Atomic soldiers: American victims of nuclear experiments

By Howard L. Rosenberg

"A timely and unsparing account of how U.S. nuclear test policies were guided and executed in the early years of the atomic age. At its most compelling, Atomic Soldiers tells what became of a man who... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807032107
• ISBN13: 9780807032107
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Using Military Guinea Pigs to Promote Nuclear Energy

In the introduction to this 1980 book, newspaper columnist Jack Anderson explains that after WWII, a vast peacetime atomic bureaucracy formed with the intention of using a massive public relations campaign to promote the idea of a nuclear utopia. Government bureaucrats used their fiefdoms to shroud everything in secrecy in order to hide nuclear wastes, radioactive seepages, reactor malfunctions and any other problems that might spoil the official ideal of a nuclear utopia. The central theme of this book is about the use of public relations, and suppression of dissenting scientific views, to diffuse growing fears about radioactivity and achieve a favorable public attitude toward atomic energy. Several hundred thousand military personnel were ordered by the Pentagon to participate in atomic bomb tests in the Marshall Islands and Nevada from 1946 to 1963 and to help clean up rubble in the bombed Japanese cities. Working with the AEC, the Pentagon's mission for the soldiers was to serve as indoctrination subjects in the effects of atomic warfare - to condition the troops not to fear radiation so that pentomic infantry divisions could safely attack through an area ravaged by an atomic weapon immediately after the blast. Pentagon literature was carefully designed to assure soldiers that there was no justification for concern about witnessing atomic bomb blasts at close range, that exposure to bomb radiation was no different from getting medical x-rays, that plain soap and water washes away all contamination, and to use normal first aid care for any skin burns. At Camp Desert Rock (also called Camp Mercury) in Nevada, following each indoctrination session, a team of the Pentagon's HumRRO psychologists and sociologists used questionnaires to determine the effectiveness of the indoctrinations. The soldiers' responses served as feedback for improving the effectiveness of the indoctrinations and Army training courses. Many years later, a statistically large number of these veterans developed various types of cancer. By 1956, survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were showing a marked excess of leukemia, and Dr. Linus Pauling predicted a rash of cancers and genetic injuries among Americans exposed to ionizing radiation from the fallout from hundreds of nuclear weapons tests. Several hundred "atomic veterans" have filed claims for entitlements from the VA, and some of their claims were approved for various reasons, but the VA never acknowledged that the veterans' illnesses are related to radiation exposure even though some soldiers` military health records showed evidence of service-related radiation-induced disease. Some atomic veterans have said that their military health records, or important portions of the records indicating service-related radiation exposure, mysteriously disappeared. The author notes that "the Feres Doctrine prohibits servicemen or their survivors from suing the government on grounds of negligence for injuries sustained while in the Arm