Though the tragedies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unprecedented in their magnitude, it was criminal on the part of the United States to have chosen the two Japanese cities as ‘testing grounds” for one of the most destructive weapons in human history. The voices of the hibakusha, many of whom are still suffering from the effect of radiation, and the ruins conserved in Hiroshima Peace Museum are a stark reminder of this ugly chapter of history. In fact what has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 is the memory of what happened in the two Japanese cities more than seven decades ago. There is another lesser known and publicised side of the story.
Though much is known about the so-called Manhattan Project tasked to manufacture the deadly weapons with the fear that the US must make rapid progress before Nazi Germany became the first country to succeed, it transpired that the exercise of the choice was a terrible mistake for the US. Not much publicity has been given in this part of the world to the fact that the American Hispanics faced brutal discrimination and were the first victims of the Manhattan Project that produced the bomb. It is a little known historical fact that when the US conducted the Trinity test, the world’s first atom bomb explosion, but not with the kind of devastating effect of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the radiation fallouts due to wind direction affected the Hispanics severely.
The American Hispanics were not told in advance; until the after-effects of the bombing in the twin cities in Japan made the world sit and mourn about the calamity unleashed by the monster bomb. When World War II broke out in Europe, America’s scientific community was fighting to catch up with German advances in the development of atomic power. In the early 1940s, the US government authorized a top-secret programme of nuclear testing and development, codenamed “The Manhattan Project.” Its goal was the development of the world’s first atomic bomb. Much of the research and development for the project occurred at a facility built in Los Alamos, New Mexico. In July 1945, Los Alamos scientists successfully exploded the first atomic bomb at the Trinity test site, located in nearby Alamogordo.
Trinity was the first test of a nuclear weapon that took place on 16 July 1945 when the Manhattan Project was in full swing. The code name Trinity was given by American physicist Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb. The near-desolate stretch of Los Alamos, in New Mexico was largely inhabited by Hispanics.
They were given less than 24 hours to leave. Their farms, life lines for generations and dating back to the 16th century, were bulldozed overnight to make space for the test. Their livestock on which their livelihood depended was slaughtered before their eyes. There was discrimination in compensation payment. While the white owners were paid more, the Hispanics were paid much less and some even completely denied.
Those Hispanics who found low-level jobs as cleaners and guards at the Alamos laboratory faced double discrimination as they were exposed to heavy radiation while the white employers were aware and wore protective gear when necessary.
The Trinity test was conducted around the time the Mexican repatriation and deportation act had ended. When the US experienced the Great Depression (1929-39), then President Herbert Hoover adopted a policy whereby up to 2 million Mexicans who were suspected to be taking away jobs from real Americans were sent back to Mexico.
Other methods of discrimination by the whites against the Hispanics succeeded in making them second-class citizens. No wonder the Trinity test was strategised to further humiliate the Hispanics. The treatment to them was no less brutal than what the Nazis did to the Jews at the concentration camp. Albert Einstein, Hungarian émigré physicist Leo Szilard, and Eugene Wigner were among the many European scientists who had fled to the US to escape the Nazi regime in the 1930s. On 2 August 1939, Einstein wrote a letter to then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt regarding the potential development of atomic weapons. In the letter, Einstein warned Roosevelt about the possibility of Germany harnessing the power of nuclear fission to create extremely destructive weapons, specifically highlighting the potential for Germany to build an “extremely powerful bomb.” Einstein urged the US government to initiate its own research into nuclear weapons and emphasised the importance of staying ahead in this field to maintain national security.
This letter played a significant role in prompting the US government to establish the Manhattan Project, a research and development effort that ultimately led to the creation of the atomic bomb. There are reports that even the Japanese scientists had a similar plan but did not get the desired support from the military to make any progress. It is often claimed that Nobel laureate Albert Einstein was associated with the creation of the bomb that caused devastating effects in Japan and began the nuclear arm race. The truth is that he never worked on the Manhattan Project as he was denied the necessary security clearance due to his pacifist views and background. After the atomic bomb was dropped, Einstein and 68 scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project signed the ‘Szilard petitions’ in July 1945 opposing the use of the atomic bomb on moral grounds. Many scientists in the project stated that they were not entirely aware of what they were creating.
Though it was Einstein’s letter that led to the Manhattan Project originally, Einstein as a German was deemed a security risk because of his left-leaning political views. In July 1940, he was denied security clearance by the US Army Intelligence Office to work on the Manhattan Project. The scientists working on the project were prohibited from consulting with Einstein regarding the project. In post-bombing peace efforts and amid high geopolitical tensions between the Soviet Union and the US, Einstein said in November 1947 that nuclear weapons should be the last resort in warfare and only be used as a defensive step.
Later Oppenheimer too publicly campaigned against the danger of atomic warfare. His security clearance too was revoked in 1954. The lesson learnt from Hiroshima is that science can be a boon but can be dangerous too for humanity.
(The writer is former Senior Fellow, both at NMML and MP-IDSA, and ICCR Chair Professor Reitaku University, Japan)