiation.48 The findings were so interesting that one of the scientists, Webb Haymaker, asked Lushbaugh for permission to discuss the case at a meeting at Walter Reed Hospital.49 Pieces of Cecilas frozen liver and lymph nodes were mailed to Hanford. Twenty-five ccs of his urine were sent to Oak Ridge. For many months after the accident, Los Alamos scientists churned out biomedical and dosimetry reports based on data from the deceased manas body parts and his clothing, including the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons on his coveralls.
But the most important postmortem study was the one to find out if the plutonium in Kelleyas body matched what scientists had predicted. Using nose counts, urinalyses, and Wright Langhamas formula, the group predicted that Cecil had eighteen nanocuries, or a little less than half of the so-called maximum permissible body burden.50 When they reduced his organs to solution, they found his body content was nineteen nanocuries. The agreement was so close that Wright Langham considered it aundoubtedly fortuitous.a But the scientists were nevertheless disturbed because the amount of plutonium in the lungs and pulmonary lymph nodes was much greater than they had predicted.
While Los Alamos scientists performed their mathematical calculations and began preparing their findings for publication, officials at AEC headquarters in Washington, D.C., were in a dither about whom to blame. Not surprisingly, Cecil Kelley became the scapegoat. It is difficult to reconstruct from doc.u.ments exactly how the criticality accident occurred, but apparently three aimproper transfersa of solutions were made that resulted in the excess of plutonium in the tank.51 Itas not clear whether the transfers were made by Kelley or by workers on the preceding shift. Ironically, the lab was in the process of reviewing the safety aspects of its plutonium recovery program when the criticality occurred.
To his credit, lab director Norris Bradbury informed the Atomic Energy Commission that ano single causea triggered the accident.52 aIt was made possible by a complicated set of circ.u.mstances and coincidences, no one of which can be considered wholly responsible.a But the AEC nevertheless went ahead and issued a press release blaming the entire incident on Cecil. aThe accident was directly attributable to errors on the part of the deceased operator.a53 The AEC press release didnat sit well with Thomas Shipman. aI feel quite strongly that the statement as given is manifestly unfair to Kelley himself and does not give a true picture of the whole affair,a he told Bradbury.54 Shipman also strongly protested the AECas statement in a letter to Charles Dunham, who by then was in charge of all the AECas biomedical programs: In stating that the accident was adirectlya attributable to mistakes made by Kelley it was untrue.55 I am sure that you are sufficiently familiar with the facts to realize that Kelley could have continued to do all of the things he did had it not been for things beyond his control and beyond the knowledge of anyone concerned.a On the whole, the people around here know pretty well what had happened, and this new publicity has left them quite bewildered, and they feel that a man who is unable to defend himselfa"and who possibly could have defended himselfa"has been very unjustly treated.
Cecil was given a military burial and a twenty-one-gun salute. A three-cornered American flag went to Doris. His daughter, Katie, then a small girl clad in a navy-blue sailor suit and a blue hat, tossed a handful of dirt on the casket. Doris received $7,000 from Los Alamos; another $3,000 went to Kelleyas first wife. Doris, who worked as a secretary at the lab for forty-seven years, said lab officials also promised to pay for her childrenas college education, buy her a house, and give her a salary increase.56 But none of those promises were kept. With two fatherless children to raise, the family gradually slipped into poverty.
The laboratory also returned to Doris her husbandas gold Bulova wrist.w.a.tch, and his wallet. In the wallet was Cecilas 1958 Los Alamos Golf a.s.sociation membership card, his Eight b.a.l.l.s Bowling League card, a New Mexico hunting and fishing license, and a charge card to Pfluegeras Smart Footwear in Santa Fe. Behind the bright-red Atomic Energy Commission identification card, Cecil kept a one-dollar bill, soft as tissue paper and dated May 18, 1914. The dollar bill was given to him by his father-in-law and was supposed to have been his good-luck charm.
With the death of Cecil Kelley, Los Alamosas human tissue program began in earnest. Between 1959 and 1985 the body parts of 1,712 human beings, including nearly a dozen whole cadavers, were shipped to Los Alamos and a.n.a.lyzed for their plutonium content.57 The original objective of the program was to see if the amount of plutonium in deceased nuclear workers agreed with predicted amounts derived from exposure records.
The Los Alamos investigators obtained organs and cadavers from people who died in other parts of the country for a acontrol group.a Those a.n.a.lyses also helped scientists estimate how much plutonium the American people were acc.u.mulating from the bomb tests. The human organs were dried in ovens, converted into ash, then dissolved in an acid solution so they could be a.n.a.lyzed. For many years, anyone who died in the town of Los Alamos was autopsied, including visitors, whom pathologist Clarence Lushbaugh called aextras.a58
PART FOUR.
aThe Buchenwald Toucha
33.
aMICE OR MEN?a
One by one the doctors crossed the lobby of the Carlton Hotel and took a right toward the big ballroom.1 With its gilded ceilings and elegant furnishings, the hotel resembled an Italian Renaissance palace. Just two blocks away was the White House. The spring sun poured through the tall windows, showering light on the stragglers making their way toward the smell of coffee and the unmistakable hubbub of a meeting about to begin. When they were a.s.sembled, with steaming cups of coffee in hand, there were twenty-six of th