In September of 1945, Manhattan Project scientists and U.S. Army officials returned to the Trinity site in south-central New Mexico, where just seven weeks earlier the atomic military age abruptly began. This time they invited the press.
Walking about in protective booties, they kicked at the twisted steel remnants of what had been a 100-foot steel tower. The point was twofold. First, let the press get a look at the place. Second, illustrate that radioactivity was not so bad-not only here in south-central New Mexico but, in particular, in Japan.
Indeed, the carefully constructed photo-op was less about the place where theory was first translated into practical effect than shaping public opinion in regard to the aftereffects of splitting the atom over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Doing so likely contributed to the end of one war, but another was just beginning. And this one involved the engineering of public opinion in regard to atomic weaponry and its unique effects beyond simply the scale of destruction.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was in attendance. So, too, was Army Major General Leslie Groves. It was one of the first instances in which the public glimpsed the curious juxtaposition of the porkpie wearing theoretical physicist and the no-nonsense military officer.
If one examines the photos closely another participant comes into focus: William L. Laurence. He was a New York Times reporter who, at the time, was on the government payroll, as well. He wrote press releases articulating the government narrative as well as front-page articles gracing the most esteemed newspaper in the country. It was a conflict of interest–not well specified publicly–that earned him a Pulitzer Prize.
(Oppenheimer, Laurence, and Groves, from left to right, at the center-front of the photo)
Oppenheimer led the scientific activities of the Manhattan Project. Groves was the military officer in charge of it all. And Laurence spearheaded the propaganda effort.
The irony is that the Trinity site was notably hot. Gamma radiation registered far beyond the natural background rate. There was scarce ground level radiation detected at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even judged relative to the standards of the day, meandering about Trinity entailed a non-significant risk of exposure to gamma radiation while seeking to convince the public that radioactivity in Japan was not a lingering hazard.
In another, more pernicious, regard, the Trinity photo-op contributed to the conflation of ground-level radioactivity and the pulse of gamma and neutron radiation surging through the survivors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. U.S. Army and War Department officials sought to convince the public that neither was a significant concern. They were wrong about the latter.
As the ash and smoke dissipated, and physicians began treating the grievously injured, it was not clear the extent to which illness and death at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were due to radiation versus the blast and thermal effects. But as the days turned into weeks it became evident some of the Hibakusha, the “atomic bombed,” illustrated radiation sickness and death. Under the direction of Groves and by the pen of Laurence, the Army vigorously contested the very idea of radiation injury, incurred in millionths of a second, as the devices detonated high above. And as the evidence continued to amass, the narrative twisted and turned as Army officials worked to downplay the issue.
Newly declassified documents suggest General Groves cast doubt upon the effects of exposure to ionizing radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki both in public statements and seated before congressional investigators, as well
As Fred Kaplan argues, such denial was rooted in more than simply the desire to put a positive spin on the issue but constituted “willful deception.” (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/oppenheimer-manhattan-project-radiation-atomic-bomb-declassified.html).
By the time it was clear that radiation effects were, indeed, arising, General Groves, and others, had already declared such things to be no more than “Japanese propaganda.” In turn, Groves painted himself into a corner. And as the evidence of radiation effects amassed, it meant he had to reverse his rhetorical position-or continue to deny that which was increasingly difficult to ignore.
Groves was caught in a material-discursive bind of his own making. In response, he elected to continue to downplay radiation effects in Japan.
His dilemma, at the time, is now our dilemma, however.
There is a strong tendency in late modernity towards a bind in relation to socio-technical risk: the hazards inherent to many materials and substances cannot be fully assessed in the laboratory and only become apparent as they are utilized in practice, but as socio-technical innovations prove useful, and profitable, powerful interest groups increasingly have incentives to contest evidence of injury that arises.
In turn, it is only through performative engagement that failures of foresight become evident, but this is often met with the organizational production of doubt, ignorance, and denial. The material-discursive bind is an expression of the difficulties endemic to conceptualizing the push and pull of human agency and nonhuman efficacy and force–except through practical engagement, which takes time.
The Material-Discursive Bind
Ulrich Beck articulates a situation akin to this bind in noting:
“Hazards which come into existence with the blessing of technological and state authority place authorities and policy-makers under the permanent compulsion to assert that these hazards do not exist, and to defend themselves against penetrating questions and evidence to the contrary.”
Science and technology are productive and, indeed, invaluable but create new dilemmas in which power shapes the character of the ensuing debate. Substances and materials whose effects mirror diseases already commonplace in society, evoke injury only over an extended period, and that are profitable or fulfill some instrumental end best illustrate the material-discursive bind.
Slow environmental violence therefore proliferates amid brilliant advances in science and technology as new-found dilemmas bedevil society. It is a difficult balancing act as the efficacy and force of matter becomes more discernable as it is entangled with instrumental human behavior which is itself called into question by the effects it evokes but is reticent to confront.
This erodes the public legitimacy of the state, corporations, science, and the law while evoking a more general sense of futility among the public. And amid the tension between recognition of risk over time versus the parochial interests of powerful societal actors who benefit from the activity but wish to hide the injurious consequences–the burden of proof of harm lies with those claiming to have been injured.
Indeed, the Hibakusha struggled for years to get the Japanese government, not to mention American authorities, to recognize their unique sacrifice. We now know they consistently illustrate an above background rate of a variety of cancers.
Thus began the era of nuclear denial in the days and weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And we have been wrestling with the confusing, conflated, tortured implications ever since.
For more information:
Robert J. Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: A Half Century of Denial (NY: Harper Collins, 1995).
Robert A. Jacobs, Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha (Yale University Press, 2002).
Charles Perrow, “Nuclear Denial: From Hiroshima to Fukushima,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 69(5), September, 2013.
Ulrich Beck, Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995).
Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).