Blown to Hell

America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders

Walter Pincus

• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781635768015, 9781635768015
• eBook ISBN: 9781635768022
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Australian & Oceanian History
• Index: History

A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist exposes the sixty-seven US nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands that decimated a people and their land.
The most important place in American nuclear history are the Marshall Islands—an idyllic Pacific paradise that served as the staging ground for over sixty US nuclear tests. It was here, from 1946 to 1958, that America perfected the weapon that preserved the peace of the post-war years. It was here—with the 1954 Castle Bravo test over Bikini Atoll—that America executed its largest nuclear detonation, a thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima. And it was here that a native people became unwilling test subjects in the first large scale study of nuclear radiation fallout when the ashes rained down on powerless villagers, contaminating the land they loved and forever changing a way of life.
In Blown to Hell, Pulitzer Prize–winnng journalist Walter Pincus tells for the first time the tragic story of the Marshallese people caught in the crosshairs of American nuclear testing. From John Anjain, a local magistrate of Rongelap Atoll who loses more than most; to the radiation-exposed crew of the Japanese fishing boat the Lucky Dragon; to Dr. Robert Conard, a Navy physician who realized the dangers facing the islanders and attempted to help them; to the Washington power brokers trying to keep the unthinkable fallout from public view . . . Blown to Hell tells the human story of America's nuclear testing program.
Displaced from the only homes they had known, the native tribes that inhabited the serene Pacific atolls for millennia before they became ground zero for America's first thermonuclear detonations returned to homes despoiled by radiation—if they were lucky enough to return at all. Others were ripped from their ancestral lands and shuttled to new islands with little regard for how the new environment supported their way of life and little acknowledgement of all they left behind. But not even the disruptive relocations allowed the islanders to escape the fallout.
Praise for Blown to Hell
"A shocking account of the destruction wrought by atomic bomb testing in the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958 . . . . Pincus makes a persuasive case that in "seeking a more powerful weapon for warfare, the U.S. unleashed death in several forms on peaceful Marshall Island people." Readers will be appalled." — Publishers Weekly
"For more than half a century, Walter Pincus has been among our greatest reporters and most persistent truth-tellers. Blown to Hell is a story worthy of his talents—infuriating, heart-breaking, and utterly riveting." —Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Liberation Trilogy

PART I

THE FIRST TESTS

1

IN THE BEGINNING

Using radioactive materials as a weapon of terror or death had been a highly secret part of the US pre-World War II atomic bomb research. In short, part of the initial thinking among American scientists included developing what now is called a “dirty bomb.”

The idea had first emerged from a May 17, 1941, National Academy of Sciences report on Atomic Fission by a committee chaired by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Arthur Compton. The men were studying whether the government should devote a major scientific effort toward developing an atomic bomb. At the time, it was believed that Hitler Germany was making progress in such an effort.

The authors of this eight-page, National Academy report wrote that with a vastly increased uranium research effort “it would seem to us unlikely that the use of nuclear fission can become of military importance within less than two years.” They went on to list proposed military applications for radioactive materials produced by a uranium fission reaction. They included use as a power source for ships and submarines, or for “violently explosive” bombs.

The first use suggested for the “violently radioactive materials” produced would be “as missiles destructive to life.” The paper read, “These might then be carried by airplanes to be scattered as bombs over enemy territory” to cause radiological injury. The report added, “This might be the most promptly applicable military use,” although it might not be available within less than twelve months of the first production of a chain reaction—so not earlier than 1943.

In the summer of 1942, Compton believed Nazi Germany was going down this path, writing to James B. Conant, physicist and Harvard University president, “We have become convinced there is real danger of bombardment by the Germans within the next few months using bombs designed to spread radio-active materials in lethal quantities.”

In 1943, Manhattan Project research work on the atomic bomb was proceeding at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico under the direction of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, who discussed various potential applications with leading scientists, including Dr. Enrico Fermi, head of the team that built the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.

Oppenheimer and Fermi talked about using fission materials, particularly strontium, to poison German food supplies. This approach was dropped after Oppenheimer wrote to Fermi that he thought it unfeasible unless “we can poison food sufficient to kill a half a million men.”

Such studies continued. An October 30, 1943, report entitled “Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon,” written by Compton, Conant, and chemist Harold Urey, another Nobel Prize-winner, was sent to Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project. This report recommended that additional work be authorized on “the use of radioactive materials in order that this country may be ready to use such materials or be ready to defend itself against the use of such materials.” One offensive application proposed was the grinding of radioactive particles into microscopic size and, as dust or smoke, using it as “a gas warfare instrument.” It could be delivered via a ground-fired projectile or an aerial bomb. “In this form it would be inhaled by personnel,” the report said, “The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person’s body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty.”

The authors also suggested use of radioactive materials for what they called “terrain contaminant.” That meant using a weapon that spread radioactive materials on the ground “in order to deny terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiations.” Depending on the quantities of radioactive materials used, “effects on a person would probably not be immediate, but would be delayed for days or perhaps weeks depending upon the amounts of exposure,” they wrote. In addition, they said contamination from radioactive material “would be dangerous until the slow natural decay of the material took place, which would take weeks and even months.”

Their memo even suggested that radioactive material could be weaponized for ingestion into human bodies by targeting reservoirs or wells. “Four days production [of radioactive materials] could contaminate a million gallons of water to an extent that a quart drunk in one day would probably result in complete incapacitation or death in about a month’s time,” they wrote.

The authors recommended that “if military authorities feel that the United States should be ready to use radioactive weapons in case the enemy started it first, studies on the subject should be started immediately.”

Pursuit of such dirty bombs was eventually set aside because of the successful progress being made in developing the first atomic bombs. But based on their past planning, key atomic scientists were clearly aware of the threat posed by radioactive materials, such as fallout created by detonation of a nuclear weapon, more than seventy years ago.

In the spring of 1945, with preparations for the initial Trinity test of a plutonium-based, atomic device well underway, the main focus of Manhattan Project scientists was getting the maximum destructive effect from an atomic explosion. Since nearly half the destructive energy released from a detonation would come in the form of blast, with another 35 percent coming from heat, those elements drew the most attention.

Radioactive fallout was mostly an afterthought, since radiation would be only 15 percent of the energy the weapon’s detonation would release. Focus was on the altitude at which the atomic bomb would be detonated in order for the explosion to create the greatest blast and heat effects over the widest area.

A two-day meeting of what was called the Target Committee was held on May 10 and 11, 1945, in Oppenheimer’s office at Site Y, the then-classified name for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The first topic of discussion was listed as “Height of Detonation,” according to a once Top Secret, May 12, 1945, summary of the meetings, declassified in June 1974.

The goal for both the uranium and plutonium atomic bombs was a detonation at a height that would cause overpressure of five psi (pounds-per-square-inch) on the ground. Such a blast overpressure would create a wind speed of 163 miles per hour and collapse most buildings, causing immediate widespread fatalities and universal injuries.

At the Target Committee meeting, expectations were voiced that “Little Boy,” the uranium bomb, would have a yield from five to fifteen kilotons (5,000 to 15,000 tons of TNT), and that the detonation fuse should be set to go off at an altitude somewhere between 1,550-to-2,400 feet above ground for the best destructive results.

For “Fat Man,” the plutonium-triggered bomb, the expected yield was to be determined after the Trinity test, since that device was of the same design. It was tentatively determined that detonation altitude would be around 1,400 feet.

The declassified memo listed another agenda item as “Psychological Factors in Target Selection.” The group agreed there was “great importance” in using the new bomb to get “the greatest psychological effect against Japan” and to make “the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released.”

To put it bluntly, Oppenheimer and his colleagues wanted to destroy as many buildings as possible and kill and injure so many people that the world would recognize something really terrifying had been added to warfare.

Of course, they didn’t want to be seen as going after civilians. Another item on their agenda was “Use Against ‘Military’ Objectives.” But notice they saw fit to put military in quotation marks. They said the initial weapon was to be used on a “small and strictly military objective,” but that the target “should be located in a much larger area subject to blast damage in order to avoid undue risks of the weapon being lost due to bad placing of the bomb.”

When it came to Hiroshima, the first target, that city was described as “an important Army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged.” [emphasis added]

Nagasaki wasn’t even on the original target list. It was added after Secretary of War Henry Stimson objected to going after Kyoto, Japan’s ancient cultural capital. Even then Nagasaki was the alternate target, the one hit because there was cloud cover over Kokura, the original selection.

The Target Committee’s “Radiological Effect” discussion of the bomb was devoted to recommendations associated with safety of the mission’s American aircraft and crews rather than the radiation exposure of the Japanese people on the ground. The memo called for no other US aircraft flying closer than 2.5 miles from the detonation site or near the radioactive cloud the bomb created.

On May 31, 1945, another key meeting was held in Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s office next door to the White House. The first test of an atomic device was looming in six weeks, and the first use of an atomic bomb was expected shortly thereafter. It was a meeting of what was called the Interim Committee, appointed by President Truman less than a month after he became president, to discuss “recommendations on temporary wartime controls, public announcement, legislation and post-war organization,” according to notes from the session.

In attendance were Gen. George C. Marshall, at that time Army chief of staff; James F. Byrnes, then-special assistant to President Truman; William L. Clayton, a successful businessman and assistant secretary of state; Ralph A. Bard, a financier and undersecretary of the Navy; Dr. Vannevar Bush, an engineer, founder of Raytheon Corps and one-time president of MIT, but then effectively Truman’s science adviser as director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development; Karl T. Compton, a physicist who helped develop radar and another former MIT president; and Harvard’s Conant, who was then also chairman of the National Defense Research Committee.

Also present were Oppenheimer, along with Fermi, Arthur Compton, and Dr. E. O. Lawrence, each of whom had run elements of the Manhattan Project. Finally there was Major General Groves, manager of the project.

Chairing the session was Stimson, a Republican former secretary of state from the Hoover administration whom President Roosevelt had brought into his cabinet in 1940 to show bipartisanship as it became apparent the US would become involved in World War II.

Did that group, almost seventy years ago, get everything right? People have argued that those first bombs should not have been dropped. General Marshall, in fact, at one point during a meeting made that very argument, although he would change his mind.

But listen to what they did say and then do.

At that May 31 session, with Marshall’s support, Stimson said the Manhattan Project “should not be considered simply in terms of military weapons, but as a new relationship of man to the universe.” He called what was about to happen more important than the discovery of gravity because of “its effect on the lives of men.”

For that reason, he said, “It was important to realize that the implications of the project went far beyond the needs of the present war.” The atomic bomb, Stimson said, looking toward the future, “must be controlled if possible to make it an assurance of future pea...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Blown to Hell
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• PART I : THE FIRST TESTS
• PART II : LONG-TERM PROBLEMS
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• Notes and Sources
• About the Author