The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom

Above-ground nuclear bomb tests in Nevada after WW II made human guinea pigs of civilians living downwind in several western states, as later revealed by thousands of cases of radiation-induced cancer, childhood leukemia, burns and birth defects. In an expose of the government's decades-long policy of public deception concerning the hazards of radiation, Udall, secretary of the interior under JFK and LBJ and a former congressman from Arizona, condemns the U.S. nuclear testing program as a violation of the Nuremberg Code. He also describes his protracted struggle as a lawyer, beginning in 1979, representing the widows of Navajo uranium miners who developed cancer. Myths sustained by Cold War military competition have warped our national ethos, contends Udall. Disputing the popular belief that Manhattan Project scientists were locked in a desperate race against the Nazis, he summarizes evidence that Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Manhattan Project manager General Leslie Groves had ample indication that Hitler was not rushing to build an atomic bomb. In Udall's analysis, Stimson played the crucial role in the decision to incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a decision rubber-stamped by President Truman, whose advisers never presented to him the full range of war-ending options. The atomic bomb's existence, Udall maintains, may have even prolonged the war by influencing Stimson and Truman to ignore an opportunity to negotiate a Japanese surrender in May or June 1945. Udall ends this indictment by calling for a drastic reduction in government secrecy justified in the name of national security, an end to the continuing arms race and a redeployment of resources toward sustainable domestic and Third World development. (June) *PAPERBACKS