DASA 2019-2 Copy No Proceedings SECOND INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON SELECTED EFFECTS OF A GENERAL WAR VOLUME II This Conference was sponsored by the Defense Atomic Support Agency Contract DASA 01-67-C-0024 NWER Subtask DB003 through the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences Interdisciplinary Communications Program It was held at Princeton New Jersey during 4-7 October 1967 DASIAC Special Report 95 July 1969 Published by DASA Information and Analysis Center General Electric TEMPO 816 State Street Santa Barbara Colifomia For Defense Atomic Support Agency Under Contract DASA 01-67-C-0024 Digitized by Google For sale by the Superintendent or Documouts U S Oovemmeot Printing Office Washington D C 20402 • Prlcc $4 75 Digitized by Google iii SUMMARY The Second Interdisciplinary Conference on Selected Effects of a General War was held at Princeton New Jersey from 4- 7 October 1967 under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences Interdisciplinary Communications Program with the support of the Defense Atomic Support Agency The first of this series of conferences was held from 18- 21 January 196 7 and dealt chiefly with the effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki This second conference was concerned mainly with the effects of fallout or other release of radioactive materials from subsequent tests or accidents involving nuclear weapons The specific effects discussed extensively included the effects of the 1954 H- bomb test in the Pacific ocean which resulted in radioactive fallout contamination of Marshall Island natives and of the Japanese fishermen on the vessel Fukuryu Maru Lucky Dragon the ecological effects of bomb tests in the Pacific ocean test regions and the effec s of the Spanish incident which involved the accidental dropping of fpur nuclear weapons without detonation but with release of radioactive material plutonium onto Spanish soil as a result of accidental destruction of an airborne bomber Representatives of many disciplines engaged in vigorous and freewheeling discussion and debate of all aspects of these incidents The disciplines represented included among others physics weapons technology military science ecology epidemiology radiation biology toxicology pathology psychiatry genetics other biologic and medical specialties and pertinent administrative and cultural specialties In addition to discussion of the physical characteristics and extent of the radioactive contamination the radiation doses the monitoring and decontamination procedures the biological medical psychological and sociological effects of the radioactive contamination upon the people and locales immediately involved the discussions extended to broader and farther reaching psychosocial aspects i e to the chains Digitized by Google iv DASA 2019-2 of circumstances and events leading from these localized incidents through the news media and diplomatic channels to the reactions of the more complex social structures such as the economic political and diplomatic repercussions of national and international scope There was much discussion of possible reasons for differences in reaction to incidents of these kinds among different nations the importance of seeking answers to such questions in the differences in culture as well as in politics was stressed On the basis of the discussion of the specific incidents and their consequences the conferees roamed the whole field of psychosocial and biomedical implications of nuclear warfare in an attempt to project the consequences of nuclear warfare under a variety of conditions with respect to magnitude of the warfare anticipation of onset preparedness and civil and military defense policies Interest was focussed upon policies and means which might help to prevent or to mitigate nuclear warfare upon the nature scope and consequences of nuclear warfare should it occur and upon the problems of national recovery after nuclear warfare The participants of this conference included Dr Frank FremontSmith director of the New York Academy of Sciences Interdisciplinary Communications Program the two co- chairmen of the conference Dr Austin M Brues and Dr Arthur C Upton the discussion initiators for the five major subjects on the agenda Dr Charles L Dunham the 1954 thermonuclear test Dr Robert A Conard the effects of fallout on populations Dr Lauren R Donaldson ecological aspects of weapon testing Dr Wright H Langham the Spanish incident and Dr Merril Eisenbud discussion of psychosocial reactions and others listed on the following pages Digitized by Google V PARTICIPANTS Austin M Brues Co- Chairman Division of Biological and Medical Research Argonne National Laboratory Argonne Illinois Arthur C Upton Co-Chairman Biology Division Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge Tennessee Robert U Ayres Hudson Institute Inc Croton-on-Hudson New York Leo K Bustad Radiobiology Laboratory University of California Davis California George W Casarett Department of Radiation Biology and Biophysics University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry Rochester New York Robert A Conard Medical Research Center Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton Long Island New York Jelle de Boer Department of Radiation Biology United States Air Force Kirtland AFB New Mexico R Lowry Dobson Bio- Medical Division Lawrence Radiation Laboratory University of California Livermore California Lauren R Donaldson College of Fisheries University of Washington Seattle Washington Charles L Dunham Division of Medical Sciences National Research Council National Academy of Sciences Washington D C Merril E ienbud Department of Environmental Medicine New York University Medical Center New York City New York John V Hemler LtC USA Office of the Deputy Director Scientific Defense Atomic Support Agency Washington D C Digitized by Google vi DASA 2019-2 Wright H Langham Department of Biological and Medical Research Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory Los Alamos New Mexico William J Schull Department of Human Genetics University of Michigan Medical School Ann Arbor Michigan Robert W Miller Epidemiology Branch National Cancer Institute National Institutes of Health Bethesda Maryland Ralph E Spear Public Administration Service Washington D C John A P Millet Psychoanalytic Clinic for Training and Research Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons New York New York Lin Root 44 West 44th Street New York New York Theodore B Taylor International Research and Technology Corporation Vienna Austria Stafford L Warren Department of Biophysics University of California Los Angeles California John N Wolfe Division of Biology and Medicine U S Atomic Energy Commission Washington D C Harold O Wyckoff Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute Defense Atomic Support Agency Bethesda Maryland Digitized by Google vii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii SUMMARY PARTICIPANTS V ix LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LIST OF TABLES xiii SESSION I INTRODUCTORY SESSION OPENING REMARKS SELF-INTRODUCTION 9 SESSION II THE 1954 THERMONUCLEAR TEST INTRODUCTION 35 RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT AND RADIATION EXPOSURE 38 THE FUKURYU MARU LUCKY DRAGON AND THE PROBLEMS IN JAPAN 56 SESSION 111 THE 1954 THERMONUCLEAR TEST Continued THE MARSHALL ISLANDS PROBLEM 95 IMPLICATIONS FOR DEFENSE POLICIES 157 SESSION IV ECOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF WEAPON TESTING INTRODUCTION 171 RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION OF PACIFIC REGION 173 SESSION V THE SPANISH INCIDENT INTRODUCTION 233 DESCRIPTION OF THE ACCIDENT 234 Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Continued THE SEARCH FOR THE LOST H-BOMBS 237 RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION AND DECONTAMINATION 239 PSYCHOSOCIAL ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ASPECTS 245 SESSION VI PSYCHOSOCIAL REACTIONS INTRODUCTION ATTACK DAMAGE AND PROBLEMS OF POST-ATTACK RECOVERY 303 SESSION VII PSYCHOSOCIAL REACTIONS Continued PROBLEMS OF POST-ATTACK RECOVERY 345 REFERENCES 397 Digitized by Google 35 SESSION 11 THE 1954 THERMONUCLEAR TEST INTRODUCTION BRUES To introduce the subject which will occupy us today we have asked Dr Dunham to say something about the 1954 thermonuclear test its background and nature and anything else he wishes to say DUNHAM My guidance has been rather loose I would say and not having attended the previous meeting you are going to have to put up with my playing it very much by ear I have taken our leaders literally in that I haven't prepared a half-hour lecture on any particular topic and I gather that my function is that of an initiator in the sense that one talks about initiators in atomic weapons the problem is whether I can generate enough neutrons to produce a chain reaction with this our critical assembly here Laughter FREMONT-SMITH Critical mass DUNHAM Critical mass I've been thinking about this off and on ever since Austin persuaded me to take this assignment last June and I'm still having very great difficulty in trying to relate this event to the avowed purposes of these meetings which are to consider the longrange effects psychological and biomedical · of a nuclear war The more I think about it the more difficult I find this other than the medical You will find that Dr Conard and Dr Donaldson will have a great deal to say on what the fallout aftermath is for plants animals and people in a hypothetical or real nuclear war To relate the way people behave-and this is one of the more fascinating things about this whole story-to the way people might behave or react during a war I find very very difficult and I think of a proposed experiment that was concocted back around 1949 in relation to the old NEPA Project to find out how pilots would behave if they realized when they were flying a plane near where a nuclear device let go that they had received a lethal dose of radiation This flight project na-112 o • 10 • • Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 36 was to take a bunch of Air Force personnel to the reactor at Oak Ridge and have them visit it and while they were within the building and looking at the outside of the reactor a lot of lights would flash and bells would ring and so on and so forth and the loudspeaker would go on the air Evacuate the building immediately Everybody has received a lethal dose of radiation Then a group of psychologists would stand around and see how these people behaved Of course it was absolutely unrealistic in terms of the person who was motivated FREMONT-SMITH This was just an idea It was never done DUNHAM It was never done but it was very seriously proposed FREMONT-SMITH Especially that You have just received a lethal dose Therefore you may be used in any way we see fit DUNHAM Right Anyway I though it might be useful to try to review the context within which these events took place I think one has to go back to the fact that there was a war that two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and that the Japanese were the only people who have ever experienced bona fide mass effects of nuclear weapons admittedly small ones One also has to object • • • FREMONT-SMITH It was not bona fide in Spain DUNHAM That's a little different Wright will tell you what his definition of the effects there is I'm sure later on FREMONT-SMITH I just had to throw that in DUNHAM Yes Anyway in 1949 the U S S R did detonate an A- bomb and I can remember a meeting called hurriedly about getting on with our program Shortly after that there was this tremendous debate which is all available on the public record a large part of it in the Oppenheimer hearings as to whether or not we should develop the H- bomb As you recall both Oppenheimer and Conant had looked at what had happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki they then imagined what an H- bomb would do and they were totally incapable of doing anything except sort of turning the other way and saying We must have nothing to do with it and Well maybe the Russians will build one but hopefully they won't use it You know the decision was made to go ahead with the H- bomb program and at the Ivy Mike shot there was the first detonation of a thermonuclear device It wasn't a weapon but it showed that the whole thing was a reality and possible and Digitized by Google SESSION II 37 information that this thing was happening became more or less public around the world So when on'March l st there was a detonation at Bikini of something of the order of 10 to 15 megatons the stage was really set for people to react People had begun to be aware that there is such a thing as fallout but they didn't have any real feel for it and I don't think the military did either Certainly I didn't In the first edition of The Effects of Atomic Weapons Reference 1 fallout is discussed and not badly actually but still I don't think it meant very much to anybody because nobody could really see the problem I think one should keep in mind the kinds of people one is dealing with in this episode On the one hand one is dealing with Marshall Islanders a small group of native people who are quite literate but who weren't well educated and I think this is the distinction to make They had been a possession first of the Germans then the Japanese and then the United States I think they do not really love the United States Bob may contradict me on this but I think he would agree that their attitude had been Well somebody is always going to be poking his nose into our business We're going to be wards of somebody The U S has been pretty good So when something had to be done and they were moved they took it all very quietly and were totally cooperative I never ran into a group of people who tried to be more helpful Just to give you an idea of the kind of people they are- I don't have any slides because I think slides tend to slow up discussions -I'll pass around some pictures of the natives and you can take a look at them In contrast of course are the Japanese a highly sophisticated people just as sophisticated as we who had this extra sensitivity to the whole phenomenon of radiation and who had been a beaten people who were very worried about their relations with the United States and with the world as a whole but who were just beginning to sort of feel their oats a little bit It was within this general framework that these events occurred I think that one way to set the stage here is simply to read the preface from a special issuance Reference 2 of the Institute of Chemical Research at Kyoto which came out in November 1 954 six months after the event and which shows how they set the stage as far as they were concerned This is all physics and chemistry There is no medical business in this report because none of the fishermen actually got to Kyoto but much of the material did Digitized by Google 38 DASA 2019-2 On March 1 1954 at three-fort y a m twenty-three Japanese fishermen on board the fishing boat No 5 Fukuryu Maru were engaged in fishing in the Middle Pacific about ninety miles northeast of Bikini Atoll when a reddish-white flash was seen on the horizon in a west- southwesterly direction and seven or eight minutes later a loud explosion was heard Afterwards it was learned that the flash and explosion had been caused by the hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll About three hours after the explosion fine dust began to fall on the boat The falling of dust lasted for several hours and ceased towards noon The boat as well as the fishermen and the fishes caught by them were covered with a white sheet of fine dust After a two weeks' voyage on March 14 the No 5 Fukuryu Maru contaminated by radioactive dust returned to Yaizu Harbor Japan It was at this point that the world really began to learn what had happened although the U S had announced that there had been a test on the first of March and that 236 residents of the Marshall Islands had been exposed to radiation and evacuated to Kwaja lein Just to give you a visual picture • FREMONT-SMITH Had there been a sort of a warning to ships and so forth RADIOACTIVE FALLOUT AND RADIATION EXPOSURE DUNHAM There had been an exclusion zone within which ships were warned not to come and there has been argument back and forth as to whether the Fukuryu Maru was within that zone As you recall the U S officials insisted that it must have been within it It's obvious that it didn't have to be because in Rongelap which is way outside the exclusion zone the doses on the northern part of the atoll were even higher than anything on the ship and they would have been fatal Bikini is about eighty or ninety miles away from Rongelap the Fukuryu Maru was up to the north the other side of the lethal zone At Rongerik there were fifty air-weather personnel and 300 miles from Bikini is Utirik The doses here were roughly l Or-plus Digitized by Google SESSION II 39 UPTON Excuse me Chuck What do you mean by 1 Or over infinity or a week or a day ls this DUNHAM Infinity dose UPTON Is this a surface air beta primarily DUNHAM No air gamma EISENBUD Wasn't this up to the time of evacuation Chuck think it was fifty- six hours actually I DUNHAM Here yes You're perfectly right These are doses up to the time of evacuation I'm sorry The 800r line is an infinity dose Thank you Merril These are estimates of actual doses received The air-weather people at Rongerik got 50 These are external The dose for Rongelap was 150 and some of the Rongelap people who were on the small atoll fishing probably got about 7 5 UPTON Would this be whole- body or to the skin penetration What sort of DUNHAM This is an estimate of the whole-body dose It's no better than an estimate but a great deal has been based on this in terms of what the human blood response to ionizing radiation is As you know there is a great deal of argument centered around that point which I think is not particularly germane to the discussion today BUSTAD Of course on your exclusion zone Chuck isn't it true that this was related somewhat to the predicted wind direction and that the wind direction did change so that Rongelap really appeared in the preliminary stages to have been safer than it was because of the wind shift DUNHAM I think the following happened The original exclusion zone for the test site didn't include Bikini It went about two- thirds of the way between Eniwetok and Bikini When they began testing at Bikini they extended it beyond Bikini but only what looks like about 50 miles The exclusion zone was not big enough for what happened Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 40 EISENBUD Chuck could I say something relative to this In fact might this be a good time to augment some of the background that you have given which I think might be helpful in setting the stage DUNHAM Yes EISENBUD First let me say with respect to Leo's comment in which he tacitly assumed that there was a windshift I'm not sure of that DUNHAM I believe the wind was already changing EISENBUD This is a matter that hasn't yet been documented It's a strange business I was then Director of the Health and Safety Laboratory and was in direct communication with one of our teams stationed in the Marshall Islands The only wind information I have ever seen came in an official dispatch at H - 6 hours which arrived in New York just a few hours before shot time From my recollection I would say that it would not have required a wind shift to dump the fallout on Rongelap Unfortunately the situation has never been documented in a manner that would make it available to many of us who were interested in the exact meteorological circumstances DUNHAM But your comments are predicated on the only hazard being on those two atolls It had nothing to do with ships out of the exclusion zone EISENBUD That's right yes For many of us our first exposure to the possibility of massive fallout came in 1951 with two Nevada explosions of the Jangle series One small surface explosion and one underground explosion took place in the fall of that year Prior to that time the military doctrine as it was translated to us on the civilian side was that there would never be any point in exploding bombs close enough to the ground so as to get fallout they wanted to maximize blast as was done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki So only the airburst needed to be considered Of course obvious questions were raised like Well suppose one drops to the surface inadvertantly and explodes on the ground what kind of fallout are you going to get or Why not put it on the ground if you can make a big crater Digitized by Google SESSION II 41 I suppose that within the military there must have already been a discussion of a military demand for surface and underground shots Until Jangle we had not really thought about the consequences of a surface or underground explosion It was widely recognized that the Jangle explosions would produce more radioactive dust than any of the previous detonations including the Tower Shot during World War II However it was thought to be unnecessary to monitor the radioactivity beyond 50 miles from the explosion HASL arranged to make measurements in the annulus of 50 to 500 miles despite the fact that people thought we would be wasting time To the contrary we obtained a good deal of useful information and in fact we found that even as far away as Salt Lake City doses were higher than l 00 mr This was certainly revealing considering that the two Jangle devices were very small Following these tests several groups took the Jangle data and extrapolated to the multi-megaton device which was then being planned for Eniwetok FREMONT-SMITH What is Jangle EISENBUD Jangle was the Nevada test It was a code name This was in November 1951 and a year later they were planning to explode the first large thermonuclear device at Eniwetok There was an Air Force officer known to most of you who came up with a rather pessimistic estimate of what the fallout would be like and he I think was probably the first to have predicted that there might be hundreds or maybe thousands of rads hundreds of miles away Our group in New York came up with somewhat the same conclusion although not quite so pessimistic However it certainly did seem that much more extensive monitoring of the Pacific would be necessary than was then being contemplated The task force saw no need to monitor beyond the atoll of Eniwetok where Mike the first large thermonuclear detonation would take place A fallout research program was included as part of the test program but it was limited to about 50 miles from Ground Zero The AEC however did agree that a monitoring program beyond Eniwetok proper could be mounted if support could be found outside the task force We succeeded in convincing CINCPAC Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific who had responsibility for security of the natives in the Marshall Islands that the fallout should be tracked throughout the Southwest Pacific Ocean Then we were given the job of doing it and after the Mike shot found there was no fallout As we reconstructed it later on based Digitized by Google 42 DASA 2019-2 on water samples we realized that there was fallout that went into the ocean The probabilities of hitting those atolls are pretty small They were a very small fraction of the total water surface exposed Well there was about two years of wrangling over what should be done to Castle the series we're concerned with here There was a very very influential group of people both among the military and civilians who insisted that there never was any Mike fallout that it all went up into the stratosphere and that probably most of it was in outer space and there even were calculations to prove it But once again we felt that this had to be looked into However because of a very low probability that there would be fallout on these atolls since they were so small and a greater probability that it would all go into the ocean we began to devise schemes for laying artificial islands This has never been reported largely because the information got lost in what happened afterwards but on the day of the shot we actually were off the Florida coast in a Navy- supported operation in which drums of viscous oil were being dumped from aircraft in such a way that it was hoped that an oil raft would lay on the surface long enough so that fallout would lay on the top and then a plane with suitable instrumentation could swoop down and make measurements This worked The test fallout material was some iron filings that were irradiated in the Brookhaven reactor and dropped on these oil rafts Plans were under way for shipping large amounts of oil out to the Pacific to lay down these rafts so that we could find out whether or not there was fallout The idea was to wait until the shot was fired find out the direction in which the fallout was likely to occur send aircraft out to drop the oil rafts then wait a few hours and send the aircraft in again with instruments to see if there was anything on them Well actually in parallel with that there were instruments put on that island but those • • • UPTON That island EISENB UD On those islands The nearest one to Rongelap was the instrument put on Rongerik I think this is revealing because it simply serves to illustrate the tremendous tenacity with which certain people just refuse to accept facts DUNHAM I think that one of the problems is that you see people around Bikini all the time They stayed there even when the thing was Digitized by Google SESSION II 43 detonated and yet in one sense they were exposed to more or less lethal radiation EISENBUD Yes I think one of the things in retrospect was • • DUNHAM Of course they were in bunkers and that sort of thing EISENBUD But in the Mike Shot the whole task force was exposed and we could have lost 10 000 men It could have been awful DUNHAM I think that the fact that we were there gave a sense of security You see if you looked at the original weapons handbook at a pattern of fallout and as Admiral Schyler used to say Scale it up why you had something But I don't think anybody took it as seriously as it should have been CONARD I remember that during the Greenhouse Operation we actually did have quite a substantial fallout TAY LOR Also after the fir st shot the Dog Shot That is one I've never understood There was serious enough fallout so that people got a few r at least CONARD Yes TAYLOR And this was known to a lot of people but somehow it never seemed to have had much of an effect on what happened at Castle They were tower shots I guess At least the Dog Shot was a tower shot And the fact that that produced quite heavy local fallout was certainly a material indication of what would happen later BUSTAD But isn't it true that the March 1st shot was considerably larger than predicted EISENBUD is significant Well it's true in part but I don't think the difference BUSTAD Isn't it a factor of two or three or four EISENBUD I think my recollection is that it was considerably less than two Let me make the point I wanted to make which was that the instrument on Rongerik which was an automatic instrument went off scale at H plus seven hours This was an instrument which was not part of the Task Force It was being operated by what was Digitized by Google 44 DASA 2019-2 basically a CINCPAC- supported civilian organization based with the Task Force but not operating as part of it When the instrument went off scale the operating procedure called for the aerial confirmation of this and there was not enough interest in the Task Force to authorize sending a plane over the island to see if in fact the instrument was working properly As I recall it this was delayed about 36 hours No information beyond the initial dispatches came into the States for about two days In other words there was just a complete breakdown as far as information was concerned in taking the steps that were necessary in order to evaluate the situation and to take the necessary palliative measures UPTON You say it was delayed EISENB UD I cite this simply to illustrate that right up to the last minute with the fallout lying on the ground the people just didn't go up to investigate UPTON You say 36 hours Merril and if so why Was something done then EISENBUD This is also interesting The Commission had recommended an evacuation capability up there and this was denied on the basis that it wasn't necessary that there would not be any fallout that there just couldn't be enough fallout to warrant keeping ships on station so that they could evacuate natives on short notice Finally a plane went up I was never clear as to why it went up there but it was up there with a radiation instrument it flew over Rongerik and found that the radiation levels were high It was a PBM-1 of that series It put down into the lagoon and took the American personnel off and then sent information back to headquarters which resulted in an LST I believe being dispatched to Rongelap to take natives off of Rongelap so that the natives were there I think 56 hours DUNHAM Fifty-two hours CONARD A plane evacuated 16 older people from Rongelap at SO hours and the remaining 48 people were evacuated by ship at 51 hours EISENBUD I thought I would give this as background because it illustrates the incredible disbelief of the subject of fallout that persisted not only up to this point but later on as you will probably see Digitized by Google SESSION II 45 DUNHAM This was an analogous situation to what was seen in the Army with malaria They had little malaria units Every military group had a team but the commanding officers had had no experience with malaria They didn't see anything and this poor little malaria unit would cool its heels until they had a great many cases of malaria Then they would be told to scurry around I think it's just human nature Langham you seem to be restless there Would you have anything to add You're the authority on Dog Shot by the way because some of your dogs were there weren't they LANGHAM Yes they were Merril's story to me is almost incredible FREMONT- SMITH That's like life Laughter LANGHAM Fallout was predicted for the Trinity test in 1944 by the bomb phenologists Hershfelder and McGee Stafford Warren mounted evacuation teams and monitoring teams to cover the potential fallout area We didn't have to evacuate anybody we almost did The arbitrary limit chosen for evacuation was an infinite life-time dose of 50 r One family approached this limit and there was much debate as to whether we should evacuate them or not They weren't evacuated WYCKOFF What happened to the cattle LANGHAM Cattle were burned by fallout at Trinity and we had experience with fallout at Bikini where there was fallout on ships I can't imagine anyone thinking that there wouldn't be fallout involved with weapons tests I still to this day want to attribute the 1954 accident to just a little bit of misconception on the part of the meteorologists I can't imagine at that time that one would think there wouldn't be a fallout problem with that device if a populated area was downwind from the detonation So they had trouble and I can't understand why anyone would have expected otherwise FREMONT-SMITH You know what happens on misunderstanding It seems to me this is one of the things we have to face I will give you a little episode During World War I we had shell shock a considerable amount of it It was so reported and anybody who studied the thing at all knew that we were going to have some kind of equivalent Digitized by Google 46 DASA 2019-2 to this in World War II So as soon as the first report came out in the Lancet by Sargeant and Slater of the war neuroses of the men evacuated from across the Channel I came down to Washington to see Lou Weed of the National Research Council about what we were doing in anticipation of the emotional problems we would be facing when we got into this war He sent me over to the Army Surgeon General's office where I was met by a colonel who said Now Doctor what are you worried about I said ''Well I'm worried about what preparations we are going to make because we're going to be in this war and we'll probably have a considerable number of emotional problems as a result of the war and we know from World War I what happened In World War II the British have already had it And he said Doctor you don't need to worry we'll have no neuroses intheU S Army Laughter Now I just want you to know that this is the kind of extraordinary aspect of human nature one has to face and I suspect that the true story really didn't come out that it wasn't a radiological but a human factor that went wrong But maybe I'm wrong EISENBUD I can understand why you feel that way The fact of the matter is that Joe Herschfelder by then was probably back in Wisconsin WARREN Jim Cooney was my deputy at Bikini Jim like many others was not convinced that there was anything to do He would leave at four o'clock and go to the BOQ and have a beer just about the time the boys were returning with contaminated clothes and hands on the gangplank and then about dark the algae would begin to rise and we would have troubles with radiation through the hull all night He thought it was unimportant He thought we were foolish for staying up all night wondering where the stuff was going in the deep part of the lagoon When Frank came back with this radioactive sodium there was a big haw-haw on his part and they almost court-martialed me for exposing Frank's ships to this radiation hazard And yet on the other hand Jim pooh- poohed the whole operation and thought it foolish to send a destroyer on this crazy downwind trip in the hope of getting some rain- out If I may just continue He was the RADEF for the preceding operation and was the adviser to the Army and many of the times that I described in the last session when I was up before the Fleet for explanation in a pseudo- court-martial they couldn't taste it they couldn't hear it they couldn't see it they couldn't feel it There were Digitized by Google SESSION II 47 just these RADEF boys with their instruments which showed something or other who claimed it was hazardous and that they were losing their ships and equipment and their gear and their laundry and their possessions You could understand some of the objections It was a lot of trouble and it was costly How do you get a station to stand out in the ocean in the right place The waves come along in a little while and the fallout which hits the water is gone Even the SARAR left an awful lot of oil when she sank and this went on over the reef It was traced downwind about 60 miles but in ten hours it was gone and anybody going out there then could show that there wasn't anything there and could ask why you were worrying It was costing an awful lot of money and time The meteorology was expensive too to cover this vast area where there wasn't anything to sit on and it was very chancy But they didn't really have the concept of how vast this phenomenon was and what the quantities were You'll find people not all of them in the military who were unwilling to face what might have happened at Alamogordo Oppy protested our surveys after the war until the white- backed cattle appeared in the Albuquerque slaughterhouse It took a lot to overcome the resistance to our purchasing of cattle I don't know if Dunham remembers this because it was partly before his time Such antagonism to the concept of the meteorological mechanisms and the vastness of the fallout problems together with all of the expense and trouble and manpower required for instrwnentation and the many safeguards like evacuation plans and public relations complications from excluding ships from this vast area all combined to make this episode possible Then I feel that this was a very fortunate thing to have happened with so little real tragedy involved because actually nobody was really hurt seriously by the fallout DUNHAM I think the most dramatic thing of all is where that 800- rad line landed WARREN Yes DUNHAM It was squarely between the Japanese fishing boat and the Rongelap people WARREN If you had planned it that way you couldn't have gotten it better Digitized by Google 48 DASA 2019-2 DUNHAM If it had happened on their own home island they probably would have had a lethal exposure within the 48 hours between the time of the fallout and the time they were evacuated These were studies that were made by Pete Scoville I think see Dunning Reference 3 who was one of the principal people involved in actually taking the measurements They went in there at 36 and 48 hours they took readings at different places on different parts of the atoll then went back later took more readings and then extrapolated back along the K- constants and so forth as to what it would be originally and what the infinity dose would be Merril do you want to comment on this EISENBUD I think it was very difficult to estimate the doses obviously DUNHAM Yes EISENBUD I've often had a feeling that the doses may have been very much higher than had been estimated particularly in the case of the Japanese ship DUNHAM Of course that's a different proposition because nobody measured them until two weeks later EISENBUD That's right DUNHAM And the ship had been hosed some EISENBUD That's right I saw that ship March 22 22 days later and by that time it was still reading generally about 110 mr per hour and the Japanese and our own people had had enough of the debris We knew what the decay-characteristics were and if we extrapolated from that 150 mr per hour to H plus four hours the integrated dose was something better than 100 r DUNHAM Yes EISENBUD By this time the ship had been hosed as you say and scrubbed and people had gone on with vacuum cleaners to take off as Scoville H Jr At that time Scientific Director Armed Forces Special Weapons Project Digitized by Google SESSION II 49 much of the dust as possible because they wanted the dust for study So it could very easily have been in excess of 500 or maybe even 1 000 r DUNHAM So it's possible with this line that I've drawn-and you called my attention to it this morning-on the map that I've come much closer to the ship than is indicated there the 800-r line might have been quite close not 20 miles away EISENBUD The fallout on the ship was estimated to have been SO curies per square meter which is going to make some of you wince but I think it's a pretty good estimate It was ma de by the Japanese in a very interesting way They took surfaces and sprinkled sugar on the surfaces and then asked the fishermen independently of each other to pick a surface which looked like the ship at the time of the fallout The opinions clustered around a certain couple of slabs and since they had samples of the fallout they could estimate what the activity was The best estimate is around SO curies per square meter which is quite a heavy dose BUSTAD Wasn't one of the difficulties that some of the crew members swept up the fallout and put it under their pillow EISENBUD I don't know that DUNHAM One of them put some in his pocket I believe to take home as a souvenir MILLET Thus far we have heard that those in charge thought they knew but they did not Whether or not the fault lay with meteorologists admirals generals or scientists may not be important except to those who want to define history in its greatest detail No information reached the United States for 36 hours There was incredible disbelief that the event had occurred And disbelief was true not only for this episode but as Dr Dunham has mentioned for malaria and as Dr Fremont-Smith said it was true also for psychoneuroses It happened subsequently with respect to radiation exposure as we will hear later in this meeting I wonder if there are not really two kinds of psychological features with which we should be concerned one is the fear of radiation effects among exposed persons and the other pertains to the psychology that Digitized by Google 50 DASA 2019-2 leads to underestimation or miscalculation of the magnitude of the nuclear event and its psychosocial consequences BRUES This is because we've been brought up to have a twovalued way of looking at things isn't it That either we're frightened or we're not frightened Actually there are degrees of being frightened MILLET I think one of the very interesting things is what motivates so many people to deny the facts when they are so readily demonstrable If the data are clear and are presented and they are denied by intelligent people otherwise intelligent people there must be some motivation known to them or unknown to them which makes it impossible for them to change their position This brings us to the question of when is a delusion not a delusion FREMONT-SMITH Right LANGHAM I think it's a matter of biased values There isn't a man in the field that isn't anxious to get on with his part of the job and in dealing with these people you find that to them the highest priority consciously or subconsciously is to get on with the job isn't that right Dr Warren WARREN Yes LANGHAM Invariably you'll find this conflict The protection man is obstinate in his way He wants to do a job right too And this is a conflict that's brought about by the bias The bias is brought about by the position in which the man finds himself MILLET One wonders if there isn't something in our national culture which makes us prefer getting on and moving rather than waiting and listening and finding out I heard a comment last night from my neighbor here that the American psychiatrists don't bother to read foreign literature for example LANGHAM We have hawks and doves right now I think probably insofar as radiation protection and nuclear devices are concerned I might be classified as a hawk I still think one has to make haste but with caution I think in some cases people who want to be cautious may lose and in some cases they may win At Greenhouse we had a trick played on us which may amuse you During Dog Shot at which Digitized by Google SESSION II 51 we were recovering animals from the shot island we dressed in complete protective clothing including respirators We looked like men from Mars We invaded the shot island to get our animals and the plan was that when we came back to our home island with the animals we would strip off all our clothes and throw them into a box on the beach and walk up to the quarters in the nude On the shot island we could hardly get a meter reading anywhere In the meantime a sheer in the wind had brought the fallout right over our home island When we returned to base camp with our animals we took off all our clothes and walked in the nude through a hundred times as much radioactivity as occurred on the shot island Laughter FREMONT-SMITH That's a wonderful story TAYLOR I would like to interject something that you challenged Staff You said a moment ago you can't hear it Apropos of the Dog Shot fallout was clearly audible There were little beads of steel from the tower that condensed and one heard this constant tinkle tinkle of steel from the tower hitting the aluminum roofs and then rolling down the gutters and piling up in little piles on the ground The thing which I've never understood which has some psychological significance I suppose is that the radiation monitoring teams pairs of people with a Zeuss meter would find one of these little piles and you just heard from them lots of expressions of various kinds of bad language about 10 r per hour 40 r per hour a few r per hour and a sort of disbelief The upshot was that everybody kept wandering around According to a Zeuss meter that Herb York had set up in one of the buildings just to have people file past to see what their reading was my own hair was reading 2 r per hour after a shower Well I got worried along witha number of other people But somehow there was an air of unreality about the whole thing There was a big discussion about whether we would have a movie that night or not and somehow they and no one seemed to know who they were had decided that the movie was all right Somehow I've never understood how that could have happened in view of all the literature that was available for years before Greenhouse on fallout and on how large areas could be covered with very intense radiation No one seemed to want to believe what was happening Herbert F York then at the University of California 3'13•781 0 • TO • 5 Digitized by Google 52 DASA 2019-2 FREMONT-SMITH Isn't there a lesson for the whole purpose and goal of these series of conferences in this discussion that's taking place this morning Human nature is not going to change that fast and we're going to have a variety of conflicts and attitudes and hawks and doves with respect to a b c and d in preparation for the possibility of atomic war Also if there ever is a nuclear war there will be this same kind of confusion and reaction all over the world So it seems to me that this aspect of human nature which we're probably going to have to face in one way or another as long as there's human nature around is one of the central lessons for this whole business If we're going to get anything out of this part of it is going to come by the fact that human nature is this way and that there are conflicts in authority the highest level of authority You're going to get denial of facts as Jack brought out clearly evident facts will be denied up and down and proved not to be so by other authority I attended a conference that the Civil Defense put on in which the problem faced by the group in this 3-day meeting was that a bomb has been dropped This was the assumption and we were to focus attention on two counties in northern New York State bordering on the of the Great Lakes According to the assumption the wind has blown the fallout over these s ounties and the question is what do you do Well the report of this meeting was never published not I think so much because it was classified but because it was unbearable to have a group of intelligent people about as confused as we were We ended up with a terrible wrangle as to who was to milk the cows Laughter So I think that among the lessons is that there's a lack of a logical approach to the realities of the problem that can be counted upon no matter where we stand I would throw in one little touch and that is that we are all aware of the fact that the weather every once in a while turns out diffrrently from what is predicted LANGHAM I would like to refer back again to the conflict of interest on the part of scientists trying to work together Each man's ego is tied up with his job FREMONT-SMITH You are right ences are bringing this out every day Our multi-disciplined confer- LANGHAM I have a rather amusing story that illustrates this I don't know whether I ever told Dr Warren but he kept getting messages from the colonel on Eniwetok who was in charge of putting the droned B- l 7s through the clouds at Bikini Digitized by Google SESSION II 53 WARREN Yes t J NGHAM Under remote control these B-1 s had been flown through the bomb cloud They were not destroyed but were slightly radioactive The colonel wanted to take the remote control equipment out and use the B- l 7s to fly his crew back to Honolulu He asked Staff to send a man over to clear the planes as radiologically safe Staff sent over two people and before the monitor would get back this man would be on the radio again asking Staff for a decision Dr Warren finally came to me and said I don't know what's happening with that guy I sent two men over and he's still bothering me Will you go over and find out what's bothering him and get this thing straightened out I went and as I came down the ramp at Eniwetok standing at the bottom of the stairs was the young colonel who looked about 25 years old he wasn't as old as I by 10 years or so When I came down the stairs these were his words Are you that radiological man When I said I was he pointed to the B- l 7s and continued with Well sonny they're there Don't give me any of this crap about milliroentgens Do I fly them home or do I push them in the ocean The highest readings were in the cockpit where there were several radium dials and on the engine intake and exhaust manifolds I came back to the colonel and in my most efficient manner announced Fly them home With that he said Come with me We're closing out the club I stayed there four days and wasn't sober a minute Laughter It never cost me a dime Here is a specialist good at his job So you've got a psychological conflict right here that I'm sure stems back to the ego and the fact that the man doing the job satisfies that ego by filling it well FREMONT-SMITH And you satisfy yours and therefore went to the club Laughter LANGHAM That's right WARREN After 20 years I've got an explanation why he was so long gone Laughter This is why I made such a tremendous effort to save the Independence The Navy had towed her to Mare Island She was seriously contaminated by the underwater blast The Navy Digitized by Google 54 DASA 2019-2 had been unable to clean her enough to get the radiation down below our 24- hour level Twice I went to the 12th Naval District where she was berthed to persuade the commanding officer to delay her sinking temporarily She was a fine example of general contamination inside and out and would have been a fine training resource The first ti me an inexperienced person walks into a situation where he's surrounded by contamination and the meters show it he can hear the buzz on the Geiger counter he realizes he's in a hazardous situation and he's either prepared or not prepared to deal with it But he should be prepared and he can be prepared to deal with it and conduct himself with some safety We needed a place like that a real situation as this ship represented But they finally took it out and sank it I think part of it was to get it out of sight out of mind FREMONT-SMITH Let's forget about it WARREN It was a hazard they wanted to forget DUNHAM Maybe we should move on from this background as to why the Task people behaved as they did They behaved in some ways very much like the Command in Hawaii when the little fellow running the radar at the ack-ack installation at Pearl Harbor reported he saw some planes coming in FREMONT-SMITH Exactly DUNHAM I think as far as the Rongelap people go-and if anybody wants to disagree they can take this up right here-that until one comes to the end of the line almost there's no particular psychological problem They were dealt with I think well They were put in good barracks and taken care of They were probably given too much to eat and had good medical care and there was very little protesting Isn't this generally the situation Bob as far as the people are concerned They were not enthusiastic about having to leave their atoll but they bore with it They were not having any aberrant psychoJ ogical responses CONARD This is generally true There were a few psychological reactions resulting from the fallout situation on Rongelap after they were moved back to the island I will refer to these later DUNHAM They still didn't really know what happened They were told that something happened They were told that they had to Digitized by Google SESSION 11 55 have their hair washed and that they had to stay away from home for a while LANGHAM How did they respond to this DUNHAM This is all second-hand from talking with them of them the doctor what was his name One CONARD Jabwe DUNHAM Jabwe the doctor who had some training decided the water maybe was getting contaminated and I think he forbade them to drink water after the first few hours CONARD But they did anyway DUNHAM They did anyway Some of them went swimming to get the stuff off Again I don't think it was a panic reaction There was nobody to tell them this was radioactivity there was nobody to get them excited and it had happened I think one of them who had been in Japan somewhere along the time of the Japanese occupation recollected that it looked like snow but of course wasn't cold I don't want to steal your thunder for your afternoon session Bob CONARD They had seen previous shots DUNHAM They had seen the light CONARD And this was nothing unusual except it was much larger than anything they had previously seen and they described it as the sun rising in the West I think EISENBUD They wouldn't have seen the Eniwetok shot in 1952 CONARD They saw others EISENBUD Yes It was my recollection that the Eniwetok shot certainly was about the same size as Bravo wasn't it DUNHAM In 1952 DONALDSON No no A little less than one-fifth Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 56 THE FUKURYU MARU LUCKY DRAGON AND THE PROBLEMS IN JAPAN DUNHAM I think we should go on to the Japanese fishing boat Ralph Lapp you know has written a book Reference 4 on this subject and there are some pictures in it of the boat and the crew I'll pass this around for anybody who hasn't seen it It was an old tub not up to modern Japanese fishing boat standards but I think it did have a radio aboard and that the radio was in constant communication with Japan throughout this whole two-week period It's not at all clear that anything was ever said about this episode in conversing back and forth FREMONT-SMITH You mean they didn't report it to Japan at all DUNHAM No FREMONT-SMITH Not until they got in DUNHAM Not until they got in Anyway the Japanese fishermen actually developed skin lesions ' which Bob will describe quite vividly for you with pictures as appeared in the Rongelap people perhaps a little more severe and the distribution somewhat different particularly along the belt line because they were all wearing trousers and apparently collected a lot of the stuff right where the trousers were tied The people are described as looking black and you can almost sense-Ralph tells a good story of this part of it-how the almost panic situation developed over a period of 48 hours FREMONT-SMITH After they got the fallout DUNHAM After they got the fallout UPTON Were they unaware until then that they had been exposed Is it clear from the log when they first became aware that they had been exposed DUNHAM UPTON They saw the flash They had the fallout Did they know at the time DUNHAM Yes There was no question that they had a general idea exactly what the whole story was and they hot- footed it straight home They made a bee line home which in itself is significant Digitized by Google SESSION II 57 FREMONT-SMITH Did they know they were in danger DUNHAM I don't know if they knew how much danger There were various degrees of concern and what they were thinking at that time I don't think we know Ralph interviewed a lot before he wrote the book and he was there three years or two years later which is an after-the-fact recollection UPTON You speak of panic you mean among the crew or among everyone concerned DUNHAM No This was a broad panic almost involving Japan as a whole I want Merril to make a real contribution now because he was right there When they monitored the ship they found radioactivity They found that the fish at least the top fish on the catch were contaminated They began throwing the fish away Then the next thing anybody knew was that within a week or so they had thrown away a million tons of fish almost anything that came from anywhere They would monitor the run and they would say Oh boy it's reading and right into the sea it went Merril you were right there and you saw what happened EISENBUD This whole story has the same element of the Rongelap fallout For example there's no official report of it which is surprising I don't think there is one of the Rongelap fallout at least I've never seen an over-all comprehensiv-e report covering the thing from beginning to end FREMONT-SMITH This is extraordinary isn't it EISENBUD Yes DUNHAM What kind of a report do you mean EISENBUD Well I mean that ordinarily you would expect that an incident of this magnitude would involve setting up an investigating team and putting out a report which would be available to the people who are involved For example I never wrote a report on my own experience in Japan beyond the first two weeks because I just waited and waited presuming I was going to be able to fit it into some sort of over-all report DUNHAM You mean a report on the episode how and why Digitized by Google OASA 2019-2 58 DUNHAM This docwnent here is an after-the-fact one EISENBUD That's right Normally you would expect for example that the meteorology would be described including the development of wind patterns starting a day or two before and running right up to shot time This is not available I asked for it before I came down here and it's still classified So I couldn't bring it with me FREMONT-SMITH You mean it's available but classified EISENBUD Yes right This would simply mean that nobody has taken the time to declassify it which takes work DUNHAM I think Merril has a feel for the way this thing built up in the Japanese press that nobody else in this room can have I hope that he will just devote a few minutes to this starting with say throwing away the fish from the Fukuryu Maru I have a few more visual aids which I will pass around You can look at them at your leisure There is a record by Holmes Narver of the repatriation of the Rongelap people and it has nice pictures of them and their habitats The only thing really wrong about it is that the pictures of the original houses were taken after two years of total neglect and they are not nice well-kept-up homes such as Bob Conard and Cronkite put in their report which were pictures taken immediately after the event But otherwise I think you'll find these interesting The other things I want to pass around are pictures of Mr Eisenbud and some of his Japanese friends This is the July 17 1954 issue of the Saturday Evening Post with an article Reference 5 entitled The Grim Facts of the H- bomb Accident 11 This was out at about the height of the fever both in this country and in Japan It starts Shortly before noon of a sunny day last January began the most famous voyage any Japanese ship has made since the battleship YAMOTO undertook the dramatic suicidal sortie from the Inland Sea 11 It shows pictures of Dr John Morton examining the fisherman It shows pictures of Merril wandering around on the deck of the Fukuryu Maru Please treat it gently because it's my only copy The Holmes Narver Co was contractor to the Joint Task Force and rehabilitated the islands of Rongelap and Eniwetok on the Rongelap Atoll The document referred to was never published Digitized by Google SESSION II 59 It may not be apparent from articles like this or from Ralph Lapp's book how much rapport developed between the Japanese scientists and people like Merril John Harley Lauren Donaldson and others who worked closely with them and tried to help them sort facts from fiction It was a very close working relationship and as evidence of this in the special issuance Reference 2 of the Institute of Chemical Research at Kyoto which is a special issue on the dosimetry radiochemistry and so forth it says Furthermore we should like to acknowledge with deep appreciation the kindness of Dr John H Harley Chief of the Analytical Branch Health and Safety Division New York Operations Office U S Atomic Energy Commission who provided us with much valid literature concerning the metabolism and internal dose determination of fission products Many of their articles have a similar acknowledgement at the end of the article I think this is important to keep in mind in spite of all the public panic hoopla newspaper reporting personal accusations and unpleasant things that may have occurred on the streets there was among the disciplined thinking scientific community a great deal of wholesome and constructive exchange With that as sort of an introduction I'm going to ask Merril first to tell us a little about his experiences in the development of the problem over there Then Lauren can tell us something of his experiences He was sent over at the request of the Japanese as an expert on fisheries and radiation Finally I hope we will have time for a little bit from two people Dr Schull and Dr Miller who were at the time with ABCC which was peripherally involved and that they will give us a little picture of how they got dragged into the thing Keep to the same ground rules Everybody interrupt if you want to WOLFE Before you start I would like to know just what the date was that the U S society found out about this fishing vessel EISENBUD Well it's a good place for me to start They found out the way the world found out when the ship put into port WOLFE That was two weeks after EISENBUD Yes DONALDSON It was the 18th I think The 17th Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 60 EISENB UD The l 7th here the 18th there I think DUNHAM March 14th precisely two weeks EISENB UD Then I'm wrong WOLFE You mean our people didn't know that ship was out there EISENB UD That's right If you've ever been on any of these sweeps you could understand why It's a big ocean and the radar isn't very effective on a small wooden vessel Remember how long it took to find Eddie Rickenbacher DUNHAM EISENBUD WOLFE Yes He had the winds blow in two directions EISENB UD The boat put in I thought it was the l 7th but you say it was the 14th and I think the first newspaper accounts were on the 16th as I recall DUNHAM Right EISENBUD Now it comes back to me FREMONT-SMITH The Japanese EISENB UD The Japanese newspaper accounts were of course picked up all over the world Consistent with the pattern right from H plus 7 hours the initial reaction here was disbelief that this was just a propaganda stunt that there would be nothing to it Dr John Morton who was then director of ABCC was dispatched pronto up to Tokyo to help out and telephoned me in the middle of the night FREMONT-SMITH Where were you at this point EISENBUD In New York He told me that he would need somebody who could evaluate the physical facts There was no one there at the time I tried to catch John Harley who had just left Japan but I couldn't intercept him and it was finally decided that I should go there myself FREMONT-SMITH How long did it take you to get there Digitized by Google SESSION II 61 EISENBUD Well apparently I'm not too good on the dates I flew straight through In those days it was about 40 hours I think I got there around the 19th or 20th 48 hours later There was a lot of confusion everywhere You've got to remember that 1954 was the end of a very bad time for the Japanese It was nine years post-war but the upturn really hadn't begun They were two years past the Peace Treaty The scientific community wasn't organized The Japanese had no instruments not even Geiger counters Also there was a lot of jockeying for position among the Japanese Well I went very innocently myself Actually I was all packed for going into Eniwetok anyway and within an hour I changed my plans and left for Japan and had no contact with anybody until I got there When I got there there must have been a thousand people with signs at the airport and I wondered who the big shot aboard was I found out it was I Laughter Somehow or other through this telegram they had word that I was coming and were picketing Some American MPs had been permitted to come to escort me into a limousine which was right at the foot of the ramp Well this of itself was very bad A number of Japanese had come out to the airport to meet me some of whom I knew quite well but I wasn't permitted to see them They had waited for hours and I was put into the limousine and whisked out to the Embassy so that I could brief the staff So that was the beginning The Japanese had no way of getting the basic information that they needed They knew nothing about bombs there was no way in which they could get for example information on the fission products that you would expect the debris and what kind of activation products would be present On the other hand the next morning one of the first people I saw was Doctor Kimura who was one of the first radiochemists who actually had been a student of radioactivity and who in 1945 was the one who had taken soil samples from Nagasaki and Hiroshima and concluded that there was plutonium in the Nagasaki bomb based on his analysis and what he read in the newspapers By the time I talked with Kimura the next morning he had already analyzed the debris and had detected uranium- 237 which led him to the conclusion that there must have been an n2n reaction which involved the fast fission of uranium- 238 I mention this because at that time this was a very sensitive fact in our weaponeering and here I was sitting with a man who had deduced something in a couple of days that was known to very few people in the United States So you Digitized by Google 62 DASA 2019-2 see the situation I was in trying to be helpful and at the same time trying to protect information that other people thought should be held secure I think that at that particular point in time the whole difficulty with the Japanese as far as the public relations problem was concerned could have been solved The main thing that the Japanese wanted was a statement that our government was sorry DUNHAM Didn't one of the fellows get involved with the accusation as to whether or not they were within the exclusion area so that it was a long time before the powers in Washington would agree that it was perfectly possible that it wasn't within the exclusion area EISENBUD That's right I think it was clear and this was reported that they really couldn't tell and that the navigation equipment they had wasn't very sophisticated The log looked authentic but they could have been five or ten miles on one side or the other One thing that impressed me through this stage which I've often remembered as other crises developed and as I think about our people that were participating is how tired you get I flew straight through in 40 hours in a very excited condition wondering what it was going to be like when I got there I arrived at two o'clock in the morning of I guess the end of the second day I was whisked to the Embassy at two in the morning and stayed in conference for about 2 hours I went home and got into bed for the first time in 3 nights I had 2 hours sleep and then went off for the first conference with the Japanese and met all day I made a point of getting to bed early that night but with the 12-hour difference in time John Bugher was just about ready to telephone me along about ten o'clock at night and this pattern kept up for 4 or 5 days I was really at the verge of exhaustion but I had to make a decision FREMONT-SMITH Yes which is very difficult to do in that state EISENBUD Yes And I don't know whether or not I made the right decision I mean somebody else would have to evaluate this But when I think of the Cuban crisis and the Berlin crisis and of the very few people who were at the center of this thing and who had to think despite the fact that they couldn't get their rest I think it's a problem that someday the government is going to have to deal with Chuck you may have been in the middle of this many times Digitized by Google SESSION II 63 DUNHAM It's not uncommon EISENBUD The relationships with the Japanese were FREMONT-SMITH The safety of all the world can rest upon the judgment of somebody who is exhausted who has to made a decision EISENBUD Yes There were some obvious snafus of a very minor nature which seem amusing but might not be Maybe there are some that I don't know about that were not so amusing For example on the third night Tsuzuki who was down at Yaizu-there were a few fisherman down there- passed word through one of the others that I should call on him immediately on his arrival that night He was coming in at eleven o'clock that night This seemed like a strange time to be asking me to call on him but I checked with this fellow who seemed to speak good English and he said No Dr Tsuzuki wants you to call on him at his home 11 So the Embassy provided a car and at eleven o'clock I was up at Tsuzuki' s house and of course he came to the door in pajamas He was expecting a telephone call Laughter This illustrates another problem that is that the fact that a man thinks he can speak English can be very dangerous The difference between call Dr Tsuzuki 11 which I would take as meaning that he wants me to telephone him and call on him 11 which means that you visit is a subtle one which you can't expect all Japanese to understand So I emphasize this as another thing that complicates a situation which is already complicated · He was very gracious he had a bottle of Scotch and we sat up and had a fine chat I would say that the political situation was stalemated by the fact that the Japanese Government was very anxious to settle the thing amicably and were willing to cooperate in any way They were willing to enter into an official agreement with the United States that would relieve us of any further financial responsibility But they insisted that we had to say we were sorry So while this was going on John Morton and I were concerned with the more technical aspects and it is commonly said that we weren't allowed to see the fishermen This is not so They didn't want the American doctors to examine the fishermen primarily because of what was being said in the American press and by some Americans in Japan including a couple of Congressmen to the effect that there was nothing wrong with these fishermen and that it was all a hoax There were two members of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy that came through Japan saw these men a few days after they arrived saw the burns decided that these were superficial and made a public statement to the effect Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 64 that the whole episode was being exaggerated despite the fact that at that time the blood counts were dropping at an alarming rate So the Japanese understandably were reluctant to have Americans publicly come in and check up on what they were doing On the other hand John Morton and his staff were given every courtesy They looked at the blood they stood there while the blood was being sampled They could poke the fishermen and talk with them I myself got involved in this in a peculiar way I think you'll find it on the front page of that Saturday Evening Post article Reference 5 where it says that I wasn't allowed to see the fishermen because I wasn't a doctor Quite the reverse is true I went to Yaizu to see the ship and had no idea of seeing the fishermen because it was almost an impossible situation I had been told that the hospital was a small hospital that the patients were sitting on mats on the first floor that there were hundreds of people milling around and that there must have been 40 or 50 reporters and I didn't see how it could be useful for me to go to see the fishermen even on a courtesy basis although I was anxious to make some physical measurements on them Well at lunch that day the Mayor of Yaizu indicated quite strongly that the fishermen would be hurt knowing I was in town if I didn't come to see them So I did go there and I made enough very superficial measurements to ascertain that their thyroids were very hot I took samples of their hair and asked for some skin scrapings which I took with me These were sent to New York and analyzed subsequently DUNHAM I'm interested in what you said about the relations with Morton and yourself because a lot of Americans got very upset with the idea that the Japanese didn't invite you to take over EISENB UD That's right DUNHAM You weren't invited there's no reason why you should have been As George Le Roy said how would we feel if the situation had been reversed and a couple of so-called experts from Japan came over and were to demand total access and taking over of the Dr George LeRoy was then on the faculty of the University of Chicago and was consultant to the AEC and to the medical team that was responsible for the care of the Rongelapese Digitized by Google SESSION 11 65 treatment and so forth the press EISENBUD But this was the way it was played up in I got samples of urine and blood for example DUNHAM Surely EISENBUD Well we made a considerable amount of progress in the first week I had set up a sort of formal organization for investigating this There was a Japanese committee established and Morton and I were invited to all the meetings and then something happened which was heartbreaking and which is a matter of public record Of course the American press at that time was very much involved There was a furor at home So it was decided that the President would go on television and make a statement to the public He did this with Admiral Strauss and there were two things in that statement which were very offensive to the Japanese and that caused things to deteriorate so far as Morton and myself were concerned One was the statement that the burns that the men had- if I'm not giving this in correct context Chuck say so-were not due to radiation but were due to lye produced when the coral was calcined in the fireball and then fell out on the fishermen DUNHAM I can remember when this hit us We were at Kwajalein I could see the expression on Cronkite's face when he read this EISENBUD edge • • Yes FREMONT-SMITH This hit the Japanese papers with the full knowl- Where did the idea come from EISENBUD It certainly didn't come from me but everybody else thought it did CONARD The fallout material was indeed caustic though this did not cause the beta burns that later developed FREMONT-SMITH You just made a nice excuse Commander Eugene P Cronkite of the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda Maryland was in charge of the medical team Digitized by Google OASA 2019-2 66 EISENBUD And I was completely discredited because it was generally known that I was sending daily reports and State Department telegrams as to the technical facts and they had every right to assume that this idea came from me The other statement was that the Japanese were presumably inside the danger area Well this coming straight from the horse's mouth so to speak widely publicized nationally televised and presumably an authoritative statement made it very difficult for John Morton and me to be effective any longer I stayed on I think for about two weeks after that but it was obvious that very little was going to come of it Actually I stayed on for the two weeks primarily so that I could see some contaminated fish We worked out a method for monitoring which is not easy to do because there were literally hundreds of thousands of fish piled up on the docks waiting to be shipped FREMONT-SMITH These were all fish from this ship EISENBUD No The fish on the Fukuryu Maru were confiscated immediately They were buried and forgotten about FREMONT-SMITH Had they been measured EISENBUD No FREMONT-SMITH EISENBUD measured No They were never measured They were dug up and ••• no they weren't LANGHAM I'm sorry Merril I can't keep quiet any longer Again your story sounds incredible to me It's not that I don't believe you I do because I've been through a similar exercise It is just that the public reaction to a radiation incident is incredible I think that we should be studying the psychology of government relations with governments Will you please tell me why such a fuss is made over something of this nature If a G I in Japan had accidentally killed two or three people with a carryall this wouldn't have made any news at all Why isn't it fashionable to admit a mistake when it involves radiation Do you mean to tell me the greatest nation in the world can't say Okay we made a mistake Digitized by Google SESSION II 67 FREMONT-SMITH We can do so anywhere except in radiation That is holy That is part of our religion We are the radiation people and we don't make mistakes in radiation LANGHAM The Air Force every now and then hits a section of apartment houses in an airplane crash Does that ever get the publicity that this did and why do we have to worry so much about the American image when I think this country can afford to admit an occasional mistake and not particularly lose face Yet I know what Merril is saying is indeed true and I maintain that what he went through what the government went through is indeed true The question is what's the psychology behind this type of thinking Why do we feel this much emphasis is necessary when radioactivity is involved FREMONT-SMITH I'm not sure that we did very much better in Spain We'll come to that later Maybe there is a tradition here of making this kind of mistake between governments l Laughter LANGHAM It doesn't make sense FREMONT-SMITH I think past history-and I'm afraid the future history- removes the incredible • • LANGHAM How many accidents have we had in foreign countries before in which the President of the United States felt obligated to make a statement MILLET It's an evidence of power in part FREMONT-SMITH Yes LANGHAM MILLET Why Why is radiation unusual in this case What about Vietnam LANGHAM Vietnam is a different thing Let's look at something that's comparable Wasn't it not so long ago-well a few years ago -a military plane on takeoff plowed through an inhabited area in Germany and killed several people UPTON Chuck did mention panic developing in Japan at the time LANGHAM Why panic over radiation J'IS-712 0 - 70 • I That I don't understand Digitized by Google 68 DASA 2019-2 EISENB UD Wait a minute Wright Everybody knows that a plane can crash into an apartment house and kill people LANGHAM can EISENBUD Doesn't anybody know that it's possible that fallout This was never announced DUNHAM It didn't come out clearly because there was no public announcement about this FREMONT-SMITH At least three things are wrong or maybe four UPTON I don't think there's any need necessarily to defer discussion to Saturday if it's pertinent now Isn't that right This is a free-wheeling kind of a meeting EISENBUD Let me finish the Japanese story LANGHAM Let me clear up one thing My saying that Merril's story is incredible doesn't mean that I think Merril is incredible Laughter FREMONT-SMITH We think he's incredible Laughter DONALDSON Merril at this point may I inject a comment about the fate of the fish EISENBUD Yes DONALDSON The fish from the Fukuryu Maru were buried at Yaizu and subsequently were dug up and sent to various laboratories EISENBUD I'm glad to know that I was unaware of it DONALDSON Pieces of these fishes have been drawn and quartered and analyzed and reanalyzed again and again So there is at least a great fund of evaluations by individual Japanese of the contamination of these Fukuryu Maru fish EISENBUD Good FREMONT-SMITH I'm glad to know that And they were contaminated Digitized by Google SESSION II 69 DONALDSON As Merril said some were It was not uniform and it was the type of contamination which we had never encountered and have not encountered in all the years working in the Pacific It was not absorbed but adsorbed radiation which came from dragging the fish across the deck This external superficial contamination or surface contamination was easy to measure with the usual radiation instruments while the internal selectively absorbed radionuclides so characteristic in the subsequent samples of the March 1 1954 test were not found in the tissues of these tuna You have two types of problems as far as radiation contamination is concerned TAYLOR With these fishes DONALDSON They stopped fishing and began picking up their lines Therefore you don't know just how much radioactivity came from contamination in the water and how much was from actual fallout on the deck BUSTAD With regard to your second statement relative to the crew being in the wrong position in Lapp's book he states that the crew felt they had been detected by the American authorities I assume he obtained this information from the crew didn't he I mean this feeling EISENBUD Yes Well they thought they were probably going to end up in jail again You see they had been in jail probably two months or so DUNHAM They had been in jail in Indonesia EISENBUD Yes for poaching Well what happened next Maybe Lauren you have better information than I do on this It's my recollection that the American shipping companies took the position that they would not accept any fish for transport to the United States that was not certified by the American Government as being acceptable for entry into the port when it arrived on the West Coast and this is what caused the great tuna panic of 1954 DONALDSON That was part of it EISENBUD Part of it What was the other part Digitized by Google 70 DASA 2019-2 DONALDSON Well it's a rather long story back to that later Maybe we can come EISENBUD Okay So when that happened the Japanese immediately needed guidance as to how they could obtain certification and we worked out some quick screening procedures that seemed to be all right because frankly we didn't find any contaminated fish at least during the period when I was there They were however dumping fish Reports were coming in that this or that boat had dumped its load of fish because it was found to be radioactive We arranged with the Japanese Government that no more fish would be dumped until I had a chance to look at them I had a helicopter and could go anywhere But these reports would come in and one by one they proved to be erroneous The only explanation that seemed credible at the time was based on a knowledge of the tuna people that a certain fraction of the Japanese boats would come in with defective refrigeration gear and the fish would be spoiled Normally this would be a loss to the company but now they_had an out If the refrigerator went bad all they had to do was dump their fish and say that it was radioactive and then make a claim Well this went on for several weeks But I did not • DUNHAM Maybe at this point we ought to ask Lauren because by this time he had been called overseas EISENBUD Yes When did you get there Lauren DONALDSON May 24th EISENB UD I left May 19th So I didn't even know you were there DOBSON May I ask a question about the earlier period please You had said Merril that the Japanese did not have Geiger counters and measuring equipment You mean that all during this time they had practically no way themselves to monitor EISENBUD That's right They had prewar equipment I had brought with me some scintillation gear and presented it to them and this was the first time that they had actually had a scintillation counter in Japan Of course now they make excellent testers as you all know But the original measurements were made with very primitive ionization chambers by Nishiwaki and a couple of others So I was very much surprised by the fact that our own military people had Digitized by Google SESSION II 71 very little equipment in Japan This was Korean war time 1954 was right after the Armistice I guess or just before it But anyway it was a tense period I went to Japan on the assumption that there would be fully equipped radiochemical laboratories in our military establishment but as near as I could find they didn't exist So I had to send samples all the way to New York to get them analyzed DOBSON So when one looks at it from the Japanese point of view-and Japan is a busy country with many ports and a great deal of fishing-at least up until the time that you got there Lauren fish were coming in off of many boats in many ports and there were very very few pieces of equipment in Japan that could be used for surveys EISENBUD Yes Geiger counters We provided the equipment We had some DOBSON But how many ports could you inspect EISENBUD My recollection is that there were about 16 ports that right Is DONALDSON I really don't know Merril EISENBUD It wasn't any larger than this It might have been 12 or 14 but it wasn't very many It wasn't a large number of ports WARREN But you couldn't be everywhere with your single equipment EISENBUD No but we trained the Japanese We had I think some 30 pieces of equipment flown in and they were able to make measurements Their plan was that when they found radioactive fish they would phone Toyko and I would fly down and take a look at it DUNHAM Maybe we should ask Lauren why he was pulled over there and what he found in the wake of Eisenbud's visits in terms of public relations problems and relations with the scientists DONALDSON Well maybe we can go back to the beginning which I guess was March 1 1954 During each of these test operations our group was busy in the Pacific studying the biological effects of the radioactivity Quite in contrast to Merril's statement which I'm sure he didn't mean-he Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 72 said there was no fallout-we know it just went into the ocean This doesn't mean there isn't fallout I'm sure you didn't mean it Merril It just didn't fall out on EISENB UD Land DONALDSON Yes Just to clarify this one point The fallout into the ocean in this case presents an entirely different group of spectra as compared to the fallout on the land except for the Japanese incident-and this is important the Japanese get about 90 percent of their source of protein food out of the sea so it doesn't make any difference whether it's tuna fish or clams or oysters or what not The Japanese are greatly concerned about radiation in any form that is with respect to the contamination of any food that they get from the sea You have this unique almost hysterical background of the Japanese people regarding radiation from their experiences during the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing and along with that fear of airborne contamination is almost a mania with the Japanese One always sees them with a face mask when they have a cold The problems of actual measurement of radiation in the sea were further complicated by the question of where it went Also there was the resistance on the part of the Task Force to understand what we felt to shape up to their responsibilities to actually get busy with the measurements It wasn't until March 26th that we got the first expedition underway that is 26 days after the event the first expedition went into Rongelap to actually do some rather thorough surveys Even this attempt was hampered by Task Force orders calling the destroyer back for patrol duty while we were still on the contaminated islands DUNHAM Lauren I think you ought to get back to Japan DONALDSON I will in just one minute DUNHAM I don't want to steal your afternoon thunder at this point DONALDSON The levels of radiation were in the order of magnitude of 100 curies per square meter on Eb eye Island on March 26th so we're talking about appreciable amounts of radiation All right now over to Japan Digitized by Google 73 SESSION 11 EISENBUD That's 100 curies extrapolated to March 1st DONALDSON That's right measured on March 26th EISENBUD Extrapolated back to March 1st as That's right DONALDSON The situation in Japan I was sent there on two assignments O e my direct responsibility was to help in any way possible to aid the Japanese fishing industry and the people who were responsible for the management of that industry Two I was to aid in any way in providing information on actual radiobiological problems However as it turned out about 99 percent of my efforts were devoted to the field of public relations as Merril has indicated This was the real problem and one was faced with it day by day The port of Toyko was in tremendous turmoil because there were mass demonstrations against the Americans This was true at Nagasaki it was true at Yaizu There were banners and this is a direct quote It doesn't take a bullet to kill a fish seller A bit of Bikini ash will do the job Well this seemed a bit out of context at the moment but in the area we're talking about I think it does make sense If we take tuna fish alone during the spring of the year the Japanese eat about a million pounds of sishimi or raw tuna fish a day It's a delicacy to them and it's part of the ceremonial tradition of Japan to have sishimi in preparation for the Emperor's birthday on April 29th On March 17th when the news of the Fukuryu Maru incident was publicly announced in Japan the tuna sales dropped to practically zero throughout Japan If we take a concrete illustration there are over 1 000 fish markets in Tokyo alone retail fish markets Many of the merchants come on their bicycles buy a tuna fish in the market and carry it to their shops A tuna fish then cost about $35 American money The sale of these fish represented the sole source of livelihood for the small shopkeeper They didn't sell the tuna fish so it decayed and they had to bury it That was a month's pay or their livelihood This went on for some days and thus their source of income was stopped This situation for those people was economic disaster Or maybe you had a boat that went out to sea and had been gone for six weeks or up to three months you returned with a load of tuna fish that would be sold to pay off the expenses and the fishermen But the tuna fish wouldn't sell not because it wasn't fit to eat Digitized by Google 74 DASA 2019-2 but because 1 the Japanese wouldn't eat tuna because of fear and 2 the United States committed an unfortunate faux pas as Merril indicated in saying We will not import this tuna fish unless it's certified This was ridiculous on our part but our tuna fish industry was adamant and they were extremely vociferous in reiterating We're not going to be subject to the economic ills of Japan That's their problem although of course our nation was largely responsible for creating the environment that made this problem The fishing vessel owners then and the crews were subjected to economic disaster I think we were inclined to minimize the overall sociological and emotional impact of this sort of thing upon a people whom we normally should consider our friends after the war We did not however take into consideration the overall impact of this unfortunate event Thus· during the first few days we assumed this trauma would disappear but there were certain other very real problems within Japan which I am sure have never been documented Merril left about the time it was becoming increasingly evident that the press-always antagonistic-was willing to grab some bit of news and immediately blow it up into a big headline This was a great problem in Japan Very carefully planned sessions were held with the American Embassy staff and with the Asiatic section of the Japanese Foreign Office and very carefully laid plans were developed to handle situations as they arose we discussed all aspects of the situation Then there would be big headlines in the Japanese press The nara kelp is contaminated with radiation 11 This radiation problem was discussed at the meetings bu t the levels were not publicized Surely you could measure fallout by this time in the onshore drift It was detected in small amounts this had been discussed but it would be blown up to a big headline So you have this weird conflict our failure to face up to what we felt were real responsibilities to do what Wright suggested make a forthright statement This is what happened-period 11 which was not done Mass hysteria spread through Japan a country where this could happen because of the previous experience of the Japanese in addition there was an attempt on the part of some to discredit any move in the way of a solution or to disrupt anything which might contribute to a logical solution All of these interacting factors tended to Digitized by Google 75 SESSION II prolong and prolong indefinitely this mass hysteria into a very real international problem CONARD I would like to add a postscript to what Merril was saying in regard to the examination of the fishermen In 1964 I was invited to go to Japan to examine the Japanese fishermen I think this is the first time since you were there Merril that this invitation had been extended When I arrived there I was surprised also as you said with the amount of press coverage a large number meeting the plane I was taken to the American Embassy and they wanted to know exactly what it was all about and what we intended to do and say and so forth They seemed to be satisfied that everything was all right And so we proceeded with the examinations at Yaizu Dr Kumatori Reference 6 was the Japanese physician who was in charge of the examinations Everything went along fine except that everywhere we went in Japan we were besieged with reporters and television people who made a big to- do over the whole thing Certainly it was apparent that even at that time 10 years after the accident the Japanese were still very sensitive about anything that had to do with radiation and particularly fallout ROOT I think this sensitivity this continuing sense of outrage persistently stimulated by the press and exploited by political parties stems directly from the 1954 shot and was exacerbated by our handling of it I was in Japan in 1964 As a journalist I made contacts through fellow journalists with many officials doctors and scientists They were far from reticent in our discussions They may have been more outspoken with me because I came with their own friends or acquaintances and was not on an official mission or connected with government activity They told me that the widespread reaction of horror crystallized into anti-American sentiment channeled into political segments mobilized women who had never before had any political interest infuriated the whole country Many called it the third U S atomic attack FREMONT-SMITH This one ROOT Yes Bravo FREMONT-SMITH More so than Hiroshima Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 76 ROOT Yes This had a greater political effect because Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in the context of war-to that extent understandable This was completely unwarranted-and the U S reactions seemed so callous-not even I was told repeatedly saying we were sorry or taking any responsibility Furthermore it played into a tense political situation The fishermen came back two days before the Diet was to ratify MSA DUNHAM What was the MSA ROOT Mutual Security Agreement-after Korea It was terribly important that Japan become a responsible member of the organization The Yoshida cabinet was entirely favorable to the U S and it looked as if there would not be too much opposition Then the fishermen arrived Demonstrations flared up everywhere You had the trade unions three million strong protesting The cabinet tried to counteract the anti-American feeling but a tidal wave of anger inundated the country It was just diminishing when Koboyama died This was portrayed as a radiation death FREMONT-SMITH This is the fisherman that had the transfusion and the hepatitis ROOT Yes Japanese doctors give very small blood transfusions and Koboyama needed a great many Timing in Europe was unfortunate too At the end of January 1954 Secretary Dulles made his massive deterrent speech announcing a radical change in our policy we had decided that the atomic weapon as a massive deterrent was our shortest cut to peace In February Vice- President Nixon stated that we were tired of being dictated to as to time and place and were going to call our own shots from now on The NATO countries Great Britain and the others were terribly concerned about this As staging areas they expected any such momentous decisions to be the subject of consultations at least To cap the political confusion and dismay in March came news of the heavy fallout from the Bravo Shot And where did the press get this information From Tokyo As you know Tokyo is a very large city It has representatives from the press of every major country in the world Suddenly the whole of Europe was flooded with grim headlines-and no explanation from the United States The first Digitized by Google 77 SESSION II explanations when they came made us look even worse The skin injuries might be lye burns-from the unslaked lime of the coral Dr Tsuzuki went on the air internationally-a 15-minute speech translated into all Western languages-to describe the injuries He said it was ironic to tell him that radiation burns might be lye burns when he had worked all his professional life with radiation and had been the first to go into Hiroshima He made a few unpalatable remarks about the ABCC and about the Americans using the Japanese as guinea pigs There was much misconception about the purpose of the ABCC among the Japanese They did not understand that the ABCC was a research organization and not allowed to treat patients as that was against Japanese medical policy For years resentment had been building up because radiation victims would go to the ABCC be examined and tested for days-and then sent away without consistent treatment The idea spread fanned by anti-American interests that they were being used as guinea pigs to further American science I was told that this was one reason the fishermen and their doctors refused to permit examination by American radiation experts and doctors In England Prime Minister Churchill was grilled for 7 hours by Parliament with the Members insisting he call the American Government to account demand an explanation-and the Prime Minister protesting 11 1 will get only a rebuff I think we ought to have an explanation but we can't demand it The image of the scientist underwent a sad change-and I think this is not simply a literary curiosity Before 1954 the prototype was Pasteur Einstein dedicated men working for human good Otherwise they were mad scientists Simultaneously as if on cue after March 1954 scientists became sorcerer' s apprentices in every European language- English German French Mad scientists dropped out of the literature All scientists are now in league with the devil FREMONT-SMITH They are all mad Very interesting ROOT I hope I haven't taken too much time irrelevant This may be entirely UPTON You mentioned earlier Chuck that there were a couple of people in the room who were at ABCC then Digitized by Google 78 DASA 2019-2 DUNHAM Yes UPTON I wonder if you would like to have them offer comments DUNHAM Yes Dr Schull SCHULL I would like to make two observations which I believe are pertinent before I describe the situation in Japan in 1954 as I saw it First we should bear in mind that the Japanese are uncommonly health- conscious and to an extent that some observers feel borders on hypochondria The face mask for example is a ubiquitous part of the winter scene or at least was in those years DUNHAM They can't outdo us SCHULL Possibly not The second observation is that there seems to be no history of responsible journalism in Japan The three large presses Asahi Yomiuri and Mainichi are in a perpetual circulation war and they are generally prepared to take advantage of any situation which might enhance their status vis-a-vis one another These two factors when put together can seriously restrict the relevance of the Japanese experience for a nation with different journalistic traditions As to my experiences in 1954 the story begins in the summer of 1953 when there was convened in Ann Arbor a small informal group whose function was to decide whether or not the clinical portion of the genetic studies then under way in Japan should continue It was our task to determine whether enough additional information could be gained to warrant further investment of manpower and money The consensus was that this was unlikely the basis for this conclusion rested largely on the knowledge that many of the exposed individuals were reaching ages at which no further reproduction was to be expected and hence continued study would merely increase the control observations which were already much more numerous than the experimental There seemed therefore no particularly strong reason to continue the clinical portion of the studies and I had gone to Japan shortly after the first of the year in 1954 to terminate that segment of the genetics program Shortly after I arrived there was held in Tokyo a review of ABCC's research activities this meeting was attended by most of ABCC's departmental chiefs and a substantial number of Japanese scientists Digitized by Google 79 SESSION II There was still manifested I believe some of the hostility which had arisen in certain Japanese scientific circles in the years immediately after the war Most of the physicians with ABCC and · in fact most of the American physicians who went to Japan couldn't communicate effectively with their Japanese colleagues few of whom spoke English The language of medicine in Japan has been German and only recently has English come to play a prominent role in the exchange of medical information It was not easy under circumstances such as these to establish rapport The situation with respect to genetics was quite different This was ascribable to a number of largely fortuitous happenings First there was a firmer body of experimental information from which to attempt extrapolations to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and even to the members of the crew of the Fukuryu Maru Second many of the Japanese geneticists of stature at that time had been trained either in the United States or in Europe and as a consequence we often spoke a common language namely English Japanese geneticists in general strongly supported ABCC's genetics program whereas the endorsement that was being given to medicine for example was of a more qualified nature The absence of a strong endorsement encouraged opportunists and opportunism and the Fukuryu Maru incident was replete with both The emotional climate that was created in Japan when word reached there of the Fukuryu Maru was really a very strange and almost unbelievable one Rightly or wrongly I'm inclined to ascribe it in large part to the devil's brew to which I have previously referred The newspapers seized upon the incident and began a drumfire of daily accounts which almost seemed intentionally designed to heighten anxieties real or fancied The Japanese government as well as our own had effectively lost control of the situation The newspapers had grabbed the ball and were running with it I can recall quite vividly some of the headlines which appeared There was one for example in the Osaka English- language Mainichi the headline said WBC counts of fish- eaters rise It appeared shortly after it had been announced that radioactively contaminated fish had accidentally reached the Osaka market and that some had been inadvertently sold A few individuals who had presumably eaten the fish were being studied by local authorities This headline accompanied a report of their work which by the way was unobjectionable They had carefully indicated that numerous factors could produce a rise in white blood cells including upper respiratory infections so common at that time of year they further stated that on this account one could not conclude that the elevation was necessarily due to the Digitized by Google 80 DASA 2019-2 consumption of the fish This nicety was lost on or at least ignored by the writer of the headline The effect of this article and others like it was far-reaching however Shortly after the appearance of the one in question ABCC was visited by a woman and her daughter who had been in Osaka when the fish were sold The mother and her child insisted that something had to be done for them They were really quite concerned and were certain they had eaten the contaminated fish We didn't have the vaguest notion of course what should or could be done if we assumed that they had in fact eaten the fish If I remember correctly to ease their apprehensions stool specimens were obtained and examined and this had the desired palliative effect At least they left with the belief that someone was interested in their health This is but one small indication of the near hysteria engendered largely by the newspapers I'm sure that Bob Miller can add to these experiences MILLER I was too far from the scene and too inexperienced in Japan at that time to be much of a witness as to what was occurring But I would like to point out that four years later in 1958 Dr Schull and I among others returned to Japan to make a study Reference 7 of children who were in grammar school then and whose parents had either not been exposed to the bomb or were too far from it to have received significant exposure In Hiroshima of 2 200 children who were invited to come for examination 97- 1 2 percent did come In Nagasaki of 4 500 invited to come 99 percent did so So four or five years after the Bikini incident in 1954 there was not much of a hard core of resistance as a result of that experience I would like to bring our attention back to Dr Langham' s question just before this discussion began Why is radiation so evil I think since he asked the question we have heard some of the answers to it I wonder how he feels about it now after hearing that the newspapers inflamed the public the Japanese physicians were jockeying for position and the governments both U S and Japanese were unprepared to handle the circumstances and made a mess of it LANGHAM Well I think this is the evil No one respects radiation any more than I but I don't think radiation is an insurmountable thing at all It may be that the psychological impact created by the press and everyone else concerned is incompatible This is exactly what I'm trying to get at All of these affairs get blown into something that is far beyond their real importance Now why Maybe some of the answers are coming now but I don't think this means that radiation is something we can't live with at all Digitized by Google SESSION II 81 DUNHAM We can live with cranberries and pesticides but for a while it got blown up all out of proportion too It just happens that radiation has created more of these situations than some of the others up until recent years EISENBUD I think that this even is one of the really few important historical events in all of history We woke up one morning and found that we had bombs that could be exploded if we knew how to use them It threw our government into such a turmoil that they knew they had to say something but couldn't decide what to say until when was it Chuck that the first real statement came out DUNHAM Well the first release containing any details came out nearly a year later February 15th or something like that of 1955 EISENB UD It took a year for your government to formulate a position This wasn't because they were dismissing it or that this wasn't important but it was because they couldn't agree on what their actual position was UPTON It seems to me we have here a very real concrete evidence of disaster We have fishermen who are sick fish that have to be thrown away and in turn a ban against the importation of fish that aren't certified economic disaster in Japan newspapers which are eager to play up sensational stories political groups who want to make capital out of this There's certainly every element of a problem The difficulty was assessing the magnitude of the problem soon enough EISENBUD But you see there's one element that hasn't been brought out That is that anyone could take that diagram and lay it on a map of Europe let's say by putting Bikini near some important Soviet airbase and point the wind anywhere you choose to and get 800 r per hour running through friendly nations This is why I say we have bombs which we are probably no longer in a position to use imagine the impact of this possibility militarily UPTON But at the time surely the dimensions of that zone were not known very generally so that the Japanese couldn't really be sure how wide spread the contamination of the sea might have been EISENBUD Ralph Lapp I think published the first of these diagrams and it seems to me it was in the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences Digitized by Google 82 OASA 2019-2 within a year as I recall I think it actually preceded our official announcement FREMONT-SMITH We're not the only government that didn't know how to handle a radioactive accident If you will all remember how the British Government fumbled the Wind Scale accident announcing beforehand that there was no danger of any kind at all and then gradually having to admit that there was more and more and then the milk all had to be dumped I think that our lessons are there but I think every government gets caught in this kind of thing or is in danger of getting caught in this kind of thing But the first thing to do on the government's part is to deny that anything dangerous has happened which is almost standard procedure and then gradually it leaks out whereas actually this is the way that people lose faith in the government The credibility gap gets bigger and bigger and I think certainly this is true in this country If something happened and if we had a firm announcement from the government of this the people of this country wouldn't have much confidence in this WARREN This is true in industrial practice too If somebody let's loose a noxious chemical they deny everything and then face the issue hours later or days later The trouble is that their insurance figures are involved and the cost of paying off is involved and they want to keep it as limited as possible We are somewhat in the same frame of mind at the government level aren't we TAYLOR It seems to me it's a very very important fact of life that the worldwide public has lost confidence in the official spokesmen of the governments of several nations as a result of a consistent denial ••• FREMONT-SMITH Of the truth TAYLOR ••• of the truth by spokesmen for these governments and that's the state of affairs that now exists FREMONT-SMITH Then we are also talking about the credibility gap between the younger generation and the adult generation in any country which is part of the same thing We have lied to the youngsters repeatedly again and again and the youngsters don't have any confidence in the adult world I think it's a very broad problem we're talking about This may be true in a good many other countries too Digitized by Google SESSION II 83 WARREN And yet as Wright says the information is always there FREMONT-SMITH What WARREN The principles on which these decisions could be made have been there from the beginning FREMONT-SMITH Right EISENBUD I don't think it sinks in CONARD I get impressed with the ignorance of the lay public with regard to the simple facts When you talk to a group it's obvious that they just don't understand the simplest things about radiation TAYLOR I claim they haven't been helped by the official spokesmen at least in the United States They've gotten very little help at all because the very first words that were published were Don't worry We know what's being done Then followed Castle the situation in which the natives were seriously irradiated and yet obviously we didn't irradiate the natives on purpose Obviously we didn't know what the hell we were doing This has happened so many times We deny the fact that we didn't know what we were doing but there is no basis for confidence any more I think that is central I think that this central fact that the public has on the basis of the record a positive lack of confidence in what they are told is going to have a profound effect on what happens FREMONT-SMITH In the future TAYLOR If one or two explosions or a whole lot of explosions really start taking place in anger you will get irrational behavior which is a result of irrational behavior namely the way in which it's been handled by the U S ROOT We go to the other extreme in assuring the people that democracy can only exist on the basis of an informed public that the public has a right to know After the 1954 incident there were big headlines in London and other countries proclaiming Ike Demands Candor Ike says the people who are going to be subject to this and whose taxes pay for this have a right to be consulted as far as secrecy permits that everything that can be told should be told There was a great wait and then the British papers asked Where is this 373• 12 0 • 0 • 7 Digitized by Google 84 OASA 2019-2 candor The United States population is waiting for candor We don't realize here how much is made of that abroad or how cynically the oft- repeated people's right to know contrasts with the official pronouncements when they do come out The first acknowledgment of the fallout from Bravo was one sentence During a routine test some Marshallese natives and weather officials were dusted or some such word The mystery of that with no follow up and then suddenly the Japanese thing I think is at the root of the fact that people can't even hear the words hydrogen bomb without going into paroxysms What help have they received to understand what happened As a result of not knowing a mystique has developed that makes the very thought paralyzing UPTON How long did it take to get the tuna industry back into more or less standard operation FREMONT-SMITH In Japan UPTON In Japan It was disrupted there for a time Dr Donaldson say that We heard DONALDSON It is difficult to put an exact time limit on this problem because the fear flares up or has flared up each time there has been a subsequent test The pulse of the people is still associated directly with any testing or any announcement of testing The surprising thing is that the French tests and the Russian tests haven't been upsetting to the same degree ROOT I was in Japan during the Chinese test The Japanese were busy demonstrating against the arrival of an American nuclear submarine in one of the northern harbors and paid little attention- other than a kind of pleased recognition that the Chinese pulled it off I was told that the ceremonies commemorating Hiroshima Day would probably have ceased by now because there are few enough interested in going but the Yaizu fishermen have given it a new and bigger lease on life An interesting insight was when the Sino-Soviet split came They had to hold two different ceremonies and Mrs Koboyama widow of the man who died finally refused to go because she was being pulled in both directions One of the meetings climaxed in heated argument about whether the Chinese Communist Government or the Soviet Government had sent greater contributions to support this memorial The contributions were openly acknowledged Digitized by Google 85 SESSION II DUNHAM I think it points up again that it isn't particularly right because it's radiation This is just something simply seized on WARREN This is part of the cold war DUNHAM Not the government people or most of the university people or most of the scientists The fallout they've had from some of the Chinese tests has not been played up very much in the Japanese press TAYLOR I think the mystique is right here at home typified by a comment that President Kennedy made to Jerry Wiesner when they sitting together in the White House and it was raining out Kennedy asked Wiesner whether there was fallout in the rain that was falling on the White House lawn and Wiesner said Yes there still is This was an intense emotional experience for the President to see rain with fallout on the outside nothing connected with anything in any way quantitative at all As far as he was concerned that rain that was falling outside was bad ROOT I think it's a little dangerous to equate radiation with cranberries though because we know what radiation can do There should be a legitimate and respected fear of it DUNHAM I'm not saying it shouldn't be respected but it happens in certain areas where the psychological seed has already fallen ROOT I think the psychological seed germinates and flourishes because of the ultimate lethal threat DUNHAM The pesticides are lethal So is radiation WARREN Not everybody buys cranberries and couldn't care less but everybody is subjected more or less to the fallout DUNHAM So is Vitamin A It's toxic too MILLET This I think brings up another point perhaps We've been talking about our dissatisfaction with leaders for not giving us the information that we ought to have I think we're getting into the area of the mystique of the leader in this country and perhaps one of the great problems hasn't been touched upon sufficiently yet which is that our leaders are not sufficiently well educated to know what to Digitized by Google 86 OASA 2019-2 think and therefore what to act or what to say They are constantly changing their minds from one position to another which is one of the problems that is due to their political needs and their careers It seems to me we have two ends to work on here How to get correct information that is capable of solving problems to our leaders and how to educate the public Now if the general public doesn't want to be educated this is something we've got to know and perhaps we could do more than we've been doing in our educational system to get them to understand the environment in which they are thrust when they are born We can only do a limited amount in getting them interested in the world in which they live On the other hand the leaders are certainly very interested in the world in which they live Perhaps this is the primary goal for our efforts to try to get the proper knowledge to our leaders WARREN What you are saying is that our leaders don't have the proper father image for the community of the world at large and in this case the father image has been tarnished if not destroyed ROOT But they always talk the right father image vates the problem That aggra- MILLET Yes DUNHAM Isn't it one of the fundamental problems that leaders almost by definition are amateurs They've never faced a particular crisis until they face it FREMONT-SMITH That's right DUNHAM This is a dilemma that the world has been facing for a good many years and I don't know how you can just suddenly say that these people are more stupid than somebody else It's a personal problem as you hinted at FREMONT-SMITH And the thing is partly compounded by the election every two or four years which means leaderships change or there are desperate efforts to maintain leadership at any cost because that's the time you'll be able to really show your responsibility after you've been re- elected DUNHAM Yes Digitized by Google 87 SESSION II FREMONT-SMITH So you've become irresponsible in terms of the election hopefully in order to be responsible later and the thing goes on in a vicious circle ROOT I think the professionals have not demonstrated any greater aptitude than the amateurs It was President Eisenhower who said We must give an accounting of this We must let the nations know He was sensitive about the NATO reaction and the public reaction He wanted as much information released as possible-to help them understand But State Department rules are rigid Certain formulas determine our dealings and interchanges with our own people and with other countries Those are the things that are sterile and constricting I think if more responsibility were left to the amateur who has the confidence of the people inasmuch as they put him up there and to the man in the affected area who knows the customs and the temper of the people concerned there would be less suspicion and hostility in times of crisis The sad part is that though the crisis passes the feelings tend to persist WARREN I would like your consultation and that of your confrere on your right because this is what we're really talking about in this whole meeting So I don't expect to get an immediate answer on this but isn't this an opportunity ROOT I know that I can get more information abroad as Congressman Morse pointed out in the security hearings about situations abroad and about situations at home than I can get at home I think that we have one of the most hysterical panic- ridden attitudes toward releasing information of any free country FREMONT-SMITH On account of security on account of classification ROOT This delusion of grandeur impedes scientific progress and destroys public confidence ••• DUNHAM I would like to challenge this ROOT • • because it's really going to destroy us DUNHAM You mentioned the ineptitude of Wind Scale I've seen what the British atomic authority releases and some of the things they don't release in the way of information And if you think we are Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 88 ROOT No I know Wind Scale DUNHAM Not Wind Scale because it all came out public never even hears about it The British ROOT It didn't even come out about Wind Scale because as the person who told me called it of a failure of management He said You can count on management to fail because they are protecting other values Wind Scale has never been accurately explained and they are doing it I think the British Government picked it up from us be much more open They used to FREMONT-SMITH Yes DUNHAM I don't know if it's all our fault FREMONT-SMITH A good share of it is our fault a good reasonable share DUNHAM The British don't publish a lot of the kinds of information on radiation exposures that we've published and things like that FREMONT-SMITH Look what we've done What is tolerable radiation dosage in industry We've had to lower the amount year by year Instead of coming out with a cautious statement and then finally coming out year by year and saying Yes we can tolerate a little bit more it's been in the opposite direction hasn't it WYCKOFF It is of interest to document this decrease In 1936 the Committee now called the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement NCRP recommended a provisional tolerance dose of O 1 r per day but suggested that a generous safety factor be applied NBS Handbook 20 By 1949 the NCRP was recommending a permissible dosage rate of O 3 r per week NBS Handbook 41 The rationale for the reduction was contained in NCRP recommendation of 1954 NBS Handbook 59 The differences were attributed to different types of measurement surface dose initially and at that time to dose in the organ of interest to a large variety of radiation sources and to a greater knowledge of the biological effects of radiation However it was pointed out in that document that these recommendations Digitized by Google SESSION 11 89 DUNHAM It has been FREMONT-SMITH I think this is part of the same thing we're saying Say they announced a kind of thing that would make everybody feel more comfortable and then they found that they were wrong DUNHAM Yes but some have gone up FREMONT-SMITH Yes DUNHAM Some have gone up and nobody says boo The British do the same thing They wait until there's an international agreement on it before these things are changed anyway FREMONT-SMITH Still I think the essential feature is that I don't think one can be very proud of the way we have dealt with the public in terms of ••• DUNHAM I think there's a great deal of holding back but to say that the British are so open or so frank with their people compared to us I think is a lot of nonsense because I know just how frank they are not FREMONT-SMITH I'm against the British Laughter DUNHAM I love them FREMONT-SMITH I know I'm teasing DE BOER It is not a question of secrecy alone In this week's Industrial Research Admiral Rickover characteristically criticized the Navy and contended that the Navy had gone downhill He listed three things 1 the so-called new religion of cost effectiveness studies 2 the Zero Defects Program which he equated with motherhood and 3 the unwillingness to assume responsibility as the cont'd excluded consideration of genetic changes manifestable in future generations Additional information on genetic effects and possible shortening of life span obtained from animal experiments and human exposure at considerably higher doses indicated a further reduction in 1957 Addendum to ·NBS Handbook 59 The exposure of a larger fraction of the population was also involved It should be pointed out that no relatable effect has been observed for any of these levels Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 90 cause of this phenomenon It is particularly the third reason which has a direct tie-in with secrecy In eleven cases before a Senate subcommittee secrecy or security was claimed while trying to identify the man responsible for making certain decisions The facts were that after days and days of digging the decision maker could not be found Everyone was hiding behind someone else FREMONT-SMITH Who are you quoting DE BOER Rickover These were eleven cases in which the responsible man was never found In other words something was originated like a contract but nobody was willing to assume the responsibility for that contract and say Here I am I originated that contract and I was right in doing so because at that time etc • • No there was always someone who could say I was told to do so but I can't divulge the source This comes close to secrecy although it is not officially labelled so EISENBUD I think Chuck Dunham is correct when he says that generally throughout the Atomic Energy program there's been a candid policy I don't think we need take the time to explore it unless you want to I think the policy has been a candid one but there's something different about this particular instance and it doesn't necessarily involve the Atomic Energy Commission in this respect The fact of the matter is that when I learned that Miss Root was working on the historical implications of this matter I referred her to a package which I had left in the New York operations office in which I pulled together all the documents that I thought would be useful to somebody someday I left it with instructions that it shouldn't be dispersed Most of this is pretty innocuous stuff things like meterological reports teletypes which give you the time when various decisions were made to do various things and a long series of telegrams of several pages a day which I sent from Japan which was the only chronological record of what went on I've forgotten it I don't remember it I forgot that they dug up the fish which I was reminded of and I learned yesterday that this stuff is still classified there's no hope of getting it out That's been sent to Washington because on my suggestion Miss Root asked for some of the material in that packet It was sent to Washington for review and it's still there How do you explain this FREMONT-SMITH It will take them years to declassify it haven't got a staff to do it Digitized by They Google SESSION II 91 EISENBUD Yes Let me tell you something else I thought we had access to all the information we needed at the time I think we did if we had asked the right questions but sometimes you didn't seem to ask the right question It wasn't until a few days before this shot was scheduled to go off that I actually knew that it was going to be at Bikini and not at Eniwetok Nobody told me they were going to move to Bikini most of my planning had been done on the assumption that it was going to be at Eniwetok and nobody told me otherwise DUNHAM Yet the tower was being built all the time EISENBUD Yes but we were preparing in New York and actually it could have been disastrous if it weren't for the fact that through a stroke of luck we had instruments at Rongerik Island But based upon our own meteorological projections we assumed it was going to be fired from Eniwetok and you may say that's a dumb thing to do but it never occurred to me as to where it was going to be fired FREMONT-SMITH There's an old religious phrase of Need to know out of the Bible and I'll give you an illustration Norbert Wiener who as you know invented cybernetics and who was also working in a highly classified bomb situation during the war told me personally that during this highly classified work he ran into a discovery which he knew to be of great importance to another highly classified group He spent two years trying to find a way in which he could tell them what he had discovered and he was never able to do it because he couldn't demonstrate the fact that they needed to know In other words he was never able to tell them I also have a hunch-and I don't expect to have it confirmed locally -that the Manhattan Project would never have been accomplished if all security had been protected I suspect that a number of people told each other things and then discovered they h_ad a need to know afterwards and that's the way the thing got off the ground in several instances But anyway I really bring this up to point out the devastating effect- Norbert Wiener is only one example I have several others- of this p ri nci ple I would like to add one thing I really do believe that by and large and undoubtedly there are exceptions our own scientific advances and our own security have been set back by our security more than if we had been much more open I think we have blocked our own advance by failure to make available to scientists a lot of information Digitized by Google 92 DASA 2019-2 which they could develop and then lead into new directions and that if we were to release this information even though it would be perhaps of use to the enemy we would be getting ahead faster and gain more by the release than we gain by the protection This is my personal opinion which I throw out for nobody else's use ROOT I think going back to Dr Warren's question that applies also to the press You say you get on the beach and you have no place to hide and you get all these distorted reports But what are those writers going to do I unfortunately have a disciplined background having been a research scientist myself which holds me up terribly in this profession But everything is a struggle And journalists and writers eventually give up There are very few instances I think in which if a subject is entirely in the open there's not great cooperation between the scientists and the writers It couldn't be greater and I know Dr Langham has helped writers at great cost to his own time and energy I'm sure But when it impinges on an area which is not necessarily classified but on one in which there is uncertainty as to classification I've talked with people and quoted figures and they have stared back as though I had leprosy and could contaminate them They hadn't known and they would say Where did you get that figure It's never been published And I would say that it had been published in such- and- such It's just too great a task It's a lifetime work to keep up with what is declassified and what remains classified So the only way for sanity is just not to say anything But then we expect the writer to be able to communicate to the public who support the research and who really are an informed public the strength of the democracy and he's got nothing to say but he's got a job to fulfill UPTON I think the morning session has to be brought to a close and I'm reminded of an amusing anecdote We've been talking about an information problem really and I heard a story about the Wind Scale incident which indicates how frequently in an astonishing situation where one is caught by surprise and has one's source of information down one has to say something and may not say the right thing AYRES There's a formula called No comment Laughter UPTON A group of power industry executives and engineers were being flown over the Wind Scale plant and were being briefed by a guide on the wonders of nuclear power As they crossed the plant in the airplane and he pointed out various installations on the ground the accident occurred and a big black plume went up out of the stack Digitized by Google SESSION 11 93 and everybody's eyeballs popped out and they looked at this thing in astonishment and turned to the guide and said What is that He was just as astonished and bewildered as they and not knowing what else to say he smiled and said Well you get that you know Laughter Digitized by Google Digitized by Google SESSION Ill THE 1954 THERMONUCLEAR TEST Continued Initiator Robert A Conard Digitized by Google Digitized by Google 95 SESSION Ill THE 1954 THERMONUCLEAR TEST Continued THE MARSHALL ISLANDS PROBLEM BRUES This afternoon Dr Conard will initiate the discussion without I guess telling us where it may lead Bob CONARD I have outlined on the board a few topics I thought might be worthy of a brief review and discussion Also I put down below the main groups that were involved in the 1954 fallout accident with the numbers of people involved and the approximate dosage of radiation that they received See Figure l and Table l In discussing the case of the Marshall Islands accident I think it's important to point out that this represents a situation on a coral atoll and it may be quite different from other fallout situations that might occur Characteristics of a particular fallout situation depend on many factors such as whether the bomb is detonated over water under water over land the geography of the terrain the populations exposed time of fallout arrival length of fallout etc Fallout effects are somewhat different from those produced by direct effect of the bombs In Japan for instance the major casualties came from blast and heat with fewer casualties from radiation exposure whereas with fallout it is a purely radiation exposure situation In Japan there were psychic trauma physical trauma starvation disease and many complications in the Marshall Islands the Marshallese people had a minimum of these factors involved In addition the fallout produces a more complicated type of radiation exposure in that you have not only whole body exposure but also the exposure of the skin and internal deposition of radioactive materials A few other points of comparison with the ABCC studies might be made The Marshallese groups of course are considerably smaller than those of the ABCC studies The vital statistics are very poor in Digitized by Google 96 DASA 2019-2 - KWAJA £111 MARSHALL ISLANDS 0 ' Figure 1 Map of fallout area Marshall Islands March 1 1954 From R Conard Courtesy Annals Int Med Table 1 Summary of fallout effects Group Composition Rongelap 64 Marshallese Ailingnae 18 Marshallese Rongerik 28 Americans Utirik 157 Marshallese Fallout Observed Heavy snow-I ike Moderate mist-I ike Moderate mist-like None Estimated Gamma Extent of Dose Skin Lesions Rads 175 Extensive 69 Less extensive 78 Slight 14 No skin lesions or epilation Also exposed were 23 Japanese fishermen who received a sublethal dose Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 97 the Marshallese people but the radiation dose is probably better known in their case than it is in the case of the Japanese Documentation during the acute period was fairly complete for the Marshallese and not so complete for the Japanese The Marshallese findings are reviewed in References 8 and 9 the Japanese Hiroshima and Nagasaki data in numerous publications by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission The Marshallese population under study is fairly stable We go back from year to year and find little attrition We have an excellent comparison population composed of relatives of the Rongelap people who have moved back to live on the island of Rongelap They match reasonably well for age and sex The Japanese fishermen studies were made difficult by the complexity of the dosimetry the fact that on board the ship they lived part time below decks where they were more protected and part time above etc Perhaps later on Merril Eisenbud might say more about the dosimetry in that group The data on the Japanese fishermen are reviewed in References 6 and l 0 In addition it was two weeks before they arrived in port where the situation could be evaluated Another complicating factor was that during the course of treatment they were given multiple blood transfusions and many of them developed jaundice liver disease and one even died probably as a result of repeated blood transfusions Figure 2 is a photograph of Rongelap Island taken on March l 1954 a typical South Sea Island village with loose palm construction Figure 3 is a rough sketch to show the types of radiation that people were exposed to The wavy lines represent gamma radiation that is whole- body penetrating type of radiation The stippled area represents beta radiation which was largely responsible for the skin lesions that developed and also the internal deposition of the fallout material The spectrum of the gamma radiation from the fallout was fairly complex There are quite a few different energy peaks as contrasted to ordinary laboratory studies in animals The calculations of the The medical studies of the Marshallese are sponsored by the U S Atomic Energy Commission and are carried out under the direction of Brookhaven National Laboratory in conjunction with the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands Department of Interior Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 98 Figure 2 Rongelop village os it was in 1954 From R Conard Figure 3 Rough sketch showing fallout deposition Wavy areas represent gamma radiation and stippling represents beta radiation From R Conard --- Digitized by Google SESSION 111 99 gamma dose to the Rongelap people was made on the basis of estimation of time of arrival of the fallout which was believed to be at about four to five hours after the detonation the length of time of fallout which was calculated to be around 12 hours and by the readings that were taken on the Islands at the time of the evacuation roughly two days later There was a telemetering device on Rongerik as was pointed out this morning which gave valuable information on the time of arrival there of the cloud of fallout and the 30-minute period that it required to go off scale In addition on Rongerik there were many film badges and the readings from these film badges afforded valuable information on the dose and agreed reasonably well with the other estimations In the case of the Japanese fishermen the dos·es calculated were around 170 to 700 rads based on extrapolation back to Day 0 Gamma radiation in a fallout field produces a more penetrating type of radiation than occurs with ordinary laboratory uni-directional radiation Due to the geometry of the planar fallout field the midline dose is increased by a factor of about 1 5 So this really gives a better indication of the biological effectiveness and we might take the Rongelap dose of 175 rads of whole-body radiation and say that it actually represented possibly 260 rads or so as compared with ordinary laboratory type of radiation In the case of the Rongerik group from 78 to 120 the Alinginae from 70 to l 00 and Utirik from 14 to 20 DUNHAM What do you mean by the ordinary type of radiation CONARD I mean uni-directional type of radiation BRUES The numbers you give are rads in air CONARD Yes the ground These were based on readings three feet above BRUES And midline doses within the person CONARD were derived using the factor of 1 5 The skin dose was impossible to really calculate As you know the beta spectrum in fallout has quite a smear of different energy components along with some soft gamma The energy spectrum of the beta radiations 113•112 0 • o • I Digitized by Google l 00 DASA 2019-2 showed about 50 to 80 percent around 100 keV and 20 to 50 percent around 600 keV So most of it was pretty soft There was also a beta contribution from the fallout on the ground It was estimated that the feet got 2000 r from the ground source at hip level about 600 and at head level 300 The hair follicles must have gotten in the range between 400 to 700 rads in view of the fact that epilation developed but was not permanent in most cases The internal radiation was calculated indirectly from urinalyses that were taken starting about 15 days after the exposure and thereafter on numerous occasions It was estimated that about 75 percent of the radiation from fission products was due to the radiostrontium radiobarium and the rare earths Table 2 shows the various radioelements that were calculated to be in the urine at Day 1 as compared with Day 82 Probably radioiodine is the only isotope that they absorbed that exceeded the MPC level By 82 days you will note that these activities had diminished to practically zero These people were able to excrete this material very rapidly Table 2 Estimated body burden of Rongelap people # IC Activity at Activity at Day l Day 82 Sr89 1 6-2 2 0 19 80140 0 34 - 2 7 0 021 Rare Earth Group 0 - 1 2 0 03 1131 in thyroid gland 6 4 - 11 2 0 0 Rul03 0 - 0 013 -- Ca45 0-0 019 0 0 Fessile Material 0 - 0 016 m 0 0 Digitized by Google 101 SESSION 111 Now I would like to take a minute or two on the thyroid dose because the thyroid situation turned out to be one of the most difficult problems we had to face io these people The thyroid dose is usually calculated on the percent uptake of the radioiodines by the thyroid gland the half-life in the gland the size of the gland and the various isotopes to which the thyroid is exposed In the fallout we have iodine 31 132 133 and 135 Quite a few isotopes are involved most of which are very short-lived - the iodine-131 having the longest halflife The earliest direct measurements were made by Payne Harris at Los Alamos on 15-day urine By using this indirect approach from the urine it was calculated that at that time about one-tenth of one percent was still being excreted and this extrapolated back gave about 11 2 microcuries in the thyroid gland originally This represented about 160 rads of radiation to the adult gland plus the whole-body exposure of course In the children it was a different story because of the smaller size of the glands James at Lawrence Laboratory Reference 11 has calculated for us that the children probably received in the range of 700 to 1400 rads to the thyroid gland It was decided that the beta irradiation of the neck which produced beta burns as shown in Figure 4 did not contribute significantly to the thyroid dose in view of the superficial nature of the beta radiation Figure 4 Beto burns of neck subject No 39 Morch 1954 The area over the thyroid was o frequent site of burns From R Conard -------- Harris Payne- unpublished data Digitized by Google 102 DASA 2019-2 To go on with the story people were evacuated by destroyer some by plane two days after the accident and were taken down to Kwajalein Atoll where we had a large Navy base We arrived on the scene about eight days after the accident to carry out the extensive examinations When they arrived they were quite contaminated particularly their hair and we had great difficulty in getting them decontaminated Figure 5 shows the people out in the lagoon at Bikini with soap and detergents cleansing themselves In many cases we had to cut off their hair because of the coconut oil holding in contamination We had to take their clothes away from them and some of the women on Kwajalein gave clothes to the Marshallese women to wear It was quite a sight to see them walking around barefooted in Fifth Avenue types of clothing FREMONT-SMITH CONARD No pictures of that Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of that None of them died After the skin burns healed etc we moved them south to another island temporarily because Rongelap Island was too hot at that time for them to move back The Utirik people however were moved back during this period since Utirik Island had a very low degree f contamination • Figure 5 Morshollese bathing in lagoon at Kwajolein in Morch 1954 to decontaminate skin and hair ofter fallout contamination From R Conard Digitized by Google SESSION 111 103 In 1957 surveys of Rongelap showed that the Island was safe then for the return of the people even though it still had a low level of contamination Figure 6 shows the new village that was constructed for them which is far superior to the village they previously had FREMONT-SMITH Did they like it CONARD They liked it very much FREMONT-SMITH This is unusual isn't it to have people like something that's been made for them CONARD They had a hand in planning it FREMONT-SMITH That makes the difference CONARD Yes Now to go on In regard to the lingering radioactive contamination of Rongelap we have carried out extensive studies of the radio-ecological situation and I may say more about this tomorrow Later I may also comment· on some of the psychological reactions to receiving compensation from the U S Government about $11 000 per exposed person Figure 6 Rongelap village today From R Conard Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 104 for injuries sustained add This has made them very happy I might DUNHAM What do they buy with that money CONARD Motor boats things that they get out of the SearsRoebuck Catalogue and other things We 're just hoping that they are going to spend it wisely So far they haven't gone too wild with the spending DUNHAM Does each one have an account CONARD The Bank of America came in there and they have deposited their money there in most cases In a few cases they wouldn't put their money in the bank but a lot of them are living off the interest of their bank accounts WOLFE When we tried to go out there with the ecological group the Commissioner was very greatly disturbed for fear we would break up their way of life I don't know of any better way to break it up than to give each one of them $11 000 to buy motor boats and things like that CONARD It was being broken up before that though The onslaught of Western civilization was rapidly coming into these islands and in the other islands it's also evident-not just in Rongelap where they have this money You can see signs of advancing changes due to American influence all the time I would now like to discuss the acute effects of exposure on these people first the whole-body gamma penetrating radiation effects Just to refresh your minds you will remember that human beings respond with various syndromes of effects related to dose received See Figure 7 The most acute syndrome of course is called the central nervous system syndrome as depicted in the upper left-hand part associated with doses greater than 3000 and 4000 rads Predominantly one sees ataxia and disorientation signs of brain involvement and life is indeed very short for these people Then with smaller exposure above about 1000 or 1500 rads we have the gastrointestinal syndrome so named because signs of nausea vomiting diarrhea and dehydration related to the gastro-intestinal tract dominate and the individual usually dies within a matter of four to nine days from acute dehydration and other effects The bone marrow syndrome Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 105 RADIATION SYNDROMES 20 000 ltl 11 COMA CONVU SIONS DEATH GASJBOINJESDNAL 10 000 w NAUSEAW DE• VOMITING DIARRHEA '' DEHYOU zw 0 o HEMATOLOGICAL HEMORRHAGE POSSIBLE ANEMIA FECTION DEATH I 000 I w o0 500 200 BONE MARROW NEUTROPENIA THROMBOCYTOPENA 1 111 1 1' 1ir 11 1 2 3 10 ------wEEl S _ _4_ _ _ _5YEARS_ Figure 7 Radiation syndromes schematic presentation From R Conard Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 106 or the hematological syndrome is that which occurs following doses in what we call the lethal range Of course we really don't know what the lethal range is for man but it is guessed roughly to be between 250 and 450 rads Owing to the effect on bone marrow the reduction in the blood cells results in infections and the development of bleeding results from the blood platelet depression and death may result Then of course if there is recovery from these acute effects there is the possibility of delayed effects of radiation occurring such as leukemia cancer and many other possible late effects MILLER I just wanted to mention that the figure makes no mention of cataracts the intrauterine effects of radiation and the possible genetic effects CONARD It isn't meant to include organ effects only the major syndromes FREMONT-SMITH It also doesn't say anything about the central nervous system effects of low level radiation which you remember the Russians had always claimed were so and which we have always denied until we recently confirmed it at the Naval Radiological Laboratory CONARD All these syndromes overlap and there are many effects in each of them FREMONT-SMITH I wonder whether there is anything in this group of people in terms of behavior which show that they had any of the low level radiation effects on the central nervous system which apparently at the level of complex behavior patterns conditioned reflexes and so forth are now recognized to be so CONARD We did not observe any Frank and at that time we didn't go into sensitive means of testing this sort of thing We had many more important considerations We didn't know whether they were going to live or die or whether we were going to have to request a hospital ship to take care of them and that sort of thing FREMONT-SMITH existed Yes And at the time we were also denying it CONARD We weren't Digitized by Google SESSION 111 107 FREMONT-SMITH I mean as a government we were CONARD Yes Figure 8 shows the characteristics of the hematological syndrome with nausea and vomiting occurring early followed by rapid depression of blood elements resulting in a critical period at the nadir where infection and bleeding may be serious results Hopefully then the bone marrow will start producing sufficient blood cells to bring about survival if not death will ensue In the case of the Marshallese they suffered from the early effects of radiation Three-quarters of them became anorexic lost their appetites some of them vomited and a few had diarrhea This occurred over the first two-day period and cleared up after that When they arrived at Kwajalein they seemed to be perfectly healthy The Japanese fishermen also went through an early period of fatigue headache and anorexia nausea and so forth EISENBUD I think there's one interesting point which also seemed incredible to Wright but the first dispatch that we got following the evacuation reported that the natives were seasick and nauseous SCHEMATIC GRAPH SHOWING MAJOR BLOOD CHANGES AND CLINICAL SIGNS FOR RADIATION DOSES WHERE SURVIVAL IS POSSIBLE 2D0•600 RADS o-----------------------0 5 IO 15 20 25 30 35 40 DAYS AFTER EXPOSURE Figure 8 Schematic graph showi major blood cha es and clinical signs for radiation doses where survival is possible 200-600 rads From R Conard Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 108 CONARD Were seasick EISENBUD Were nauseous from seasickness CONARD Yes I think that was the original interpretation but it soon became apparent that none of the Alinginae the other group that received less exposure showed the sickness and since only the heavily exposed Rongelap group showed the sickness it was apparent that it was radiation-induced The blood elements showed considerable depression down to one-half and more below normal levels but fortunately they didn't get low enough in the Marshallese people to cause any real evidence of infection or bleeding we used no specific treatment and none of them showed any signs of acute radiation sickness as such In the case of the Japanese fishermen some of their blood elements dropped even lower than in the Marshallese indicating perhaps a higher dose in some of them But I would not say looking at the blood work that any of them received greater than 500 rad because the depression didn't seem to reach levels that would substantiate that EISENBUD What allowance can you make Bob for the fact that they received a dose over a 14-day period CONARD I agree that that certainly would moderate the effect But most of the dose that the Marshallese and the Japanese fishermen received occurred during the first 24 hours I would say over half of it and so it was really more in the acute type of exposure classification There was a slight weight loss in quite a few of the Marshallese people and we were not sure whether that was due to their radiation exposure or to the fact that they had a change of environment and were eating different types of food although they seemed to eat it with great relish The Japanese as I mentioned earlier were given multiple transfusions over a number of days soon after they arrived in Japan and shortly thereafter quite a few of them developed infectious hepatitis and jaundice and then of course one fisherman died in September It would seem to most of us in this field that his death was most likely due to the blood transfusions that he had received DUNHAM His peripheral blood picture just about returned to normal in July before he died The jaundice came on at about that time and he died with essentially a normal blood picture At least the total count was in the normal range Digitized by Google SESSION Ill CONARD 109 Yes that is so FREMONT-SMITH That would fit CONARD But the Japanese have made quite a bit over the fact that this liver disease might be radiation-induced which is not at all agreed to Now to turn to the skin lesions The Marshallese had symptoms of itching and burning during the first 24 to 48 hours This fallout material clung to the skin as a white frosty dust and it was very difficult to remove FREMONT-SMITH Do you know why it would cling to the skin Why was that CONARD As you know in this climate the perspiration made it cling and it got caked into the skin I think Ninety percent of the people developed these so-called beta burns beginning about two weeks after exposure These lesions were first characterized by pigmented skin increased pigmentation parchmentlike thickening of the skin and gradual desquamation the epithelial layer shed and a nonpigmented area was left beneath In some people the burns were deeper as evidenced in the next few figures Figure 9 shows one of the boys who wasn I t wearing much in the way of clothing and had multiple superficial lesions of the skin EISENBUD What's the time of this one Bob CONARD That was between two and three weeks weeks I believe About three DUNHAM April 16th CONARD That was quite a bit later many about two weeks after exposure These first appeared on Figure 10 shows 11 beta burns of the feet Figure 11 shows the loss of hair which occurred in about 90 percent of the children and 40 percent of the adults and which was usually spotty in nature There were usually beta burns on the scalp in the areas of the epilation Digitized by Google 110 DASA 2019-2 Figure 9 Numerous superificial ''beta burns of the skin of a young boy who was wearing little clothing at the time of the exposure From R Conard Courtesy Annals Int Med Figure 10 Beta burns of the feet From R Conard Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 111 Figure 11 Epilation in the temporal area of the scalp of a young girl From R Conard Courtesy Annals Int Med WARREN Is some of this because they slept on the sand without a pillow CONARD Since the epilation was distributed over the head no more so on the back of the head I don't think that this was a factor DOBSON Bob you spoke this morning about the caustic action of the fallout ls there any evidence that this played a significant role CONARD I think that it might have aggravated the burns It was caustic and we know that the caustic chemicals in combination with radiation will enhance the effects of radiation So it's entirely possible that this material did enhance the severity of the lesions DUNHAM There was nothing to see for ten days at all looked perfectly good CONARD Yes EISENBUD The skin We didn't see any erythema even Did anybody measure the pH of this material Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 112 CONARD Yes I think that's been done That's the reason it was declared to be highly alkaline It was incinerated coral calcium carbonate calcium oxide EISENBUD Excuse me I didn't see how it could have helped assuming it was calcined initially It was in intimate contact with water quite a long while before it actually fell out It would seem to me if it was calcined it would be hydroxide This is an interesting speculation and it's a really interesting point which I hadn't given much credence to I was hopeful that someone had done some work on this It's too late DUNHAM There are no notes by the medical personnel about skin lesions and for ten days after we got there we saw none EISENBUD The normal humidity of the atmosphere in that part of the world I should think would result in conversion of the oxide Apart from that this whole fireball sucks up enormous amounts of water which eventually cool the fireball and then there are rainfalls It just seems incredible to me that calcium oxide could persist for four hours in that atmosphere in this case seven hours but this is just speculation BUSTAD I think Chuck Dunham's point is quite a critical one in this case in that a radiation burn will show up after a considerable period of time during which there may be no manifestation of injury CONARD Yes This is characteristic of radiation burns that there's usually a lag after the burn before the lesion shows up as contrasted with thermal and chemical burns WARREN A chemical burn would come within a few hours 24 hours or so BUSTAD Yes except with radiation you may have had a transient erythema within a few hours In comparative studies on small pigs using beta particles we observed a transient redness which disappeared within the first 24 hours CONARD Yes This was true of the Japanese fishermen too BUSTAD In the light-colored swine injury would be manifested in 14 to 2 1 days • Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 113 TAYLOR Are there any other examples of beta burns to human beings besides the Bikini ones CONARD Yes there are quite a few TAYLOR Are these reactor accidents CONARD Beta burns have been reported in persons carelessly handling fission products Reference 12 and from exposure to other radioactive sources References 13 and 14 LANGHAM There are hundreds and hundreds of examples of burns of human skin DUNHAM Lowry had a case They have been reported by dermatologists and cancer therapists EISENBUD Could I ask one question about this lye calcium silicate DONALDSON No Isn't coral There's very little silicon It's calcium carbonate WARREN You might have flakes of calcium oxide or hydroxide which could burn a moist skin but a very dilute lime water has been used as a soothing solution for burns CONARD There are about 15 cases in the Rongelap people that still show some residual pigmentation and scarring as a result of the burns The Japanese fishermen had some rather severe beta burns particularly on the hand with which they were handling the fish lines between the thumb and the index finger One area that was heavily involved was on the crown of the head They frequently wear a handkerchief around their head and the crown of the head was exposed The belt line was a frequent site of involvement See Reference 15 BRUES Dr Tsuzuki told us that the older fishermen had more damage to the skin of the head because in general they didn't wash their hair as often as the younger fishermen did CONARD That's interesting Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 114 From the Marshallese experience we learned about certain factors that influence the development of beta burns The Americans on Rongerik recognized the danger of the fallout and immediately went indoors in their Butler buildings They took showers and changed clothes As a result their skin exposure and internal exposure was minimal compared to the Rongelapese The older Rongelap people who stayed indoors and others who went wading and swimming had fewer skin burns A single layer of cotton clothing was proved to be sufficient to protect the skin The internal absorption of the radioactive materials produced no acute effects that we could observe They had three millicuries of fission products that were calculated to be in their gut but this produced no effect that we could see Probably the strontium and radioiodine are the most serious of the radioisotopes that are present in this acute fallout situation DOBSON Excuse me Bob they had in the gut How many millicuries did you estimate CONARD Three DOBSON Three CONARD Yes three TAYLOR Was that probably by inhalation CONARD Mostly ingestion The particle size of the fallout was too large for optimum absorption into the alveoli of the lungs UPTON Do you wish to imply that there were not depressing effects on the marrow from internal contamination Bob CONARD Yes I feel that's true since I think it was calculated that the dose over the whole period of time that the Marshallese received to their bones was in the order of several rads-something of that nature UPTON Surprising FREMONT-SMITH Why does it surprise you Digitized by Google 115 SESSION 111 UPTON I've been apparently laboring under a wrong impression for many years that the internal dose to the marrow was higher than you say it is Bob TAYLOR Is that from concentration of strontium-90 in plants UPTON Just total fission product intake· from one source or another EISENBUD Are you talking specifically in these cases or in general UPTON No the Rongelap cases WARREN They weren't there right along to eat local food or get exposed internally CONARD The actual body burdens of strontium-90 that had accumulated over years for the Rongelap people amount to about 5 percent of the MPC for adults and ten percent for children EISENBUD The Japanese fishermen lived at sea for 14 days in very intimate contact with fallout It's quite a remarkable thing that Koboyama had I believe when he died 2 millicuries of strontium90 per gram of calcium in his bones which is about 20 percent of what children have today I mean it's a small dose I think that one of the comforting things that came out of this experience is that the human body in close contact with surface contamination apparently has better defenses than we had anticipated against absorption of at least the less soluble components · Now the iodine did get in as Bob indicated CONARD We felt very encouraged about the whole internal situation To be honest with you we were misled We felt that the internal situation was far less of a hazard than any of the others and of course we still do but we certainly did underestimate the hazard of the absorption of radioiodines as you'll see in a few minutes when I get into that aspect of it WARREN Wouldn't the radioiodine be in gaseous form and inhaled rather than ingested and wouldn't that be why the concentration could have been higher l'IJ-'82 0 • o •9 Digitized by Google 116 DASA 2019-2 CONARD They must have inhaled some from the cloud as it passed over but the majority of the radioiodine absorbed probably came through contaminated drinking water since it rained the night of the fallout Moreover the people were on water rationing everyone receiving about a pint a day including the children So most of it was in the drinking water WARREN Yes It would be scrubbed out in the rain CONRAD So during the years the Marshallese people have remained generally in good health and we have not seen any illnesses or any deaths that we could directly relate to the radiation effects except for the thyroid situation which I will come to shortly and the one death in the case of the Japanese fishermen They have been healthy over the years As far as mortality is concerned 15 deaths have occurred among the 84 in the most heavily exposed group which represent about 13 per thousand and this is compared to aboot 8 per thousand in the Marshall Is lands as a whole So we do have some increase in mortality but whether this is significant in such small numbers it is difficult to say We have a greater number of older people in the original Rongelap group also As far as malignancy is concerned there have been two cases of cancer in the exposed group plus one case of cancer of the thyroid So we have to keep an open mind as to whether we will eventually have an increased incidence of cancer Again the numbers are small As far as the skin is concerned the only late effect that we have noted in the Marshallese is in the appearance of moles benign nevi in the areas that were more heavily irradiated Figure 12 shows some of the moles that have developed in the case of one woman who had fairly clear ulcerations on the side of her neck early after fallout during the acute period Figure 13 shows residual scarring resulting from a severe beta burn '' of the ear Figure 14 shows a case of one of the Japanese fishermen I took this in Japan four years ago It shows an area of permanent alopecia The Marshallese hair all regrew except that in one case there was a slight alopecia but in the Japanese fishermen there are two cases that still show some degree of alopecia that is a permanent bald area from the radiation Some of the fishermen had beltline'' lesions with some degree of blood vessel dilatation telangiectasia Digitized by Google SESSION 111 117 Figure 12 Benign nevi moles that developed 8 years later in area of beta burns From R Conard Courtesy Annals Int Med Figure 13 Scarring of ear from beta burns 11 • From R Conard Figure 14 Permanent alopecia in Japanese fisherman From R Conard Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 118 Now a more serious finding in the Marshallese was that over the years the children particularly the boys exposed at less than 12 years of age have tended to be somewhat stunted in growth have shown some lag in growth and development Reference 16 We have carried out numerous growth measurements and x-rays for bone growth and so forth and this finding has become apparent Figure 15 shows a comparison of bone age in some of the males The dotted line represents the exposed males compared with the unexposed males on the left and on the right the females The base line represents the American standard The Marshallese tend to be somewhat smaller than American standards Shortly I'll have a little more to say about this lag in growth in the Rongelap children We have carried out blood work every year of course and Figure 16 shows that there's been a slight lag in complete recovery of the white count and platelet count up until about ll years after exposure The straight line represents the unexposed control population We have carried out numerous aging studies to see if we could detect any premature aging effects and we haven't seen anything along that line Life shortening has not been apparent in these people from this limited study Fertility based on birth rate has shown that about the same birth rate has existed in the exposed population as compared with the unexposed population They've had about 70 babies and these babies on the whole appear normal We haven't seen any greater incidence in the congenital defects in the babies of the Rongelap exposed as compared with the unexposed Whether there was an early sterility or not we do not know We did not test it of course It probably did occur during the early period The Japanese fishermen showed quite a drop in sperm count which lasted for three years but since that time they've had children repeatedly and recovered their sperm count During the first four years the exposed women showed some increase in miscarriages and stillbirths About 41 percent of the births during that period ended in nonviable babies compared with only 16 percent in the unexposed group Digitized by Google 119 SESSION Ill COMPARISON SKELETAL AGE ANO CHRONOLOGICAL AGE 196161962 POOLED DATA -••- EXPOSED --CONTROL -so u 0-2 3·5 •-• U 0-2 AGE AT EXPOSURE YRS Figure 15 Comparison of skeletal age and chronological age 1961 and 1962 pooled data From R Conard DEPRESSION OF BLOOD ELEMENTS IN RONGELAP PEOPLE PERCENT DEPRESSION COMPARED WITH AVERAGE COUNTS OF UNEXPOSED PEOPLE I 25 § 'o oi---- -- -- - - f _ -25 1- z ' -50 ' WHITE BLOOD CELLS AVERAGE COUNTS -75 PLATELETS AVERAGE COUNTS I 2550 6 I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 II 1-0AYS- -Mo - ----YEARS - - - - - - TIME AFTER FALLOUT Figure 16 Depression of blood elements in Rongelap people Percent depression compared with average counts of unexposed people From R Conard Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 120 Examination of the lens for possible opacities has not revealed any evidence of radiation-induced opacities of the lens Remember of course that the Marshallese didn't get neutron radiation which has a much higher RBE for opacity than gamma radiation We haven't carried out any specific studies of genetic effects particularly in view of the generally negative result of the studies of Neal and Schull Reference 17 and others in Japan I'm sure there must be an increase in the mutant pool of these people and we have seen evidence of chromosome damage in the peripheral blood cells We have cultured their blood and found an increase over the normal in the number of chromosomal aberrations FREMONT-SMITH CONARD Yes Were these persistent This was ten years after exposure FREMONT-SMITH You don't know what they were earlier CONARD We didn't test them earlier MILLER More than the Hiroshima survivors CONARD Yes I was going to say that also in the Hiroshima survivors and in the Japanese fishermen there's been a persisting increased level of chromosomal aberrations So I suppose we would have to expect that there are genetic mutations that exist in these people Perhaps Bill might say something about that FREMONT-SMITH At least in the blood cells CONARD Yes FREMONT-SMITH the genes We don't know whether they are operating in CONARD I should imagine there would be some increase in general somatic mutations FREMONT-SMITH All right tations I thought you meant the genetic mu- CONARD And also in the genetic Digitized by Google 121 SESSION Ill FREMONT-SMITH The genetic too EISENBUD What's known about consanguinity in this group CONARD This is a good point We've gone into that and it turns out that these people probably do have a somewhat greater degree of consanguinity than we do but in the exposed group we checked the number of first-cousin marriages and second-cousin marriages and this sort of thing and found that actually they had a lower rate of consanguineous marriage than occurred in a comparison population This also has bearing on growth and development because the children of consanguineous marriages are known to be somewhat retarded SCHULL It might also have a bearing on the finding of increased percentages of abortions If the latter reflects immunologic incompatibility between mother and fetus fewer abortions would be expected among the pregnancies of consanguineously married individuals than among those of unrelated spouses EISENBUD I don't see how they can get away from their cousins on a small island like that I don't think they are completely inbred Do they mix up much with the other islands CONARD Yes there's quite a bit of communication with other islands and people come in and bring in fresh blood Laughter FREMONT-SMITH You mean small transfusions Laughter ROOT I had heard that they had a low birth rate and that's why the custom of adopting other children into families had arisen CONARD It may be true from the point of view of infant mortality which up until more recently has been quite high but now we have brought in better medical care and so forth and the infant mortality is greatly reduced But they do adopt children too Now I would like to discuss the most serious finding in the Marshallese that is the development of the thyroid abnormalities Until 1963 we had thought that these people had normal thyroid glands We had already detected this lag in growth and development in exposed boys and we really didn't have any explanation for it We carried out numerous thyroid tests and so-called PBI protein-bound iodine tests of the blood which are good indications ofthyroid activity Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 122 and we found them to be normal However since that time as an aside we have discovered that these people have a peculiar protein in the blood an iodoprotein which is quite high and no doubt gave us false levels of the PBI readings earlier and this may have thrown us off the track DUNHAM It is true of all Marshall Islanders CONARD Yes DUNHAM I see CONARD Four years ago we first noted a thyroid nodule in a 12year-old girl and since that time there have been increasing numbers of these abnormalities until now we have 19 cases of thyroid abnormalities 17 people with nodules and two boys with completely nonfunctioning glands that is a hypothyroid situation References 9 18 19 WARREN Myxedema CONARD They had signs of myxedema yes most dwarfed boys in the village FREMONT-SMITH never developed They were the two Were these thyroids that were destroyed or CONARD Presumably destroyed FREMONT-SMITH How old were they CONARD They were at the age of 15 to 18 months which seems to be a critical age for children FREMONT-SMITH When they were exposed CONARD Yes MILLER Was there any other child ir that age range at the time of exposure CONARD There were several in the one-to-three years of age range Digitized by Google 123 SESSION Ill ROOT They would be closer to the ground radiation and would get a bigger dose wouldn't they-in addition to the fact that the organ itself is smaller They would be at the level of the most intense radiation CONARD That's true That probably increased their whole body dose somewhat but this would be negligible compared to the increase in the absorption of radioiodines into their glands and that is the biggest factor by far In other words 700 to 1400 rad radiation came from radioiodine absorbed compared to only 175 of whole-body radiation and if you want to assume that the children were getting a little more you might increase it to 200 or so ROOT They would be crawling around at the age of 15 months probably CONARD Yes FREMONT-SMITH Would their thyroids be in a stage of development where they would absorb a greater percentage from a given dose of iodine CONARD I think it's assumed that their glands absorb as much as the adult but being smaller the same dose is distributed in a smaller gland FREMONT-SMITH Right were absorbing more CONARD Right So this means per gram of gland they They were getting a higher dose BRUES Is there also a possibility that the thyroid in these children would be close enough to the skin that the beta dose would be greater or at least would be appreciable while not as appreciable in the adult CONARD We didn't feel that that was the case Austin because the beta radiation was so soft that it was attenuated in only less than a milliliter of the skin CASARETT Bob were these nodules appearing in relation to the onset of pubescence in most of these cases Could the pubescence period and the endocrine disturbance associated with it be a stimulating factor in the production of nodules at the time they did appear Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 124 which is apparently about ten years after the exposures for the first case CONARD That's right I think that's very likely to be the case that most of these children were going into adolescence and there was a greater requirement perhaps on the thyroid due to increased metabolism and this could put a greater strain on the thyroid and then they began showing the effects of a hypothyroid state Table 3 shows the distribution of cases R represents Rongelap A Alinginae U Utirik and C control Here in the first four groups we have children less than ten years of age You will notice that in the Rongelap exposed group there were 19 children that received a gamma dose of 17 5 and a thyroid dose of 714 to 1400 rads We found on the last survey another thyroid nodule so we have 84 percent instead of 78 9 The incidence in the Alinginae group-six children none Utirik-40 children none and the control children61 none In the Rongelap adults there were three nodules in the 36 The Alinginae adults had one nodule which was not typical of the other radiation-induced cases You can see that in the other populations there was only a small percentage of nodules and most of these were in older people which appears to be a normal incidence Table 3 Thyroid nodules including hypothyroidism in Marshallese populations Age Group At Exposure Estimated Thyroid Gamma No in Group Dose rads Dose I rads % Thyroid Nodules R 10 19 175 700 - 1400 84 2 A 10 6 69 275 - 550 0 0 u 10 40 14 110 0 0 C 10 61 0 0 0 0 R 10 36 175 160 5 5 A 10 8 69 55 12 5 u 10 59 14 15 3 4 C 10 133 0 0 2 3 55 - R Rongelap A Ailingnae U Utirik C Unexposed Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 125 Eleven cases were operated on nine children and two adults Figure 17 shows the nodules at surgery Note the hemorrhagic nodules It turned out at surgery that practically all of these glands had multiple nodules whereas at the clinical examination we had only been able to feel one or two at surgery in most cases the glands were pretty well shot with nodules FREMONT-SMITH Does this mean that a lot of other cases where you didn't feel anything also probably had multiple invisible nodules CONARD Yes it's quite possible that we were unable to palpate minute nodules in some cases I can't deny that FREMONT-SMITH Yes CONARD Figure 18 shows one of the glands in one of the children that was sliced up just to show you the consistent nature the multiple nature of these nodular changes in the gland WARREN Is that pigment or extravasated blood CONARD A lot of that is hemorrhagic blood pigment The histological examination of these nodules showed that they were all benign they were of the type usually seen with iodine deficiency but of course we know that on Rongelap there's no iodine deficiency The iodine level in the foods is normal and the urinary excretion of iodine checked in quite a few of these people has been within the normal range Furthermore we don't know of any goitrogenic foods on the Island The evidence seems overwhelming that this is a radiationinduced phenomenon in these people There was one case in a 40-year-old woman in which the nodule was malignant Now one can argue that this may be just a normal occurrence A lot of people believe that cancer of the thyroid is not easily produced by radiation exposure but certainly in a small group like this heavily-exposed one it has to be considered as a possibility anyway MILLER You said that there is overwhelming evidence that this is radiation-induced You didn't mention yet that part of this evidence is observations made in other radiation-exposed groups CONARD Yes that is certainly true Digitized by Google 126 DASA 2019-2 Figure 17 Benign thyroid nodules at surgery Arrows 00int to nodules From R Conard Figure 18 Sectioned thyroid gland showing multinodular cystic and hemorrhagic nature of the gland The nodules were benign From R Conard Courtesy New England J Med Digitized by Google 127 SESSION Ill MILLER Which others show it CONARD Which other examples you mean from the literature MILLER Right CONARD Numerous animal studies have shown the causative relationship of radiation of the thyroid with later development of both nodules and malignancy References 19 and 20 This also applies to radioiodine References 21 and 22 Also examples in human therapy include patients particularly children treated with radioiodine for hyperthyroidism which have been shown to later develop nodules Reference 23 MILLER Then external radiation also has had some effect CONARD External radiation certainly in children A causal relation of irradiation of the neck region in infants and later development of thyroid cancer and nodules has been clearly demonstrated References 24 and 2 5 There appears to be an increased incidence of thyroid carcinoma in inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki exposed to radiation from the atomic bomb explosions Reference 26 TAYLOR Was this given for diagnostic purposes CONARD Radioiodine was given for treatment of hyperthyroidism to destroy part of the gland DUNHAM Big doses CONARD Yes It takes about 10 000 rad to successfully treat hyperthyroid conditions whereas in some cases to ablate the thyroid gland such as in angina pectoris heart disease they use doses of 50 000 to 70 000 rad to the thyroid gland to destroy it We haven't seen any recurrence of cancer in this one Marshallese case She's had complete surgical and radioiodine ablation of her gland Now the correlation of the development of these thyroid abnormalities and the growth retardation in children has become increasingly clear These children in recent years have shown more and more evidence of reduced activity of the gland and as I said the two Digitized by Google 128 DASA 2019-2 dwarfed boys that were four years behind in growth and development show a definite correlation there So beginning two years ago it was decided that we should treat all of these exposed people with thyroid hormone in the hope of reducing further development of nodules to prevent cancer and hopefully give an increased growth rate in those children that had shown the lag Figure 19 shows the skeletal age development of the two boys that were most dwarfed You can see that at the time of thyroid hormone therapy institution there was an almost immediate spurt in growth We hope that in the next survey we will see increased growth rate in other children as a response to the treatment with the thyroid hormone We are having difficulties getting these people to take their daily tablets They just don't seem to want to do it I was very disappointed when I returned from the last survey to find that the blood levels of the thyroid hormone in the affected children were quite low which meant that a lot of them were not taking the drug So we have a real problem getting them to take the drug for the rest of their lives particularly the children DOBSON Bob in your earlier discussion of these patients did I understand you to say that you are differentiating among different iodine-carrying proteins in the blood 15 ---- ----- ------r------ ------ SKELETAL AGE DEVELOPMENT SUBJECTS •3 AND •5 In a w 12 • w C J I- MEOIAN CURVE UNEXPOSED BOYS 9 w J w en 6 #5 a 1 --- ----6 _ 3 3 6 9 12 15 CHRONOLOGICAL AGE YEARS Figure 19 Skeletal age development before and after hormone therapy in two boys showing greatest growth retardation From R Conard Courtesy Anna Is Int Med Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 129 CONARD Yes We've done considerable work on the different protein-binding levels of the different blood proteins BUSTAD On the basis of our work with radioiodine in animals and also a fairly extensive review of human data I would not have predicted nor can I find very many people that would predict that you would see frank hypothyroidism with 1400 rads from radioiodine and 175 r from gamma exposure DUNHAM Have you kept any animal ten years BUSTAD Yes In fact we have fed sheep radioiodine for 11 years every day of their life MILLER These were little sheep BUSTAD Yes they were exposed in utero since their mothers were fed radioiodine In the cases of the Marshallese children their dose was an acute one at a sensitive time but since the calculated dose appears insufficient to cause hypothyroidism I'm wondering if there could have been two or three times the thyroid dose in some children Maybe they drank more water or maybe a few children licked themselves and contaminated objects around them and realized significantly higher exposure I have difficulty getting three times as much which I would say might be the minimum exposure from radioiodine which would result in frank hyperthyroidism I would like some reaction to this FREMONT-SMITH Is this potentially a species difference BUSTAD I think generally the acute ablating dose for most animals is very nearly the same In an adult person it's reported to be about 30 000 rads which is similar to that we have observed in sheep FREMONT-SMITH Many other experiences with animals show that you do get species differences of various kinds and therefore prediction from several species of animals that you have used doesn't apply to humans UPTON How about Sol Michaelson's work George in dogs CASARETT That work Reference 27 bears out the fact that external radiation with x rays will cause hypofunction of thyroid myxe- Digitized by Google 130 DASA 2019-2 dema with much lower radiation doses than those required fi om internally administered radioiodine After 2 000 rads of x rays to thyroid the myxedema appears in about a year With reduction of x ray dose the time taken for the myxedema to develop in dogs increases in a manner indicating a slower progression of the underlying mechanism at lower doses There is a possibility that radiation from external sources in addition to the internal radioiodine may have contributed to the thyroid changes in the children in question BUSTAD That was my next point I think that 200 r or 300 r is not an insignificant amount from the standpoint of thyroid damage These children probably received a considerably more effective dose per rad from external gamma to the thyroid than from 1131 and there is some substantiation for this from animal data And if I can then stretch a point and say Well it's five times more effective •• UPTON because of dose rate or dose distribution within the gland BUSTAD Yes I think there are at least two things that contribute to this In order to get the same equivalent rad to the thyroid from I 131 you have a much lower dose rate because it's extended over many days With the total body radiation it was a sudden thing over a matter probably six or eight hours In any case it was very acute The other thing is that a lot more than thyroid tissue was affected following external gamma exposure With the radioiodine however the periphery of the thyroid gland is probably receiving 25 percent of the dose at the center of the gland while in the case of external irradiation the entire thyroid gland is being uniformly irradiated as are the contiguous structures I think this too is important The other thing that is worthy of note is that in Dr Hempleman's studies Reference 28 which I briefly discussed during our first meeting he noted a high incidence group of about 268 children who were irradiated early in life anteriorly and posteriorly for total doses of 200 to 600 R or more Of the 268 there were 20 that manifested thyroid neoplasms Half of these were cancers It's interesting to me to note that in your Marshallese group Bob Dr Conard the children manifested no cancer only thyroid adenomas Reference 29 This was also the pattern in our sheep studies We had one fibrosarcoma and one adenosarcoma and 30 or more adenomas and this pattern of response has characterized most of the followup studies of the children who were exposed early in life to radioiodine That Digitized by Google 131 SESSION 111 is the e seems to be a higher proportion of cancer per total neoplasms than with the radioiodine studies but I'll admit there isn't always comparability and many of you could then say But we don't know how many of these who are still walking around may have adenomas We know that in adult populations there is a high incidence of thyroid adenomas in fact in those of you who are over 50 years old if we removed your thyroid if it isn't already removed we would probably find adenomas in half of you A study was done several years ago in which it was shown that half of the people over 50 had thyroid adenomas and most of them didn't know it and seemed none the worse for them The moral of the story is if you're going to have a neoplasm choose the thyroid FREMONT-SMITH Were any primates used in the experimental animals any monkeys which might be closer to man BUSTAD The only studies in the sub-human primates that I'm familiar with are those by Pickering Reference 30 and he was concerned mainly with the uptake in the very young-the fetal thyroid There have been no long-term studies with radioiodine in primates to my knowledge I think that most of the data that I've reviewed-and I think I have reviewed most of it in this field-certainly indicated to me the species that have been worked on • • • • FREMONT-SMITH But they're all lower species BUSTAD Well no was radioiodine given We've also looked at human cases where there FREMONT-SMITH Okay BUSTAD The effect is similar It will take an acute dose of 30 000 to 50 000 rads to ablate the thyroid of sheep Dr Goolden Reference 31 in England looking at a lot of human cases says it will take a comparable dose for a human adult There's one exception to this that some of you may bring up and that is the work of Dr John Garner now at Colorado State Univerisity Reference 32 who says that cattle thyroids are unusually resistant and may take over 100 000 rads In all of these cases a lower dose will cause hypothyroidism if you wait long enough WARREN The jack rabbit is susceptible too 3'3•792 0 • 70 • 10 Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 132 BUSTAD Yes CONARD Are you intimating that in the case of the Marshallese their gamma dose was probably significantly higher than we have calculated BUSTAD I'm only trying to generate ways these children may have had more radiation than was estimated In addition to you I've talked to many other people who have had association with it and they will admit that maybe it could have been something over 200 quite a bit over 200 possibly and then we have to admit that 1400 rad as a maximum may not be a true maximum depending on what the experience of these children was during this period I'm also worried a bit about the short-lived isotopes which can really contribute very heavily to a radiation dose and I'm speaking of iodine 135 and 133 The fact is they may contribute up to half or more especially in the early period MILLER You keep speaking of 30 000 r to ablate the thyroid in an adult how much is required in an animal one-month old BUSTAD I feel that-and this is partially intuition-it's possible to see hypothyroidism If you permit me to choose any animal and choose a certain dosage regimen I could produce it with maybe 5000 or 6000 rad in an animal that's very young providing you wait the ten years or so that Dr Dunham mentioned earlier MILLER There is a need to make a study in animals that duplicates the experience of these children BUSTAD Well I've discussed this with Dr Dunham some time ago and some of this is under way DUNHAM I think the point is well taken that it is a combination of internal and external BUSTAD That's right DUNHAM And in the other data it's either one or the other BUSTAD That's right And I feel strongly about this BRUES Ablation of the thyroid is a different matter as regards the production of adenomas You have to leave some tissue but remove enough so that the pituitary sees a thyroid deficiency and stimulates Digitized by Google SESSION 111 133 the thyroid cells that remain with thyroid-stimulating hormone So I would suppose that the adenomas would go through a maximum at some point In addition to that if with radioiodine as you have said Leo the irradiation of the thyroid is not homogeneous so that the outer layer gets less of a dose than the internal part there might remain a reservoir of cells on the periphery which would be stimulated by the pituitary response to hypothyroidism CONARD But we had two cases remember with ablation and with practically no thyroid function These glands are gone DUNHAM What's your evidence that there is ablation hypothyroid How hypo were they You said CONARD Their PBl's dropped to below 2 micrograms percent their glands were no longer palpable and their iodine uptake was nil I do not see how you could account for this ablation on the basis of the increased whole-body radiation since if the whole-body exposure had been increased by even a factor of two we would have seen considerably lower white counts than we did BUSTAD If you look back on these two boys can you really separate out the blood picture from say 150 r versus 250 r exposure CONARD I think so I think if they had had 250 rad we would have seen signs of infection or bleeding in these kids AYRES You said a while ago that the thyroids of these young children would absorb about the same amount of iodine as an adult but the glands were smaller Is that taken into account in the internal dosage calculation CONARD Yes This is what brings the child's dose up so much higher than the adult dose AYRES I just didn't notice BUSTAD A factor of ten BRUES In fact the ratio is better estimated than the absolute dose CONARD Perhaps Laughter Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 134 CONARD Figure 20 shows one of the boys with greatest growth retardation on the right standing beside his brother who is a year younger Shortly after this picture was taken we started the boy on thyroid hormone treatment Figure 21 shows the same stunted boy on the left before treatment and on the right a year later ROOT His features- the myxedema is gone CONARD Yes He's changed in appearance I hardly knew him when I saw him after treatment with the hormone We' 11 go on then to the chronic exposure from residual fallout I refer here to the period following the first few days of acute exposure In this situation we have low dose rate whole-body irradiation possibly some irradiation of the skin and internal absorption of some radioactive isotopes We know that chronic low dose exposure such as this will increase to some extent the incidence of leukemia and cancer of the skin and has been seen by radiologists over the years But we are in a region that we really know very little about in regard to human effects We get down into the region in which there is controversy over whether or not there is a linear dose effect relationship and whether or not there is a dose threshold for the effect In the case of the Marshallese at the time of their return to Rongelap Island there was a low level contamination consisting mainly of the radioisotopes cesiwn-137 strontiwn-90 and zinc-65 Though the body burdens were well below the MPC levels it has afforded us a unique opportunity to study the radioecological situation in the Marshallese Perhaps in your discussion tomorrow Lauren you might bring in a little bit more on this aspect of the thing DONALDSON Yes CONARD I find it extremely difficult to visualize what the situation will be during the aftermath of the atomic bomb I have tried to visualize the importance of residual fallout in this situation and I just can't give it too much emphasis To me if one survives the acute fallout situation the economic transportation and psychosocial problems will far outweigh the residual fallout problem in importance Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 135 4 Figure 20 At right a 12-year old boy with greatest growth retardation at left is his brother a year younger From R Conard Figure 21 Same boy with retarded growth as shown in Figure 20 at left before thyroid treatment and at right 6 months after treatment began From R Conard Digitized by Google 136 DASA 2019-2 UPTON Could I ask Bob about the dose rate at the time they were evacuated Suppose it had been impossible to get them out promptly Suppose one had waited a few days or a few weeks would the situation have been vastly different in the outcome CONARD There wouldn't have been as much difference as you might think The total dose would have been say around several hundred rads around 250 I believe it was if they had stayed on there DUNHAM And never left at all CONARD Yes ROOT ls it because of the short half-life of most of the elements that there would have been no appreciable increase with time CONARD It's due to the fact that the shorter-life elements are dying out and only the longer- life ones are left so that the radiation dose rate reduces with time and the dose rate would have been considerably less as time went on ROOT Like for instance if you have strontium-90 does the body take up as much as it can in the initial stages so the residual strontium90 doesn't have much effect CONARD You do reach a point of equilibrium with the environment that is provided the dietary source of strontium-90 remairis constant UPTON But the total dose wouldn't have been twice what it was had they remained indefinitely on the is land CONARD No not the whole-body dose TAYLOR Is that independent of strontium-90 concentration in the food that they eat I thought that that didn't really come up CONARD In the Marshallese the majority of the present body burden of strontium-90 is from their native dietary source after moving back to the island AYRES In the first few days the concentration of strontium-90 would have been very very tiny whereas ten years later it would have been a significant fraction of what was left Digitized by Google 137 SESSION Ill CONARD Relatively greater yes EISENBUD As a general rule as many of you know the dose rate goes down by a factor of 10 for every sevenfold increase in time The dose rate must have been down to about 10 percent of what it was when it started Had they stayed on then as you said it would have been a smaller figure something like 25 AYRES It's not true in the early hours when you're not at ground zero because of the delayed arrival UPTON But this is simply the external radiation This doesn't take account of continual recontamination by fission products in the environment The internal burden would presumably continue to increase DUNHAM Relatively speaking the strontium-90 is unimportant to begin with as Dr Ayres points out The amount of strontium-90 that they are now living with isn't very different from what it was when they left It was the material on the surface of the food that they might have eaten on the first two days that was important CONARD I think we should seriously consider the possible psychological reactions to the residual fallout situation It would be a great mistake if this hazard were overplayed It could cause psychological unrest and interfere seriously with realistically facing the recovery problems I think this point deserves serious consideration FREMONT-SMITH Also there would be a credibility lack if we made less of it than we should and it was then discovered that we had made less of it CONARD Yes that's true ROOT Could I have a word about the crab that was a staple in their diet I've heard two things one that the crabs ingest their own shells so they are forbidden as food and the other that they have disappeared entirely CONARD No they are still there They're reduced in number The coconut crab is quite a delicacy among the people DUNHAM It's not a staple it's a delicacy Digitized by Google 138 DASA 2019-2 CONARD They are very fond of it DUNHAM They say there's a distinction between this and a staple which is something they must have to live on-a main constituent in the diet Crab is a delicacy when they can get one CONARD These crabs have a concentration of 4000 to 5000 units of strontium-90 FREMONT-SMITH In their shells In their meat and their shells DONALDSON It's in their digestive gland It's characteristic of crustaceans to build up reserves of minerals to use at the time they molt and this then is translocated into the shell from the storage house in this case in the •• FREMONT-SMITH It stores minerals in its skeleton and then releases them when it's going to make a shell When the crab makes its new shell it takes it not from the skeleton but from the digested matter DONALDSON This translocation takes place in relatively short order One distinct difference between the coconut crab and the usual crustacean is that as soon as the crab finishes the molting process and the new shell is formed the crab eats the old shell and thus these minerals are returned to its body FREMONT-SMITH They eat what DONALDSON They eat the shell FREMONT-SMITH The old shell DONALDSON Yes FREMONT-SMITH So they don't lose anything DONALDSON So it preserves the materials and they go on perpetuating this process year after year This is a particular situation peculiar to the coconut crab It's not typical of crustaceans in general FREMONT-SMITH I'm sorry coconut crab does This eating the shell is what the Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 139 DONALDSON Yes AYRES Perhaps I may make a further remark about the relative importance of strontium-90 in this case as opposed to say a nuclear war Probably it's not important in the long run on Rongelap compared with the initial dose that people had but it might be important in the aftermath of a large number of nuclear weapons if you're talking about the region away from direct fallout CONARD You mean where it was involved immediately AYRES I'm not saying that the strontium-90 wruld be important when compared to the damage to the area of direct fallout but where local fallout didn't fall strontium-90 would be one of the most impor• tant things with which to cont end DUNHAM Are you talking about worldwide fallout AYRES Yes CONARD In the situation that we're talking about if you had a nuclear war aren't you going to have practically everybody involved and isn't the amount of strontium going to be trivial to the problems of transportation and all of the other problems that are going to exist AYRES I think probably so DE BOER We don't have to talk about an all-out nuclear war AYRES The point is that people tend to worry about the most important residual effect that affects them and in some parts of the world strontium-90 might be the most important residual effect In other parts not DUNHAM In other parts it might be something else AYRES Possibly In the areas more directly damaged it would be a relatively minor thing except very late again FREMONT-SMITH If people recovered from this damage then it would come in again AYRES Yes many years later Digitized by Google 140 DASA 2019-2 FREMONT-SMITH So the assumption is if you neglect it 1 you don't recover from the damage EISENBUD I think we should bear in mind that through a process of testing we have disseminated around the world a very sizable fraction of the total amount that would be produced in an all- out nuclear war Hasn't there been about 500 megatons of testing Let's say in nuclear war you talk about l 0 000 Now you've got a good tracer experiment You see you're up to maybe somewhere between l and 10 percent of what would be released If you increase the present level a hundredfold without creating a risk it would be significant compared to the social consequences of the bombings themselves in the immediacy AYRES That's just a few hundred megatons over a decade although most of it was concentrated over 3 or 4 years EISENBUD What's the difference It's all long-lived stuff DUNHAM We're talking about the late effect EISENBUD It doesn't matter It's undistributed AYRES Yes but the uptake phenomenon very much depends on the timing here EISENBUD For strontium-90 AYRES Uptake efficiency is much smaller for strontium-90 in the soil compared to uptake of strontium-90 from foliage If you have a lot in the atmosphere at one time you may get quite a considerable dose and of course it's stored in the bone EISEN BUD As I say it can increase about 100 You take the social consequence of the bombing themselves and the immediate consequences and compare that with the worldwide consequences of let's say for the sake of argument everybody having 500 picocuries of calcium I would say that the late effects would be a minor thing TAYLOR There's still one other case and that is when you consider strontium-90 in the region where there was heavy fallout but the people were protected let's say by fallout shelters The question is what is the remaining hazard then Let's say people are out of their sheltere after a month I don't know I'm really asking Is it clear that Digitized by Google SESSION 111 141 in such a case strontiwn-90 is the main source of radiation to these people CONARD I think it is It's probably the main hazard from a radiation point of view I still contend that this small selected group of people is going to be faced with many more problems that far outweigh possible contamination from strontium-90 AYRES I accept that but I wanted to bring out these points CONARD The last item I have here is protection survival and recovery measures I don't think I need to emphasize to this group the fact that taking shelter in either homes or basements or fallout shelters is quite protective I think that one might want to consider such things as the use of the stable isotopes perhaps strontium and particularly iodine during this acute period It only takes about three to four milligrams of iodine a day in the adult to suppress the absorption of the iodine uptake of the gland two to three milligrams in the case of children I don't think it would be unreasonable to have a little Lugol's solution potassium iodine available to add to the diet and perhaps stable strontiwn or calcium WARREN How much are we getting now in the salt At one time we had a lot of hypothyroidism and myxedema around the country and there was a drive to put increased iodine portions in the salt I think the Morton Salt Company has done that but I'm not certain FREMONT-SMITH They have store We do regularly In fact you buy it in the grocery WARREN Yes but is the iodine still added FREMONT-SMITH So it says You can't taste it but it says so CONARD It's a small amount a very small amount BUSTAD I would exercise caution I think in recommending stable strontium because I think the amounts that you would require to really affect the uptake would be toxic AYRES Any stable calcium would be just about as good wouldn't it CONARD That's right Digitized by Google 142 DASA 2019-2 WARREN •• because the strontium can only join if there is a gap in the calcium Do these people have milk Is there calcium in the coconut milk CONARD I'm not sure what the calcium content of coconut milk is but they certainly had no cow's milk and there were very few children that were nursing at that time WARREN Fish bones have some don't they Lauren bones have some calcium DONALDSON Fish Yes WARREN Don't they eat small fish total DONALDSON They eat the entire fish WARREN So this is one of the sources of their calcium You don't know whether they've got a calcium deficiency do you so that they sop up calcium CONARD We don't know that specifically WARREN This could vary from day to day CONARD We've done the strontium-calcium ratios in their urines and as I remember the calcium was within normal limits DUNHAM With all that coral dust blowing around the atolls there they can't be deficient in calcium DONALDSON There are several cyclic phenomena here One has to realize that the atolls are made up almost exclusively of calcium compounds There is a tremendous availability of calcium although most of it is not in soluble form There are noticeable deficiencies of some elements in the area particularly iron Thus some of the plants don't grow well because of the lack of this element On the other hand the natives' diets are geared to this type of envirorunent through survival patterns or whatever one wishes to call them One of the greatest sources of minerals in these diets beside the coconut crab which is a delicacy is the giant clam This clam also is a great filtering mechanism for the sea It tends to concentrate Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 143 its mineral requirements from the sea in not only the shell but particularly in the digestive gland People eating the entire organism are thus actually being supplied with the minerals they need The same is true if they are eating the fish they eat the entire fish Maybe you can say it's the Japanese influence but as part of their diet they will eat many of the algal groups and here again they have a good source of minerals I think one might comment that one of the things we have feared was that a nice handout would change their food habits appreciably- they are eating rice now and canned goods to a very great extent This new diet may have a much more specific effect upon them than some of the things we've been talking about in the context of radiation contamination FREMONT-SMITH Do you think their diet might become deficient now because of the canned goods CONARD I don't think so I think they're getting more protein now They eat canned salmon FREMONT-SMITH But what about minerals CONARD We haven't seen any real evidence of nutritional deficiency BRUES If I may quote from your most recent monograph Reference 9 the 1965 urine analyses showed around 100 milligrams of calcium per liter I suspect this is a little low rather than high CONARD I've forgotten exactly what it is MILLER The question was raised this morning as to whether or not radiation was singled out as a special horror when in fact it was not special Yet you have shown us that among the Marshallese there was no serious consequences from fallout at first but after 10 years a high proportion of children were found to have thyroid nodules and two of the children were very markedly dwarfed Why shouldn't there be fear then about radiation in particular These people had no control over it Exposure need not come from nuclear war in this instance it was a nuclear accident As Dr de Boer said nuclear wars or nuclear weapons now may be more limited in their effect more limited in their areas of influence where perhaps fallout will be a serious consequence But even if it is not the fear among the people may be deep and widespread Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 144 TAYLOR I would like to ask two questions that are related to a possible lesson from the Bikini experiences that might apply to a nuclear war situation One can certainly visualize circwnstances in which there is heavy fallout in an area and there are shelters of some kind available but in the process of getting into the shelters people are subjected to some amount of fallout The question is how important is it likely to be that they decontaminate themselves to get rid of any surface activitiy that is clinging to them that is gamma radioactive Is there any estimate of what fraction of the total body dose the natives got that was due to gamma emitters that was in the white ash that stuck to their bodies and would follow them into the shelter if they had gone to one CONARD It was a very small proportion Usually they say the beta-gamma ratio is about 100 to 1 so they were getting about 100 times more beta radiation on the skin than they were from the gamma TAYLOR So the necessary decontamination would be to get rid of the source of beta burns CONARD Yes AYRES Is this 100 to l ratio based on specific studies CONARD I think this is just a general statement from my understanding of it AYRES Well I've heard numbers like that but the only pertinent research I am aware of was done by Steve Brown Reference 33 at SRI about two years ago It suggests rather smaller ratios more like 25 to 50 to 1 CONARD I've heard that it's controversial I'm sure AYRES They have actually taken the fission spectrwn and done detailed calculations for the first time to my knowledge CONARD But even so that's quite a ratio AYRES Yes It's a useful number WARREN I wouldn't like to leave the impression that I think it's unnecessary I think the precaution •••• Digitized by Google SESSION 111 145 TAYLOR Assuming it is very hard to get this stuff off the question is how important really in a major disaster situation would it be to get the stuff off I get the impression it wouldn't be terribly important-that people would get beta burns but that these really are not terribly serious anyway CONARD They can be serious but it's fairly easy to decontaminate the skin Even with a damp cloth you can probably wipe enough fallout material off so that you won't get a burn BUSTAD I wouldn't sell beta burns short They are very irritating at least that's what my pigs told me Furthermore there is a long latency for the development of skin cancers I would also point out although it may not be very significant that iodine may be readily absorbed through damp skin The radioiodine in case of fallout originates from tellurium in the fallout I would recall for you that we can obtain our requirements for iodine if we just rub tincture of iodine on our skin We '11 get enough that way to satisfy our demands FREMONT-SMITH there You mean all over or just a little bit here and BUSTAD No you don't have to rub it all over WARREN Well in the mass casualty situation you wouldn't want to have to supply all of the materials ointments and bandages to protect the skin while it was breaking down and if you could eliminate this from the consideration it would be worth doing TAYLOR It sounds like a difficult job CONARD To get it completely de ontaminated It was very difficult in the Marshallese but I'm sure they would never have developed any further skin burns if we had gotten it off completely FREMONT-SMITH Baths may not be available in a disaster area for everybody There may not be that much uncontaminated water to use WARREN Some did go into the ocean and were less contaminated FREMONT-SMITH But we 're not all staying close to the ocean Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 146 WARREN I mean in their case have showers FREMONT-SMITH Exactly shower water Of course all the shelters will I said there wouldn't be enough DUNHAM You know the problem is a little like the flash burns in Japan What clothing is worn makes a little difference WARREN Yes EISENBUD I think it's awfully hard to be adequately imaginative about these things and most of us I think have kind of insulated ourselves I used to think about it more than I have in recent years and it used to impress me Frankly I haven't thought about it recently but I think basically you've got to face the fact that you have a pretty high doctor-to-patient ratio You didn't have the complications of blast you had adequate food supplies you had adequate water supplies and you didn't have panic When I think of the kinds of interacting of medical and logistic problems that would arise in the event of a real nuclear war it seems to me that almost any type of injury would greatly lessen the chance of survival FREMONT-SMITH Absolutely EISENBUD It could be even a minor injury to a finger If a man has got to dig himself out of the rubble and has a broken finger he may not be able to get out and we haven't faced up to the fact that these things do interact in a way which is not only unpredictable but incalculable I don't know how to apply nwnbers to these things CONARD That's true You may have a severe leukopenia that develops and this in conjunction with a laceration or even with beta burns of the skin may result in serious infections from a tiny wound You may have a very serious situation FREMONT-SMITH A small infection then could be fatal EISENBUD That raises the question of what is the LD-50 in a populace exposed to mass bombing and I don't know whether you want to get into that or not FREMONT-SMITH How many assumptions do you have to make alternatively to try out that figure There are at least 10 or 15 Digitized by Google SESSION 111 147 separate sets of assumptions you can start off with and each one leads in a different direction I bring this out because in the very simple hypothetical situation we had in which only two counties in northern New York State were exposed to the bomb we couldn't settle down to really reach conclusions as to what we should do because there were different kinds of assumptions you could start off with which lead in different directions I think if we had a nuclear war it would not take very long to list 50 different things which would make what you were planning to do quite different EISENBUD Yes BRUES You have innumerable little judgments in the case of water If someone has a half-pint of water how much does he drink and how much does he wash off with FREMONT-SMITH Exactly BRUES And does he drink contaminated water or does he wash off with it or both EISENBUD May I take a poke at the government again in connection with this This was the first shot of that Castle series and it delayed the second shot It proved what a lot of people had suspected you can have massive fallout following a surface detonation of a megaton bomb Based on early very sketchy data collected by two or three individuals certain isodose curves were drawn which are at best approximations Those of us who have had the experience of actually measuring these fallout patterns from smaller weapons find that they are not quite so uniform that they tend to be amoeba-like and are harder to find There arose out of this experience the need for an experiment which would make it possible to get better approximations of the total amount of debris that falls out physical and chemical characteristics This wasn't done and as far as I know hasn't been done in any other subsequent explosions during the period when they were still testing in the Pacific I think that from the point of view of national security we are without information which is badly needed Now it's needed to simply answer questions It may be totally useless in the sense that there may not be even with the present information a satisfactory answer to all the complications of mass fallout and the way it would interact with blast ns-T12 o • 70 • 11 Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 148 DUNHAM There were a couple of heroic efforts One was to actually sample with rockets to find out what was coming down into the air shortly after the explosions but the rockets all failed or something went wrong There was also quite a lot of effort to collect stuff on barges and things The NRDL was involved in this EISENBUD When you say heroic what people were trying to do was slip things in Then you remember the way we laid 400 rafts and couldn't find them afterwards But this was all stuff that was done in a hurry trying to fit our requirements into a schedule that was already laid down and couldn't be changed DUNHAM One of the big problems was simply the old business of trying to guess where the wind is going to be if you're talking about surface collecting and they tried to get around that by a whole program of rockets Dr Alvin Graves of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and Dr Willard Libby then one of the AEC Commissioners were promoting this and it just fizzled I don't know what happened to the rockets but they never did get much data TAYLOR I think the reason that the experiment just is not done is there's no place to do it If what one wants is to fire a few megatons on the surface of the dry land somewhere where there isn't a lot of water involved the question is where do you do it BUSTAD You can do it in China Laughter EISENBUD Granted portant point AYRES And of course this is an extremely im- What is it that we don't know EISENBUD Would you want to set national policy based on a single set of observations which yielded data which at best were just scavenged AYRES Which types of data are you referring to specifically There's much more than one set of data on this TAYLOR Not a megaton AYRES There's a lot of kiloton data that's very different and some megaton data Reference 34 Digitized by Google 149 SESSION Ill DUNHAM It's still not known whether one-third or two-thirds comes down within several hundred miles of a megaton burst EISENBUD You can measure the doses and not have to reconstruct them AYRES The particle size distribution I believe is now much better understood than it was two years ago DE BOER This is an area you can't discuss very much because you get into classified information I think you' re really treading on thin ice now as far as that's concerned MILLER May I ask how many casualties there were in the Marshallese CONARD What do you mean by casualties MILLER That's what I want you to tell me FREMONT-SMITH You want to know how many there were or what do you mean by casualties WARREN It's the qualitative rather than the quantitative definition You mean some of their white counts fall and there's no other evidence and they are nauseated and some of them had beta burns and some didn't CONARD Almost all of these people were affected in some way FREMONT-SMITH 100 percent casualties MILLER Yes among the Marshallese But then there were casualties in Japan Dr Donaldson has told us that the mother of one of his students was a casualty and Dr Schull has told us about a mother and daughter from Osaka whose fears caused them to seek medical advice and who were I suppose psychological casualties And there may have been many more but these were just a few we happened to hear about I am wondering if perhaps there were not mass casualties as a result of the Bikini experience One must think of the people around the world especially those in Japan who were casualties medically economically and or psychologically Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 150 CONARD Well in this small population we were not able to observe any casualties other than those produced by the radiation effects There was nothing that I would classify as psychological casualty As far as their relationship with the other Marshallese people and this sort of thing is concerned we were not able to observe anything unusual MILLER No My point was that the casualties may not be limited to the Marshall Islands UPTON There has been a thyroidectomy hasn't there CONARD Eleven people have been operated on 11 surgical cases FREMONT-SMITH Do they count as casualties CONARD I just don't know what definition to give UPTON How did they react to their experience Would you say this has been a source of distress Has it been disconcerting CONARD Several have come up to me in the last survey and said Can't you find a nodule so that I go to the United States and get operated on Laughter l FREMONT-SMITH The mass casualties are all those who haven't been able to go to the United States MILLER As I said before my point is that the casualties may not have been limited to the area of fallout They may have occurred in Japan affected indirectly by the fallout by economic troubles by suicide by other psychological disturbances and by the uproar in general That was my point-that there really may have been many more casualties than one can count in the area of the Marshall Islands FREMONT-SMITH And the whole of Europe was disturbed and had a different reaction toward the U S and that's a major casualty ROOT Yes That's a grievous psychosocial effect WARREN There's another generally insidious casualty which affects all levels of government To mayors supervisors governors and on up Civil Defense has fallen flat on its face on the basis that it's impossible to meet the situation which we don't think is going to happen Digitized by Google SESSION 111 151 anyway It would cost a lot of money and trouble so we're not going to do anything about it until we have to FREMONT-SMITH Yes WARREN That puts us in a very vulnerable situation There was a general participation and training up to about 1955 that could have provided a fairly competent protection in the possibility of warfare affecting the United States But now there exists nothing that is much more than a paper organization very poorly supported and not wellunderstood or known FREMONT-SMITH This was the psychological casualty wasn't it WARREN This was the psychological casualty FREMONT-SMITH Of the whole country WARREN There's a group of assistant professors who know nothing about World War II and still less about atomic warfare They have a kind of vague apprehension They would like to know more and they are beginning to work on it Of course there's a very small group that is willing to work on it The rest of them think it's a horrible thing We must stop all war 11 This is a nice goal but we haven't gotten very far on that goal yet FREMONT-SMITH Not quite WARREN This is really where we run into trouble in the long run How do we bring this situation to a focus and how do we deal with it In our culture and history it seems to me to lead eventually to a war because our people will eventually get sick and tired of the harassment and impasse of cold and hot partial wars and atomic war blackmail Earlier I heard this very often from audiences A prominent businessman and other leaders in the community will stand up before four or five hundred people and say Well if it's that bad let's get it over with while we're ahead Why are we waiting around Let's go and do it now 11 FREMONT-SMITH You remember Staff the conference that we attended We had a group of steel people from Pittsburgh and on the first day of the conference that was their attitude Digitized by Google 152 DASA 2019-2 WARREN Yes FREMONT-SMITH ''If it's that bad we'd better damm well have it quickly before everybody else can do it We didn't end up with that mood but I think it is not an uncommon attitude and there are even some people saying this in Washington today BRUES Another way of dealing with the frustration is with drugs I wonder how much of the current drug usage is FREMONT-SMITH You mean we give drugs to Washington BRUES Perhaps we should Laughterl FREMONT-SMITH Excuse me sorry tect people You mean drugs to pro- BRUES I mean how much of this business is another reaction to this same frustration ROOT You mean LSD BRUES For instance ROOT Yes Drugs are one way to deal with frustration I think so very strongly You listen to the flower children talk-the bomb is coming and we've got to get out I know one group that's really setting up a colony in the Amazon They've got it all figured out that the Southern Hemisphere will get less fallout Behind this kind of there is no tomorrow philosophy is very much the feeling that they have been betrayed there's nothing they can trust The only true experience is Now In that sense we have lost a very serious war in that we are losing an increasing percentage of our youth FREMONT-SMITH That's what I meant by the gap between the adult population and those who don't trust anybody over 30 Most of us are over 30 and so we can't be trusted BRUES The ones over 30 have the other irrational way of dealing with it which is to have it over with FREMONT-SMITH Yes Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 153 UPTON Before we get too far away from the Marshall Islander I find it really quite intriguing that a population can be dusted can develop burns can be moved off their home island can see their children stunted can develop thyroid tumors and can accept this philosophically without great emotional upheaval FREMONT-SMITH Have they really understood it UPTON Yes I would be interested in asking Bob to say a little more about how this situation was explained to them in the beginning FREMONT-SMITH If ever UPTON Do they really understand its implications Do they worry about a recurrence for instance What do they think about it all CONARD Well it's really hard to know They have sort of the Oriental viewpoint on things and they are a very phlegmatic type of people Their reaction to this whole thing has been very calm and collected They have accepted things as they have arisen Moving them to another island to live they took it in their stride These people move around from island to island very readily anyway They like to go over to Utirik or some of the islands to see other members of their families that are living there It's nothing unusual In the old days they used the outrigger canoes to go by family to the island and now they use the interisland cargo ship the copra ship They crowd on the decks of that and camp there FREMONT-SMITH Have there been any anthropological studies made by Orientally-oriented anthropologists who might understand them a Rorschach test for the Marshallese people CONARD No sir not that I know of FREMONT-SMITH I think this is the only way one could get an answer because one doesn't know what has been repressed in this so-called phlegmatic attitude Our Negroes were also very phlegmatic and something unphlegmatic seems to be coming to the surface now CONARD They certainly don't have any of the headhunting aspects that I had been led to believe existed when I went out there I haven't seen it Digitized by Google 154 DASA 2019-2 EISENBUD I spent quite a while on various of the islands in 1956 This was two years after the event and there were tests in progress then I guess-the Red Wing exercises There certainly wasn't any official apprehension on the part of any of the natives In fact I think I spent one night on Utirik on an expedition They were all very friendly and pleasant and somewhat excited by all that was going on WARREN Historically they've had to worry about food and typhoons and drought and invasion by other peoples not the least of which is the colonizing groups-the Japanese and now the Americans While they probably have some radios and they hear a lot they don't really have control over their situation and yet don't want to change it or do anything about it I'm reminded about the time in our culture when tuberculosis and fatalities from lobar pneumonia were just accepted as being unfortunate If the old man got kicked by a horse had a broken leg and laid around and couldn't do the farm work well this was part of life It was just tragic It wasn't all right but it was acceptable We're not in this culture today nor in that frame of mind We've got miracle drugs and we've been told about all of the advantages and the wonderful life etc Our young people don't see it our way They haven't been raised in a family where members died at inopportune times nor have they lived in a general population which was close to the bare subsistence level Also I think I remarked last time that our people came West with a gun and always had a gun handy and knew something about Indian fighting and predators of various sorts human and others We haven't had these experiences recently and a certain amount of self-reliance has now been lost FREMONT-SMITH Do you mean we can't use the Marshallese experience very well to extrapolate what will happen in the Midwest after an atomic war WARREN Bob has just indicated that people adjust and I think we would adjust to whatever happens What else is there to do You've got to eat every day and sleep AYRES It's interesting there's a difference between our culture and the Oriental We believe deep down that we can change our surroundings WARREN Yes Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 155 AYRES In that we do not differ from our ancestors who went West with guns We still believe we can change the Vietnamese and that somehow we're going to make democrats out of them We wouldn't be here if we didn't believe we can have some effect on our own country But the Marshallese don't believe they can have any influence on their surroundings and that's probably why they accept things like this These are just Deus machina CONARD As Staff pointed out these people do show some of the characteristics of stoicism and the rigors of a hard previous life They never celebrate a birthday for instance until a child is one year old because they're so used to them dying before they reach that age They don't accept them as human beings before that WARREN That would save them some trouble wouldn't it CONARD And the older people are all set aside You're old now We'll give you some rice or something and you take care of yourself 11 But they love the children MILLER Isn't there another feature They are in an isolated place under American control and no one can reach them to inflame them or to pattern their thinking as in Hiroshima DUNHAM People go down there from time to time and try to stir them up but they don't get very far CONARD They got stirred up as far as to institute a suit against the United States Government They tried to sue the American Government for something like $40 million -There were several lawyers that got into the case and tried to push the thing for them but that fell through EISENBUD They've had several missionaries down there UPTON Do they wonder why you're coming back every year CONARD Yes For a long time for the first six or eight years they were puzzled because we would tell them at the end of the examination Well we find that everything is fine that you're doing fine 11 Then they would say Well why do you have to come back and take our blood and examine us again if everything is fine 11 This is very difficult to explain to a naive group of people like that But we did the best we could We told them that we wanted to be sure that something might not develop They accepted it gradually and over the years now Digitized by Google 156 I think they look forward to our coming out friends DASA 2019-2 We consider them our UPTON You speak of mobility Have a number of them moved away Have you lost any of the population CONARD They have only moved to islands that are readily accessible to us The Paris'' of the Marshall Islands is Ebeye which is an island just next to Kwajalein where a large number of Marshallese work for the government We have a big Nike-Zeus testing station there AYRES Relative to what you have been saying in the present conversation so far of course nothing serious has happened They've had these nodules but they are not very obvious What do you imagine would happen if something fairly visible occurred let's say a skin cancer or one of these beta burn lesions and you came out and made quite a fuss about it Do you anticipate some very serious psychological reactions building up CONARD I think they have the capacity to become emotionally upset about these things They showed some degree of homesickness for instance when they were on the other island they were temporarily living on Then the word got around falsely by the health aide that none of the women were going to be able to have children again and this caused quite a bit of furor and concern until we were able to reas sure them FREMONT-SMITH How did they show this Just in statements CONARD I got the word indirectly They didn't come to me with this but I heard that the health aide had told all the women that they were not going to be able to have any more children Of course this was a very bad state of affairs and we got all the people together and talked to them and explained that this was not the case FREMONT-SMITH The crew on the destroyer I was on were all sure they were going to be impotent until I explained to them that the one thing they would not be was impotent Digitized by Google 157 SESSION Ill IMPLICATIONS FOR DEFENSE POLICIES TAYLOR I would like to point out what I think is a deeply significant difference between a psychological reaction of the Marshall Islanders and people particularly in the United States who might become involved in even a limited sort of nuclear war To the Marshallese apparently this was some kind of fairly important but not overwhelming catastrophe which just suddenly happened We have conditioned ourselves as a country for twenty years now to a state of mind that says when nuclear war breaks out all is lost The whole idea of massive deterrence is built around the idea-it was built around the concept of making the war as bad as possible and therefore avoiding it I think it's really clear from many things that have happened and many things that haven't happened that it's our national policy not to accept as a working premise any kind of a nuclear war FREMONT-SMITH That's right TAYLOR Therefore if it does happen even in a limited way it seems to me there's going to be a very deep psychological fact of life that will lead to a reaction to disaster which would be very different from the characteristic human reaction to disaster that is to rise to the occasion and do the best that one can There will be a feeling of hopelessness that we have built up very carefully and thoroughly and almost studiously over many many years AYRES I could add to that A lot of civil defense planning is predicated on the assumption that people will cooperate with agencies of the government and with its appointed representatives in an emergency Yet privately I worry that if a nuclear war occurs because of this conditioning that you speak of one possible reaction is a great intensification of the kind of distrust that we've been talking about They really did us in this time Now we can't believe a word they say Lynch them hang them from the nearest lamp-post Don't follow directions They're just leading us down a garden path MILLET I'm interested in this apparent preoccupation with the anti-missile defense which seems to be one of the things we are struggling with Russia about most of all right now with the possible exception of Vietnam Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 158 If it is a true assumption that we 're going ahead to increase our anti-missile defense potential it would seem to me that any attempt to make any kind of recommendation would have to be focused around that possibility This looks as though perhaps the tide might be turning away from this assumption of absolute disaster toward the possibility of some kind of defense and it isn't clear as far as The Times or other public media information states whether the orientation of this defense system is primarily anti--Russian or primarily anti-Chinese TAYLOR Hasn't it been called primarily anti-Chinese by the Secretary of Defense It seems to me that was fairly definitely said MILLET Yes it has been said I think but TAYLOR So far as the real reasons for going ahead with that decision are concerned I think there's one interesting development that hasn't happened yet that will help reveal what was really in some people's minds in making that decision and that is the decision with respect to fallout shelters MILLET Yes TAYLOR Curiously in the recent decision to go ahead with the small ABM whatever one wants to call it I've seen no mention of any kind about any civil defense measures associated with that dec1s1on It's always been coupled in the past but this time it was not The question is why MILLET I was coming to that point in a sense I was thinking that if we assume that this is going to be the policy then this would seem like a great opportunity for public works possibilities for putting a lot of people to work to build appropriately distanced shelters to take care of a lot of people TAYLOR The difficulty is that other few billion dollars which have not been mentioned so far as part of this decision to spend $5 billion on this active part of the defense This would be an unpopular thing to promote Digitized by Google SESSION 111 159 FREMONT-SMITH Do we have to consider the fact that we are just prior to election year The policy is going to be influenced as much by the oncoming election as it is by national security perhaps TAYLOR I'm surprised the fallout shelter issue has not been brought up again ROOT Would this indicate that the distribution of anti-ballistic missiles had been worked out in a way that makes fallout shelter unnecessary TAYLOR I don't see how because no one I think is arguing that any ballistic missile defense system against any threat will be perfect therefore there will be some leakage If there really is an attack there will be some exposures on some U S cities This will simply cut down the number There's a huge difference in the number of casualties that would result from let's say a single explosion I mean this works pretty well if there's only one explosion in one city The difference between the casualties with some kind of a recovery plan and fallout shelters and no such plan is a factor between 10 and 100 in the number of people that would be killed FREMONT-SMITH Do you think it's possible that those who are responsible for making policies are well aware of the fact that the public is not going to respond to the fallout shelter issue that the whole thing has gone down and that they just hesitate to propose a plan which is tied to a fallout shelter system I think it would be very hard to get Congress to vote vigorously for fallout shelters now unless there was a much • AYRES The presumption is that the Defense Department wants ABM ROOT Yes Given the credibility gap it seems more like a trial balloon to test public reaction DE BOER If one looks at the development right now I feel that the United States and Russia whether they have agreed in principle both know that in an all-out attack between the two big powers they would destroy each other Let us consider China or other potential sources and this feeling of security and certainty fades away rather fast Our Goverrunent does consider this a threat since we are planning a defense system But what worries me is how we will retaliate when provoked by China or even more sinister by an unknown source such as was Digitized by Google 160 DASA 2019-2 pointed out to us by Dr Taylor yesterday Will there be mass hysteria if part of New York or San Francisco blows up and will there be a cry for all-out retaliation Retaliation in what What are our plans under these circumstances How much weaponry shall be used in order to retaliate against China and if we have these plans what is eventually coming back to us in terms of fallout TAYLOR On Russia DE BOER Or on ourselves as far as I'm concerned Do we have any plans of this nature I don't think we have I think it ' s worthy of consideration in terms of an open forum whether these plans are here officially or not officially AYRES As long as you're speaking of China a lot of people believe that the Russians are probably building their ABM system because they're worrying about China DE BOER As Dr Taylor mentioned yesterday it does not have to be China There are other sources quite capable Are we ready to make up our minds as to how to proceed Also fallout has to be considered if China attacks Russia alone FREMONT-SMITH And you put this out very effectively about if we don't know How DE BOER The question is how much of our strength is necessary to subdue the enemy It is easily done if one knows the threat Even in the case of Russia we have enough weapons TAYLOR Not if we don't know who did it Kill everybody Who do we go and hit DE BCER We'll have an idea as to where it comes from-from the east or the west TAYLOR All of a sudden a bomb goes off in New York It went off because somebody put it into the basement of somebody's house HEMLER I say it doesn't have to come in by ICBM to go off WARREN It can come in on a ship in the harbor and go off in the harbor Digitized by Google SESSION 111 161 TAYLOR Off a ship in the harbor on to a truck and wherever they want to put it DE BOER Let's think about it now This is the very point may even have to do something about it now We WARREN That was the argument FREMONT-SMITH We can't possibly get a record if everybody talks at once which is natural for us to do under the excitement WARREN I wondered when this came out whether this wasn't part of the cold war effort by China to have us thinking a bit more about the situation blackmail They have relatively few weapons and trying it risking our uncertainties and unwillingness to really retaliate might very well be the case Could we stop a couple of them with our defense missiles which might settle the matter without our getting grievous injury We might not get involved but they're not going to send them in clouds for a long time they haven't got the potential yet AYRES I don't see that they have any such intention They haven't even attacked Quemoy Yet everyone seems to agree that China is a great threat TAYLOR There's no reason that I can see that we are taking any kind of comfort in the notion that they just have two or three They've already exploded a little stockpile ROOT As far as the unknown threat is concerned we know which nations have the capability TAYLOR Ninety-six nations at least ROOT Have already tested TAYLOR No no Have the capability ROOT But they won't send it over until they have tried it out and we'll know when they test Anybody with an Atoms for Peace Program has the capability TAYLOR There are 96 countries with an Atoms for Peace Program That's what I mean Digitized by Google 162 DASA 2019-2 ROOT I would not think you could anticipate the delivery of a hydrogen bomb from a country that had not already tested We know Great Britain is no threat to us It would be either Russia or China TAYLOR The fission bomb is a different story delivered by anybody That could be ROOT Yes BRUES I think the timing is another question It seems to me that at least in our public statement-I don't know about our inside knowledge-we have consistently underestimated the rate at which the development would be made in other places FREMONT-SMITH Yes every time ROOT The lag has always been less than we have given them FREMONT-SMITH That's right WARREN You can't tell whether it's a fishing expedition They may know a good deal more but they made the charge and then see what happens when they get a rebuttal more information comes from it The trouble is we've got all kinds of activities at different levels that we do not know about FREMONT-SMITH We don't know perhaps about each other UPTON You mentioned some American personnel on an island nearby there Are data available on relative degrees of contamination in comparison with the ground level in these groups I myself am wondering to what extent sheltering was effective under those conditions CONARD Well they were certainly quite effective from the point of view of the skin contamination and the internal absorption of materials UPTON And the thyroids were not particularly hot CONARD We didn't examine the thyroids from that point of view originally We didn't suspect that they would have any thyroid accumulations at that point But the American servicemen definitely had Digitized by Google 163 SESSION Ill fewer skin lesions and lower body burdens of radionuclides However their gamma exposure was probably more in line with what you would expect from the amount of fallout that occurred on the Island UPTON Let's assume hypothetically that one could have been able to predict that contamination on Rongelap and to send warning to the natives there In absence of a shelter could they have done anything under the circumstances CONARD I can't see how they could have done anything to avoid the whole-body gamma exposure EISENBUD They could have gone to sea in their canoes CONARD They don't have eno lgh boats to get the population to sea EISENBUD Even if they stood in the lagoon for several hours this would help DONALDSON Yes DUNHAM They came back and walked in it and got it on the backs of their feet and got the skin burns They would have to stay there until they were removed EISENBUD You wo lld cut down the external gamma dose considerably by just going out in those outriggers CONARD What are you going to tell them on the radio ''Everybody go out in the lagoon and stay there Or what FREMONT-SMITH Exactly Eat fish EISENBUD I don't think you could do it without advance preparation But to answer Art's question I think there are things that could be done CONARD You mean with some advance planning EISENBUD Yes CONARD I thought he meant under the circumstances as they existed in the village then If we had contact with them is there anything that we could have told them to do to protect themselves Is that what you mean 3'13-181 0 • 10 • 12 Digitized by Google DASA 2019-2 164 UPTON Yes WARREN How long did the white ash fall CONARD About 12 hours WARREN So they couldn't have been standing neck deep in the lagoon for 12 hours CONARD under water No They would have had to hold their breath and go UPTON Because one may imagine that the best preparations are not likely to be made in the event of such a thing in the future one may have to improvise in every case WARREN So you have to have the knowledge to know what to improvise for FREMONT-SMITH You would have to have about seven improvisation plans depending on what actually happens WARREN Yes UPTON We know that reactors are going to blow up from time to time They will be localized events What does one do in a case like that EISENBUD It's an altogether different problem Arthur don't blow up This is a misconception UPTCN They Well take Wind Scale EISENBUD Wind Scale didn't blow up You said there was great fatality in the event I'll let you take literary license with it What happened was that the lighting failed and the fuel began to burn and it went out over the countryside That's generally the type of accident you could expect With the melt-down of fuel and the release of the volatile constituents unless we are awfully wrong-and I don't see how we could be at this late date-the only exposure would be to the radioiodine BUSTAD Possibly the cesium Digitized by Google SESSION 111 165 EISENBUD Yes and the radioiodine problem would be greatly potentiated in areas where there are crops and forage and dairy cows This is manageable in a variety of ways But I don't think the problem is anything like what you would have from a nuclear weapon I've often thought that the singie thing a person could do in a metropolis in the event of an attack assuming that the weather conditions permit it would be to get in a small boat-and the smaller the better-and get out in the middle of a lake and just stay there DUNHAM With an umbrella Laughter EISENBUD Well you would get your beta burns in that situation and you could probably take care of that too If the Japanese had been on a larger boat they all probably would have died One thing that saved the Japanese was that it was a small boat and they were not in the middle of an infinite plane If they were the dose could have been as much as three times higher DONALDSON It rained a great deal too EISENBUD If there are not too many other boats there of course you might get by SPEAR There are lots of ways in which you can help yourself WARREN As Ralph says there are lots of ways in which you can help yourself You can get under a roof that is fairly high and the wooden building would get you some attenuation EISENBUD We're not considering mass evacuations blast fire and things like that CONARD I might say another word or two about the treatment aspects Of course we know that under the best of hospital conditions we can save a person from two or three times the LD-50 dose perhaps by giving him very careful attention with blood transfusions platelet concentrations and perhaps white cell concentrations the use of antibiotics and by maintaining fluid balance and so forth But it really takes quite a hospital staff to take care of even one serious radiation casualty So this sort of thing would be out of the question during the time of nuclear warfare I think the best we could hope for is to stock up on the antibiotics and perhaps plasma and have these things located at strategic areas for use Digitized by Google 166 DASA 2019-2 AYRES It's also important not to waste them on the worst cases CONARD Yes AYRES How do you manage that Our normal peacetime philosophy is always to give most attention to the most serious cases CONARD How are you going to get the laymen to decide whether this case is fatal or not without any blood count or any other means AYRES I'm asking CONARD You could go somewhat on the degree of symptoms of nausea and vomiting that occur early If that is very severe and prolonged then you could suspect that survival would not be likely AYRES Doesn't it seem reasonable to have simple pamphlets or instructions giving a kind of range of symptons that it's worthwhile using these supplies for CONARD In general if a person survives two weeks in a fallout shelter and then gets sick he's a pretty good candidate for antibiotic treatment AYRES In other words perhaps the first rule would be Don't use them at all for two weeks CONARD Yes DE BOER I think you are ahead of the game What you are talking about simply is not there yet Sure we can talk about those things around this table but before we can reach a reasonable consensus of opinion millions of dollars have to be spent The points I like to make are How do we create public interest in these matters without causing mass hysteria And let me tell you public interest is a must if we want support How do we set priorities The priorities must be not only relevant to biology and medicine but more important relevant to our national goals Is it more important to have better hardware going to the Moon Venus or Mars or hardware for a war to be fought in the future than to have some fundamental knowledge about what to do today in a case of emergency DUNHAM These space programs are still peanuts compared to the Vietnam War I think your Civil Defense right now is competing like everybody else with the Vietnam War I think it's as simple as that Digitized by Google SESSION Ill 167 DE BOER I don't necessarily agree with you on that The Vietnam War costs us a lot of money true and there may even be an argument whether it is a worthwhile cause or not But we are selling ourselves short if we let the Vietnam conflict be the reason that stands in our way of making progress which eventually may save our skins The entire expenditure of the DOD cannot be laid on the doorsteps of the Vietnam conflict For a true cost of that conflict one would need an economic analyst The facts are 1 We are in Vietnam 2 We need to know more about how to defend ourselves when attacked with nuclear weapons 3 We do not have a sound and well-thought-out priority system-a defense system based on the best this country has to offer Indeed we argue we compete and work hard but not on the real issues FREMONT-SMITH Supposing that the Vietnam War was stopped tomorrow is there any likelihood-and I think it's highly unlikely-that the money which is now being used for the Vietnam War would be used for Civil Defense I don't think it would be at all I think it would be used for a variety of other useful things but I think it would take a tremendous something a change in attitude to get any significant use of money for Civil Defense whether there's a Vietnam War or not TAYLOR I think that change is taking place and this is independent of whether the end of the Vietnam War comes and the change is simply a transition from a state in which we are able to rely on stable deterrents to a new world in which we can't FREMONT-SMITH In which there are no deterrents that we can rely on TAYLOR There's beginning to be a sort of awakening in this country FREMONT-SMITH Have you seen some signs of this TAYLOR Yes by all means More and more people are concerned about criminals using nuclear explosives for all kinds of uses in which it is not necessary for them to identify themselves to serve their purposes The material is becoming much more available The combination of these things is making it much more rational to imagine some kind of even very limited use of nuclear explosives for violent purposes As soon as that begins to be a really understood threat • Digitized by Google 168 DASA 2019-2 FREMONT-SMITH Since it's been used once TAYLOR then the whole situation will change will happen certainly within two years I think that ROOT I remember after the release of the Bravo information there was a great fear that nuclear weapons might be brought in secretly A lot of regulations were passed for tightened inspection The FBI issued directives about examining all luggage coming into the country and they gave specifications a gun bore so many inches across was the tip-off I haven't heard anything about them since TAYLOR I don't think they are enforced I 've gone to some pains to try to imagine how on this last trip I would have brought in 6 kilograms of plutonium What people forget is that the important part is plutonium and u 235 as far as what's not generally available is concerned Depending on what it is that one is trying to put together requirements can range from material that is available down the street to material which is very difficult to design and there's everything in between WARREN May I go back to one thing we just touched lightly on and that is this problem of the triage A person gets bad burns and lethal rads yet he won't die for a week and so on We had a big push in Civil Defense and in the Atomic Energy Commission for dosimeters I can remember a very serious conference on this in which people began to really face the situation and it was agreed that you couldn't do this After that there was a general let down on these dosimeters all around There are good ones there are stable ones FREMONT-SMITH It would be too disturbing for people to know about that or for anybody else to know that they were already dead WARREN That's right that you have to deal with This psychological factor is something FREMONT-SMITH It's somewhat the same thing if you are in a shelter and your neighbors come and want to get in and there isn't room for them which ones do you shoot I mean only the ones that are over 65 WARREN Yes tion It would be a good idea to re-examine the situa- Digitized by Google 169 SESSION Ill EISENBUD One of the things that bothers me having lived through this almost as long as you-I guess Stafford Warren has got two more years than I have and after 25 years that doesn't seem important because these wer exciting years-but I got into this field when we were thinking of one or two bombs air-delivered because you had to consider their effect on blast and so forth That was 1945 when we were talking about 20 kilotons delivered by a propeller aircraft In 1955 we were already talking about 20 megaton bombs delivered by jet aircraft By 1965 the ICBM systems on both sides were pretty well dispersed presumably by the hundreds maybe by the thousands I don't know Now we're talking about 1975 when we expect to have an anti-missile system employed and the impressive thing about this is that the technology has gotten to the point where you can even think of knocking a missile out of the air on about 10 minutes' notice or whatever it is It may be less and if the technology is that advanced then what are the delivery systems going to be like If the defense system has advanced to this point what are the delivery systems going to be like in 1975 when we see what has happened in the last 20 years ROOT Probably they'll all be obsolete We'll be using lasers Digitized by Google