Please Don't Frighten Us

by ROBERT E. SHERWOOD

SINCE the appearance of Dr. David Bradley’s widely (but insufficiently) acclaimed So Place to Hide in these pages, various military authorities have been making strenuous attempts to counteract the effects of such “alarmist fearmongering” by tut-tutting the atomic bomb.

(In his famous “Arsenal of Democracy" speech in December, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt summarized a telegram he had received from a private citizen in these words: “Please, Mr. President, don’t frighten us by telling us the facts”; now it is not the private citizens but the Top Brass who are urging that.)

Rear Admiral William Sterling Parsons, one of the Navy’s foremost experts on the Topmost Secret, and also one of the bravest of men, gave an interview to the Associated Press in which he said that there has been “tremendous overemphasis of the atom bomb”; that one or a dozen dropped on American cities “would be just another Pearl Harbor. ... It would cook the goose of any nation doing it . . . unless that nation had hundreds of atom bombs to follow up with.” (No guarantee provided that an aggressive enemy would not have hundreds of atom bombs.)

Shortly after the Admiral’s reassuring statement, Colonel James P. Cooney, one of the Army observers at Bikini, was sent to Boston by his chief, the Surgeon General, to address the American Public Health Association. As reported in the New York Times by William L. Laurence (another courageous expert), the Colonel referred to the atomic bomb as “this piece of ordnance" and stated that “unreasoning psychological fears of the effects of radioactivity “could well interfere with an important military mission in lime of war.”

There can be little argument about that last assumption. But there can be and must be plenty of argument over the theory that the way to keep the people fearless is to keep them ignorant.

Dr. Bradley was only one of thousands who participated in Operation Crossroads, the tests at Bikini. He was, however, engaged in what was undoubtedly the most important part of the gigantic, complex, historic task: the Geiger monitoring of radioactivity on land and sea and in the air and in the fishes of the target area and in the urine of the sailors, who worked in necessarily short shifts aboard the blasted ships. It was his conclusion that the Bikini Atoll —an area of some two hundred square miles — could not be decontaminated and made habitable for years or perhaps for centuries. To Dr. Bradley the bomb is not merely another “piece of ordnance’: it is “the colossus which looms behind tomorrow”; and he gives even the incurable lavman (meaning myself) a deep and disturbingly clear idea of its implications. Although young and rugged (he had to he, on the Crossroads assignment), Dr. Bradley reveals in his writing the qualities of it doctor of the old school who, driv ing his buekboard out to some remote farm on a life-or-death mission, does not neglect to note en route the unseasonable appearance of a golden-winged flicker in that neck of the woods. But the Doctor’s sensitivity to the beauty of Micronesia and the peacefulness of its people merely serves to underscore his awareness of doom. There is a sense of terror even in his dedication: “To Kim and David, who will know whether we have made that cloud man’s masterpiece or his master.”

As is well known, the first of the Bikini bombs was detonated above water level —as were those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and the second one beneath the surface. Whatever the destructive effects of the first bomb —and it was not Dr. Bradley’s job to report on this — it left behind it little ol the real atomic menace, “the lingering poison of radioactivity,” since the great bulk of the most dangerous fission products was hurled upwards to be dissipated in the stratosphere. It was the second, underwater bomb which provided the real, ominous warning, for in this test the lethal elements, including plutonium, were held in the huge cloud of water which returned to the Atoll. According to Dr. Bradley, this is the effect of plutonium on the human organism: “ It lodges in the bones, destroys the blood-producing marrow, and may kill its host by wrecking his red and white blood cells; or, if the host survives that early period, he may die years later from bone tumors. . . . Plutonium cannot be removed by processes known to medical science to date.”

The second Bikini test gave an indication of the effects of a bomb detonated in San Francisco Bay, or the Chicago, the Hudson, the Thames, or the Moskva River. A formidable portion of the fission products, particularly uranium, would similarly be held earthbound if bombs were detonated at ground level in the canyons of our cities. How extensive this poisoning would be. or how long enduring, I cannot say, nor do I like even to think about it.

Operation Crossroads was to have included a third test to be carried out in the deep waters of the Pacific, but this was abandoned and Dr. Bradley does not appear to know whether or not another atomic bomb has been detonated anywhere since he left Kwajalein at the end of September, 1946. The rest is indeed silence, and far too much of it.

He has written: “The greatest failure of all in these tests has been in apprehending their sociological implications. Evidently the Bomb has failed to impress more than a few congenital pessimists with the full scope of its lethal potential. This error in publicity — an error of omission might be justifiable on the basis of strict military secrecy. In the long run, however, the one thing more dangerous than informed governments abroad will be an uninformed American opinion.'

Or, it might be said, a misinformed American opinion. Day after day we read official statements from high authorities of the Army, Navy, or Air Force which plead the case of each branch of the service and, when put together, leave us in a stale of utter confusion which inevitably resolves itself into indifference. (Not long ago I read an Air Force prediction that if there were an atomic war within the next few years it would be fought exclusively by small formations of fast, far-ranging bombers and would be won or lost within the space of two months.) But no one on the upper levels has offered clear refutations of Dr. Bradley’s contentions:-

There is no real defense agains atomic weapons.

There are no satisfactory countermeasures and methods of decontamination.

There are no satisfactory medical or sanitary safeguards for the people of atomized areas.

The devastating influence of the Bomb and its unborn relatives may affect the land and its wealth — and therefore its people — for centuries through the persistence of radioactivity.

Colonel Cooney, previously quoted, did say that “the residual radiation from an air burst bomb is insignificant,”and pointed to the fact that only 5 to 15 per cent of the casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were due to radiation. But the lengthy report of his speech by Mr. Laurence indicates no mention of the measurable results of the second Bikini bomb.

For want of other evidence we must accept Dr. Bradley’s and assume that we confront an age— an eternity — in which the most vital mechanism is not the wheel or the lever or even the human heart, but the Geiger counter (and that is useless in detecting plutonium). The unseen enemy that still poisons the gallant, sunken Saratoga does in awful truth constitute the wave of the future.

Why don’t we know more about his transcendenl reality? Military security must be respected and the authorities can be forgiven for a tendency to err on the side of excessive secrecy. But military security is not compromised in Dr. Bradley’s No Place to Hide any more than it was in John Mersey’s immortal Hiroshima. Why then must we depend on individual, unofficial writers for our information on this vital subject instead of on the appropriate officers of our government and armed forces? Does this betoken lack of confidence in or even contempt for our people? If so, a policy prevails which has always proved lamentably unprofitable.

I do not believe that there has ever before been a time when the people have so conclusively demonstrated their right to be trusted. The people have developed a wonderfully healthy attitude toward world problems in so far as they are given an opportunity to see and understand these problems. Public opinion is perfectly expressed in words attributed to George C. Marshall, “The only way to be sure of winning the next war is to prevent it,”and there can be no doubt of the people’s confidence that the Truman-Marshall policy is calculated to prevent rather than instigate war with the Soviet Union. Nor can there be any doubt of the character of the Atomic Energy Commission under the chairmanship of David E. Lilienthal.

There remain, however, the deluding or confusing pronouncements from military officers who seek to boost the stock of their own arm of the service. The people cannot be sure that there are not chips as well as stars and eagles visible on the shoulders of some of our military leaders. It seems at times that there is one policy for the White House and State Department and another for the Pentagon Building. It is the members of the “War is Inevitable" brigade who need to be told the facts brought out by Dr. Bradley — or, rather, they need to know the feelings of every citizen who is made aware of these horrors. (It would also be a good idea to keep reminding the Soviet leaders of them and as many of the Russian people as can be reached by the Voice of America or any other medium.)

I have been told (not on unassailable authority) that our best military thinking estimates that the Russians will have found a way to manufacture the atom bomb sometime before 1952 but that they are not likely to catch up with us in manufacture, because of our superior industrial “know-how.” (As Dr. Bradley says, “This know-how is our Maginot Line.”) However, I do not think the retd problem is when the Soviet Union completes its first bomb or its thousandth. The basic point for our military leaders to bear in mind (and on their consciences) is this: —

We do not want to drop so much as one bomb on the Russian people any more than we want them to drop one on us. Because the first one will be the period at the end of civilizalion.

The maintenance of peace involves firm and resolute action rather than the repetition of mere pious, wishful words. Whenever I hear anyone talk of the desirabilily of “outlawing” the atomic bomb or bacteriological weapons, I am reminded of the Chevalier Bayard who ordered his troops to treat with utmost consideration all enemy prisoners who had been fighting with swords, spears, battle-axes, or bows, whereas those captured inthe act of firing any of the new weapons cannon or blunderbusses — were to be tortured to death; for the Chevalier considered the use of gunpowder an unseemly violation of the ancient and honorable rules of “civilized” warfare.

Accepting the present need for universal military training, it seems that the people should be informed as well as trained. The people deserve the respect, the most humble respect, of their leaders. They deserve to know just what it is they face. They deserve to know that the ancient concept of national sovereignty has gone forever, blasted into the stratosphere above Bikini.