Cover-up Policy of the US on Nuclear Injuries

Cover-up Policy of the US on Nuclear Injuries

Just after the beginning of Japan’s occupation by the Allied Forces, on 6 September
1945, a brigadier general T. Farrel, who was a commander of the research commission
of the Manhattan Project gave a press interview and published a statement that "In
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at present, the beginning of September, anyone liable to die
has already died and no one is suffering from atomic radiation." This was disputed by
a journalist W. Burchett who had seen the real state of Hiroshima, where one hundred
survivors died each day. Farrel made a counterargument that denied the facts: "In order
to remove risk from residual radiation the bomb was exploded at considerable altitude,
so it is impossible that radioactivity exists in Hiroshima at present, and if someone died

at present it will not be owing to residual radiation but from the effects of damage
received at the time of bombing. "Farrel was in charge of research on the human effects
of radiation including experiments on the human body in the Manhattan Project so he
would already have known that if a few fine radioactive particles accumulate in the lung
it produces fatal effects.
On 19 September 1945, the General Headquarters of the Allied Forces issued a
press code that controlled by severe inspection press reports and literature concerning
the atomic bomb and by demanding permission before publication of research results on
the damage of atomic bombing, practically forbidding publication. This was the
beginning of the US cover-up policy regarding radiation damage, especially of the
problems of internal exposure to residual radiation.
All the results obtained by Japanese scientists just after the bombing and the results
of research done by the Special Committee for Investigation and Research on Injuries
from the Atomic Bomb established by the Japanese Academic Council were brought to
America. Late in September 1945 the US Army and Naval surgeon group organized the
Joint Commission for the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan by
making the Medical Faculty of Tokyo Imperial University the collaborator and
investigated for about one year, but they carried back to the US all collected materials.