IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023 - 17

colloquia. The military, on the other hand, wanted a
bomb for combat purposes. It emphasized secrecy,
security, and a strict hierarchy of authority. Instead of
the open sharing of ideas, it wanted an operational
structure with clearly defined compartmentalization
of tasks. " And then there were the medical doctors,
" marginally part of both communities but not fully
members of either. "
General Leslie Groves, who directed the Manhattan
Project, was particularly contemptuous of the
doctors and dismissive of the concerns they raised
about radiation exposure. Dr. Nolan traveled to Oak
Ridge, TN, USA, to give Groves the monitoring and
evacuation plans for the Trinity Test. After keeping
Nolan waiting for hours, Groves taunted, " What are
you, some kind of Hearst propagandist? " The General's
" single-minded preoccupation with security
and secrecy " meant that he did not want to approve
anything that would alert people to the military operation
being conducted at the test site, including the
need to evacuate people from areas that received
high radioactive fallout.
The first test of an atomic bomb, named the Trinity
Test by Robert Oppenheimer, took place on 16 July
1945, at the Alamogordo Bombing Range, 210 miles
south of Los Alamos. The biggest uncertainty about
the test was how meteorologic conditions would
affect the size of the area of radioactive fallout.
The military saw radiation exposure as a public
relations problem, not a medical one. The physicians
were continually frustrated by their inability to
convince the military about the dangers of radiation
but " there is considerable evidence to suggest that
the doctors were ever mindful of potential legal consequences
and careful to take precautions to protect
themselves and the military from future litigation. "
Time after time " a scientific mindset superseded a
medical one, " perhaps most egregiously in human
experiments on 18 patients secretly injected with
plutonium. A 1949 proposal to do " total-body irradiation
tests on prisoners with life sentences " was
rejected because " It is not very long since we got
through trying Germans for doing exactly that. "
Groves consistently minimized the impact of initial
and residual radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
because he " feared having to give an account
for what could justifiably be seen as an inhumane
and (illegal) form of combat, " akin to biological
or chemical warfare. This is one reason why Americans
did not offer medical care to hibakusha, the
March 2023
survivors of the bomb. To do so " would be acknowledging
moral responsibility for the plight of the
hibakusha in both cities. ...this was not something
Americans were willing to admit. " Atomic Doctors
painfully delineates the actions that flowed from that
allegiance: the shameful treatment of downwinders
exposed to radiation during the Trinity Test, the
destruction of the lives of Marshall Islanders, the callous
disregard for the health of enlisted personnel,
and the secrecy necessitated by lies about the long
term effects of radiation.
In the midst of this depressing narrative of moral
compromise is the edifying story of the Polish-born
British physicist Joseph Rotblat. Like other scientists
who were refugees from Europe, Rotblat was motivated
to work on the Manhattan Project because he
feared that Germany was going to develop atomic
weapons. But after Germany surrendered on 8 May
1945, only Rotblat walked away. Why did no one else
choose to leave? " This was a question he explored
with his colleagues both before and after the war.
'The most frequent reason' offered to Rotblat by his
Los Alamos colleagues was that of 'pure and simple
scientific curiosity-the strong urge to find out
whether the theoretical calculations and predictions
would come true.' Operating within the investigative
mentality of the scientific paradigm, the physicists
were thinking not so much about the wartime use
of a weapon as they were about the final outcome
of their intensive research, experimentation, and
theoretical predictions. " Or, as Robert Oppenheimer
observed, " the decision to use the bomb 'was
implicit in the project.' "
When asked about his work at Los Alamos, Dr.
Nolan always replied, " I delivered the babies. " He
hewed to the official justification for the use of the
bomb that it ended the war and saved American
lives. But his grandson suggests that he was deeply
troubled by his participation in these historic events.
" While in later years he occasionally gave interviews
and lectures about his wartime experiences, he was
notably reluctant to discuss his various roles. Even
close family members recall hearing very little about
his unique journey, and concerning some aspects of
experience-such as what he saw in Japan-virtually
nothing at all. One can only imagine the anguish
and psychological toll he endured from keeping hidden
and unspoken such life-changing experiences
for so long. " It is impossible to ignore the moral
injury this good physician sustained after years of
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023

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