nuclear-news

VIDEO: USA’s soldier guinea pigs watched atomic explosion

“It was a publicity stunt to show the American public how safe it was during an atomic bomb,” Yoshitake says, “and if there was a war or something, with atomic bombs going off, that it was going to be safe for the general public.”..

 all six people who were there that day have had cancer

VIDEO   How not to watch an overhead nuclear test http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57475611/how-not-to-watch-an-overhead-nuclear-test/ CBS News COLLEGE POINT, Md. 19 July 12  – On this date in 1957, the U.S. conducted one of the most important tests of the atomic age.
A nuclear-tipped missile was fired and detonated in the skies over the Nevada desert.

But what was happening on the ground at that moment seems beyond comprehension today.
Five men voluntarily stood there as the weapon exploded 18,000 feet
over their heads.

The test was the only one of its kind, and it was all captured on film, which is now held at the National Archives…. here was a sixth man there that day – George Yoshitake, a civilian cameraman working
with the Air Force. He wasn’t told the test was directly overhead
until he arrived.

“I remembered I had a baseball cap, and I thought, ‘I’d better wear
that, just in case,”‘ Yoshitake recalls.

Afterward, he found out that the film he was making was to be
government propaganda.

“It was a publicity stunt to show the American public how safe it was during an atomic bomb,” Yoshitake says, “and if there was a war or something, with atomic bombs going off, that it was going to be safe for the general public.”..

.. Duck-and-cover drills – laughable today –
were held to teach Americans how it was thought they could get some
shelter…. “They wanted to show that this was really no big deal. And
they did everything they could to say, ‘Well, this is no big deal,”‘
Kuran says.

The five human guinea pigs didn’t seem to think so, either….. Only
one of other five men, Don Lutrel, is still alive. He’s 88.

He told us that all six people who were there that day have had
cancer, but there’s no definite link to that day.

July 20, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, Resources -audiovicual, USA