DECLASSIFIED Authority Wt 520 Tm DIVISION OF CLASSIFI 0 us will Kimmy Class - RESEARCH AND DEVELOPME ass DEW DE mm c g RE A DETERMINED THAT THIS DOCUMENT our so to DATA 0 RESTRICTED DATA OR FORMERLY 3 Re class'n - on 0333311333 AT BIKINI 33 dqomfm i 3 5 EC s312958 25x - salon mom Dam l Australia Commander S H K Spurgcon Rg gfwih trelien Navel Attache inWon end Non-vParti cipeting Observer remained with the ship onxy during the first test during which time I had no conversations with him I noted that he took notes during lectures and discussed some of the points with Bertrand of France who said later Spurgeon had only the foggiest idea of the mechanisms involved in the atomic bomb project Dr who was scheduled to join the group did not arrive 2 Brazil Commander Carlos Almcida De Silva Brazilian Liaison Officer at the Philadelphia Navy Yard and Brazilian Ob- server at the tests spoke very poor English and remained somewhat aloof from the rest of the group On the other hand uhjor Orlando Rengol hhmber of the Brazilian Military Commission in'thhington D 0 and Adviser to the Brazilian Representative on the United notions Atomic Energy Commission was quite active among the observers and acked a number of questions He demonstrated a great deal of interest in thoriumn Eh said he knew there were large deposits of monezite in Brazil but that he didn't know where they were He is very confused about the scientific details of a project 3 Canada Air Vice marshal Stedmen Canadian None articipating Observer a d former Head of Research and Bevelopment Royal Canadian Air Force seemed to have an excellent grasp of the technical features of the project He stated shortly after the Able Test that the results had been about as the Canadians had anticipated and he deplored the tendency to minimize the effects of the bomb in view of the fact that fear of the atomic bomb was forcing nations together in a cooPerative enterprise which they would never achiete without it 4 China Major General T Fisher Hon Military Attache in wcshington D C and Chinese Noanerticipating Observer appeared to have very little technical knowledge and asked no questions concerning the tests or the prom ject Dr Chung Yao Choc Director of the Department of Physics National Central University Ranking is a very able nuclear physicist He did graduate work at the California Institute of Technology in 1930 and has published several papers on nuclear physics in China during the 1930's He said that China has no high-voltage apparatus at the present time and doesn't expect to be able to do much in the field of experimental nuclear physics for a long time He is going to try to encourage some of the Chinese nuclear physicists in this country to return to China to assist him in his work mentioning Chang of Princeton specifically He visited E 0 Lawrence at Berkeley before leaving for the tests but this seemed to be primarily a social call 5 Egypt Lt Col Abdel Cafar Osman Chief Inspector of Explosives of the Egyptian Army and Adviser to the Egyptian Representative on the Atomic Energy Commission apparently understands little English and remained entirely in the background overshadowed by his dynamic colleague Colonel Hhssan ngab Egyptian military'sttache in'hhshington D C Regab is extremely interested in organizing a nuclear research project in Egypt Roget said that there are large deposits of uranium in the-Egyptian desert and that a project is now underway to develop these deposits so also mentioned the deposits of monezite sends near Nile and he said that these were being exp101tcd - 12968 sec 3 4 10 3 x5 escrow I seen-- 3 noW'and before the war He did not know the extent of the deposits but he stated that many tons had been sent to the war 6 1 a Observers Capt Henri Balande Representative of the General Staff of the French Ministry of national Defense spoke only rudimentary - English and was rather shy of contact-with most of the observers so expressed one day however his satisfaction with the first test and said that it went about as he had anticipated Bertrand member of the French Atomic Commission is a former associate of Irene Curie and during the war was Director of the Division of the Laboratory of thc canadian atomic energy effort In describing his departure from the Project for France recently said he had an interview with General Groves which was blunt but fair He said he believes General Groves was a singularly good choice as a military head of the manhattan Project because he is a genius of organization was a little bored with the tests and after the first one wired for permission tc return to new York but he received two denials from Joliot and an explanation from Kowarski later that whilc it was a miserable waste of time it would be impossible to prove that to the French people and so for the sake of appearances he must stay Andre Labarthe arrived at Bikini just after the first test to replace Yres Fargo a communist underground worker and writer who was recalled to France as Food Minister under Bidault Labarthe was formerly Professor of mechanics at the Sorbonne and had an excellent technical appreciation of the project I read one of a series of twentyueight articles he has written for his primary newspaper France-Soir and it was quite good Labarthe was Minister of Information under Giraud during the war whom he admires intensely He explained that he had become associated with journalism because of his impatience with contemporary journalists and he continually criticized the sensational approach to news used by most of the journalists at Bikini I showed him a quotation from the French paper L'Hhmanite which claimed to be unimpressed by the first test He snorted Those Cemmunists are all fools b Frederic Joliot Curics Joliot is deeply hurt by the statements against him which appeared in the nyth Report In this connection he says both Einstein and Szilard have personally stated to Joliot that they had no part of these statements said Joliot is also almost obsessed'with the idea that people believe that everything he knows he tells to Mbscow He said that when he and Gueron and Kosarski first arrived in France they were puzzled by the fact that Joliot almost completely ignored them and certainly failed to show the lively curiosity in their work that they had anticipated After a short time Joliot called a meeting at which he stated to them categorically that none of the information on nuclear research known to him would go to Russia except as specifically included in public treaties between France and Russia He stated that he recognized the difficult position in which they were placed and he promdsed to ask unthing of them which would not be immediately needed for the French program Because of the nature of the program Goldsohmidt thought this might work with a minimum of difficulty - 2 essence Authority 7 SE 36 W In his attitude towards Operation Crossroads said Joliot had gotten caught by his disease of talking too much He said that Joliot was in Brussels when the first rumors of an atomic bomb test were received and he vigorously denounced such a plan before he learned that they would be open to international observers Shortly afterwards both he and Auger received official invitations to attend the tests but both felt that three months was too long to spend and to explain their absence they continued their statements condemning the tests According to Joliot and Auger are extremely jealoas of each other Andre Labarthe reported that Joliot was astounded that Labarthe had been permitted to see even the exterior of the plants at Oak Ridge c French Flans The general plan of France for atomic energy is not to develop a Tall-scale program but to use its time well until it is clear what may develop from the United ctions Atomic Energy Commission Because they expect that enriched uranium may eventually be made available through an International Control Agency they are undertaking no isotope separation work at all Two small piles will be built near Paris a heavy water pile and a graphite pile of ten to fifty thousand kilowatt capacity Joliot hopes to be able to interest the Netherlands and the Belgians in collaborating on the financing of a 60 to 100 Mev cyclotron which they hope to order from Switzerland In general France hopes to collaborate with Great Britain in this work if she feels she can free herself from America and if this fails the emphasis will be placed on a west European bloc I asked why collaboration with Great Britain depended upon their independence from America and replied that it seemed quite clear that America would not want to collaborate with France d United nations Atomic Ener Commission A letter arrived dated July 3 which read in its entirety owerski felt things in the UN were going Very slowly and many of the scientists feel nothing at all nny come of it although the diplomats tell them they are naive children and that things are going exceptionally well Konarski and Pierre Auger attended the American Physical Society meeting in Chicago on 20 22 June where they saw number of the University of Chicago people Kowarski expects to return to Paris with Joliot at the end of August 7 7 Great Britain Commander A H P Noble member of Parliament Conservative Party while quite affable as an individual made little comment upon the tests or upon the status of atomic energy He did not contributev his observations to either of the two seminars on the first test but his more voluble colleague Frank Beswiok member of Parliament Labor Party participated fully in all activities Beswiok professed himself to be entirely ignorant concerning the technical aspects of the atomic bomb and most of his questions were quite elementary Eb was interested in the duration of the flash from the heat which he felt was of too short duration to accomplish much damage to wooden or steel structures and he asked if_there was any possibility that the bombs could be made in such a way that the same total energy could be released more slowly During the seminar on bomb damage after the first test Beswick made the statement that he felt the worst possible result of the tests would be that the public might become cynical or blase about the atomic bomb as a reaction to the publicity to which they have been subjected during the last two weeks at DECLASSIFIED 8 Nbxico Bt Col Juan Loyo Gonzales of the beican General Staff spoke only Spanish and consequently had little contact with the rest of the observers Dr Haber Carillo Director of Scientific Research of the na- tional Universities of monies was an extremely able and versatile man a 'graduate civil engineer and mathematician as said he is director of re- search of eight institutes in beico of which the Institute of Physics is none and is headed by Dr Graef Carillo said he knows of two small occur yrences of uranium in beico but they are too small to be of importance He said that pending UN action the Mexican Government was doing nothing to nationalize uranium deposits Inc is interested in educating the maxican people in nuclear physics and has translated the book of marshak and Deutsch Vatomic world into Spanish to be published by the government 9 Netherlands Captain George B Salm Head of Havel Intelligence of the Royal etherlands Navy appeared to be a very able man who had mastered the main points of the Report but showed no great interest in the technical features of the Project On the other hand major Hajo Bruining of the Technical Section of the bar Office and Doctor of Physics at Leyden University showed great curiosity about the Project He stated that he was with the Philips-Eindhoven Company before the war and had studied electron emissions Bruining said a nuclear physics program had not been organized in the Netherlands yet and that probably they would wait until the UN had taken action before beginning organized work 10 Poland Dr Stefan Pienkosski President and Professor of Physics of Warsaw University spoke no English and had little contact with the ob- servers He stated that he had expected more of a from the bomb 'explosion but that the damage in the lagoon had been about as extensive as he had anticipated He believed the reddish hue in the ascending cloud from the bomb was explained by omission from free nitrogen in the air activated by beta radiation from the fission products Dr Anresej Soltan Professor of Physics at Lodz University spoke fair English but was extremely reserved and difficult to talk with Eb stated that he had done no research for seven years remaining in Poland throughout the war and because of the devastation in Poland did not expect to begin research for some time Pienkowski also told one of the observers that the reconstruction of warsaw University had not begun as yet Perhaps because of language similarities or for deeper reasons the Poles and the Russians remained very close throughout the trip and major Bruining of the- thherlands commented that they are probably simply additional Russian delegates at the UN He wanted a table of isotopes and prepared a table showing the heavy isotopes which had been published and their relation to each other 11 Russia 7 a Observers At the last minute before the special observers train left washington the proposed Russian observer Dr was replaced by Dr Mikhail of the other Russians appeared to know spoke only a few words of English and announced himr self as a physicist head of the Cyclotron Laboratory at Leningrad none of the other observers believed this and assumed that he was an NKVD agent DECLASSIFIED Authority DQH Q3210 United States assigned to watch Dr Alexandrov the other Russian observer This was not true as I have seen references in the Soviet Literature to Dr Moscheryakov's connection with the construction of the Leningrad cyclotron in 1958 moreover during the time the party was ashore mescheryakov paid little or no attention to Alexandros remaining aloof and often going upon long walks by himself while Alexandrov associated freely with the other observers received an annual salary of 6 000 nobles and this figure includes a twowweeks vacation each year In general RescheryakoV'was very uncommunioative hiding behind his professed lack_of English although we noticed he read the New Yank Times regularly I noticed that mescheryakor was quite susceptible to the influence of alcohol and after a few beers became relatively garrulous At the cocktail party at the Ala'wai Officers' Club in Honolulu for example he spoke at great length uith the Russian sife of a Rear Admiral Hansen phonetic who stated later that most of his consersation'was a fanatical eulogy to Communism For the most part he was quite glam and manifested interest in the proceedings only three times after the lecture on bomb physics during the bomb test itself and'when the observers examined the damage to the ships after the test Dr Simon Peter AlexandroV'was a much more affable man than his colleague and except when representing Russia officially was quite a pleasant individual He was born in Shaohty Mines in the Donicts Coal Basin of South Russia on 12 February 1891 In 1914 before attending college he spent a corner with a geology prospecting group which explored the Tyuya huyun deposits of Fergana In 1922 he graduated from the Mining Institute of Leningrad where he had specialized in ore dressing and he immediately began the organization of the commercial production of rare earths and rare metals At the same time he was appointed teacher of ore dressing at the Institute In 1927-28 he visited the United States to study ore dressing methods as visited Uravan and Climax in Colorado and a molybdenum deposit in New beicc being primarily interested at the time in Molybdenum tungsten and vanadium He met Frank Boss of the Bureau of E nes and Kithil also of the Bureau of Mines who prepared a report shortly after the first world war on vanadium and other radioactive ores in the Alexandros admired this work and mentioned that he has a copy of Kithil's paper He began his own original research after his trip to the United States and specialized on the dressing of complex ores of lead zinc and copper from the Ural and the Altai mountains In 1929 he was elected Professor of Ore Dressing in the Mbscow HenvFerrous Institute where he has remained until the present time In 1937 he worked on gold and tin production in the Yennossey river and in the Far East During the war Alexandrov worked on the extraction of metals of strategic importance such as nickel cobalt molybdenum tungsten tantalum platinum tin etc and he also claimed to have worked on uranium during the war He claimed to have developed more than sixty different processes of ore dressing which had been published in Russian technical journals and in 1933 he translated into Russian the work of Gaudin on Flotation Processes Alexandros is married and has two boys the elder Ehtislav is 25 and is specializing in radar at the MDscow Electrical Institute It-is curious that Matislav is being sent on a government mission to New York in September in conection with radar although according to Dr Alenandroy he has not finished his training As an insight into his character the following is of interest Auth DECLASSIFIED ore _heavy water had been extracted from sea water One Sunday morning while playing shuffleboard Alexandrov noticed that religious services were being held on the afterdeck and he asked if it would be improper to photograph them explaining that his mother and father were rery'religious people and such a picture would please them He added that he is a very religious man Orthodox and that someday they would have religion again in their country I should mention a habit of Alexandrov's which other observers also encountered to their annoyance In order to discourage questions Alexandrov'would deliver a sort of filibuster in reply in uhich usually everything but the answer to the question appeared Another favorite trick of his was to bring up a debatable point in the course of his filibuster and when two or more of the other observers entered the conversation he would smile politely and excuse himself It was not learned what exact financial position is but according to Dr Paul Galtsoff a white Russian who translated most of Alexandrov's official statements Alexandrov received considerably more than 6 000 roubles a year and Once a year is permitted a free roundutrip trai ride to any point of his choosing in Russia Project It was difficult to get any b Russian Atomio Ener information out'of lsxandrov on is subject and of course impossible to get anything out of on any subject -waever in the course of a lecture on Mineral Resources of the Alexandrov'made the statement that concerning radioactive ores he could mention only radium and thorium uranium being Top Secret 1 can say however he added that the study of uranium fission is proceeding in my country with success and this determines the position of the Soviet delegates to the United Nations Atomic'Energy Commissions In discussing a new ore of thorium which had been discovered Alexandrov made the statement that you and I know thorium will not be made into atomic bombs and I can tell you_these things At one time Alexandrov drew our attention during a lecture to the highly dispersed occurence of most strategic minerals in Russia and stated that in this respect Russia would be in a very secure position in a future atomic war At only one time did either of the Russians manifest interest in heavy water This was when ilexandrov asked after a lecture by Dr John Grebe of Dow Chemical Company on Raw materials from-tho Sea if This seems interesting since it indicates that Alexandrov is aware of the higher concen tration of deuterium in salt seas and suggests that the Russians may be considering using the saline lakes near the Aral Sea for heavy water concenr tration An interesting if irrelevant point was reported by Jack Dement co-auther of the book Uranium and Atomic Power who said that Alexandrov stated that there are many copies of his book translated into Russian and although he himself had not used it he said his colleagues in Mbscow sent DeMsnt their thanks c Russian httitudea At all times the Russian attitude aboard ship was a duplicate of Russian attitude in the United nations suspicion bombast wounded pride indignation etc When the Foreign Observers were - l Authority 551 540 first assigned staterooms alphabetically by nations the Russian stateroom photo lenses being the last one was in the center of the ship and had no portholes was probably particularly disappointing to alexandrov who had the most elaborate movie camera aboard an obviously newly purchased American model with tele- This caused a near riot in fact and offers by other observers to trade rooms with them and assurances from the Captain of the ship that This room assignments were arbitrary and not made with malice aftrethought tore necessary before they accepted their room quitly Later Alexandrov was to participate in an informal radio interview and at the last minute he arrived at the studio with a twenty-minute prepared speech and when he was not per- Some of the observers explained that American radio audiences do not like prepared speeches and prefer spon- mitted to read it he became very upset taneous interviews and Alexandrov complained be like that In our country it would not The major incident occurred when the ship's newspaper the Panamint Press carried an AP dispatch reviewing Bullit's new book the Great Globe Itself The Russians felt this was a perSonal afront and they wrote a letter of protest to the Captain of the ship sent a cable report to Mhscow and threatened to leave the ship Later Alexandrov told Andre Labarthe that This thing is day I see that as are nearer war than I had suffered in this war as did my friends and the can t we have peace I am so discouraged I would like to leave the ship at Guam and go home through Japan The Russian attitude towards the-Baruch proposal for control of atomic energy was both categorical and frank When asked what was wrong with it they said simply that it left us in it they would have none of too powerful a position and when reminded that we had said we'would destroy all of our atomic bombs they answered simply But we don t believe you This lack of faith was not strengthened by the cruise among the Island Bases in the Pacific and when we reached Truk Alexandrov looked at the fortifications and asked Is this-humanity or is this imperialism d Radioactive Ore Resources Alexandrov said little on uranium resources and W Winubey of the S Geological Survey reported that he stated that the Tyuya Mayan deposits at Fergana are the only uranium dew posits he was free to mention He did mention that the radium industry of Russia had been founded in 1909 and that when the war began there were three refineries in Russia the oldest of which was at Ferganao He stated that a source of radium and mesothorium in water solution had been found at Ukhta 1200 miles N E of mosses and that this had been developed commercially during the war He said little is known about the origin of the water but he described in detail the separation process used giving no indication of output of radium or mesothorium _Mpnazite according to had been found in at least traces in most of the Soviet gold placers but in most cone centration on_the Yennesy and Kane rivers yellowish ore of thorium'were known but that these were of academic interest as said that in 1944 a neW'ore of thorium Khlopinite was discovered only He said a feW'primary deposits of and it is a hydrous silicate of thorium oxide which occurs in dispersed form like monazite A survey is underway now to determine from the distribution_if there may be a primary lode occurrence