Radiation Secrecy and Censorship after Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Abstract

Although U.S. officials celebrated the powerful blast effects of the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945, they worked hard to censor information about the radiation. This article analyzes the diverse ways that civilian and military officials worked to contain knowledge about the radiation effects. The article also explores the reasons why the radiation deaths and other residual effects elicited such censorship attempts. In particular, American officials did not want the atomic bombs linked with chemical and biological warfare and some objected to radiological warfare. The article draws on numerous archives and manuscript collections, many little known, to underscore the context for the censorship activities as the war ended and the U.S. moved into a new kind of militarized peace.

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