The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 10 | Issue 26 | Number 1 | Jun 17, 2012

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Radiation as Cultural Talisman: Nuclear Weapons Testing andAmerican Popular Culture in the Early Cold War

Robert Jacobs

Radiation as Cultural Talisman:Nuclear Weapons Testing andAmerican Popular Culture in theEarly Cold War

Robert Jacobs

Introduction

On what appeared to be a normal day off thePacific coast of California, Scott Thomas wasrelaxing on his boat and enjoying a peacefulday of leisure. His wife had just gone below tograb two beers when he noticed a strange fogapproaching. He stood up, and for a moment,the fog enveloped him. The cloud passed, andwhen his wife returned, she saw that Scottseemed to be covered with glitter. The couplethought nothing of this until the impossiblebegan to happen: Thomas began to shrink; hehad been transformed into The IncredibleShrinking Man.1

Scott Thomas faces the fallout cloud froma Pacific Test that would shrink him in TheIncredible Shrinking Man (1957)

Released in 1957 as public concern overradioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testswas rising, The Incredible Shrinking Man usesthe device of a radioactive cloud from a nuclearweapons test as a plot twist to miniaturize anactor to the point where he has to fight withcats and spiders. He shrinks out of his job, outof his marriage, out of his life. His exposure toradiation has a devolutionary impact on him; hefights progressively smaller and smalleradversaries, until finally he becomes microbial.At no point do we see any form of destructionor horror; the only monster is the silent cloudof fallout. After Thomas innocently notices it inthe opening scene of the movie, it slowly andinexorably dehumanizes and erases him.

The monster postulated in this movie was a realmonster; its clouds blew across the UnitedStates even as the movie was in theaters.Moviegoers could consider the notion that thefog in the air when they left the showing of TheIncredible Shrinking Man might just be thatreal, live monster.

Radiation embodies some of the mostparadoxical iconography of the early Cold War.2

Its abstract nature (invisible, odorless,tasteless), when combined with its true dangers(genetic mutation, cancers, death), allows it toevoke impossible worlds emerging from theordinary one. Able to kill silently and invisiblyat a distance and, by the late 1950s, widelydocumented to be present in mother's milk andhuman bones, radiation represented athreatening technological world that seemed toexist beyond reach of the senses.3

Radiation was a tool-in-trade for television,

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radio, movies, novels, and short stories as thestrange force that authenticated any departurefrom normal space and time. It was the magicbullet of science-fiction plots: passing a clickingGeiger counter across a scene was as good aswaving a magic wand; be it giant bugs or bug-eyed aliens living in a vast underground city,the clicking made any plot twist credible.Radiation came to symbolize a break in thenormal structure of everyday reality; it was anarrative marker to indicate that a boundaryhad been crossed. From this moment on,anything was possible.

Radiation was often used in popular culture tosignify that the future had arrived. But theenvisioned future was, as likely as not, adystopia where insects are our ultimatecompetitors and the scale of our own humanviolence is measured in biblical terms. Inscience-fiction movies, radiation is detected theinstant before matters go awry. Not unlike themaxim about a gun seen on stage during aplay— that it must go off by the third act—theclicking of a Geiger counter in a 1950s science-fiction film signified that something was aboutto go terribly wrong and that objects andevents that might otherwise seem physicallyimpossible (like invisible creatures that suckthe brains out of unsuspecting humans) areabout to happen.

Mickey Rooney and Robert Strauss play

with a Geiger counter in The Atomic Kid(1954)

Radiation was the device employed in science-fiction plots to lend verisimilitude to theemergence of monsters, both prehistoric onesand the products of genetic mutation, andweapons testing was cited more frequentlythan nuclear war as the specific cause of theemergence of these monsters. The Nevadadesert, the continental site of US nuclearweapons testing, became a symbolic landscapethat granted access to our world to alien beingsand forces. The evil contained in the humanpsyche could also draw on radiation to gainunnatural power in order to threaten masses ofhumanity and social stability.4 By the late1950s, nuclear radiation had acquired acultural iconography that would be commonlyused to legitimize departures from the boundsof reality in popular-culture texts.

Central to the history of nuclear popularculture is the history of nuclear- weaponstesting. “The accidental awakening of thesuper-destructive monster, who has slept in theearth since prehistory, is, often, an obviousmetaphor for the Bomb,” wrote Susan Sontagin the early sixties. But beyond this destruction,she also cited the additional importance ofradiation and weapons testing: “Radiationcasualties—ultimately, the conception of thewhole world as a casualty of nuclear testingand nuclear warfare—is the most ominous of allthe notions with which science fiction filmsdeal.”5

From the Bikini tests in 1946 through theentire atmospheric-testing era (ending in1963), nuclear weapons testing had a profoundand multifaceted effect on American societyand culture. In 1951, the Nevada Test Site(NTS) was established about 75 milesnorthwest of Las Vegas, and by the followingyear, Americans could watch tests on televisionbeamed into their homes. These broadcastshelped to establish a visual geography of the

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test site, which eventually became thebackdrop for countless science-fiction films.

During this period, the United States testedhundreds of nuclear weapons in theatmosphere, both in Nevada and in the PacificOcean at the Pacific Proving Ground (PPG) inthe Marshall Islands. As a rule, less powerful(smaller-fission) weapons were tested inNevada, while the stronger (larger-fusion)bombs were detonated at Eniwetak and BikiniAtolls in the Marshalls. The Pacific weaponshad the more immediate and vivid effects onthe health of human populations that foundthemselves downwind. In particular, it was the1954 Bravo shot at Bikini Atoll, with itsimmense fallout impact that would render theland on Bikini and four neighboring atollsuninhabitable to this day. The world wasquickly becoming highly radioactive and peopledid not need to be aware of the fact of anuclear explosion to end up as a falloutcasualty.

This article examines the iconography ofradiation in popular culture in the UnitedStates during the atmospheric testing period. Ishow that during this time and forever after,radiation functioned as a cultural talisman forthe suspension of previously fixed laws ofnature and society. It became an emblem of thedislocation of the imagined future of humansociety with its fixed past. Radiation became asignifier of the rupture in narratives of thecontinuity of human history that manyimagined nuclear weapons to mark. Thisiconography emerged out of, and wasembedded in, nuclear weapons testing. Theeffects of nuclear detonations are typicallydescribed as blast, heat and radiation. I arguethat a fourth and elemental effect, one that hasrarely been understood, was the effect ofnarrative discontinuity.

Bravo: Putting Fallout On the Map

Nuclear radiation was and remains one of themost potent icons of the atomic age. At first an

abstraction associated with the horrors of anuclear war, during the atmospheric testingera (1945-1963) radiation became a very realpart of the lives of Americans, carried into theirhomes and minds by wind and rain in the formof radioactive fallout from nuclear weapontesting. As nuclear weapon testing increased inthe 1950s, and as thermonuclear weaponsbegan to be tested, higher and higher levels offallout reached deeper and deeper into thelives, and bodies of Americans, and of peopleall around the world.

The Bravo test filmed from an airplane(http://youtu.be/T2I66dHbSRA)

Fallout was not discussed in detail in the earlyrush of articles and books about nuclearweapons after 1945: it forced its way intopublic consciousness through a series of eventsthat devastated the health of those involved. OnNovember 1, 1952, the first United States testof a thermonuclear weapon, or H-bomb (the"Mike" shot of Operation Ivy, explodingapproximately 10 megatons) was carried out onElugelab Island, in the Pacific Ocean.

The mushroom cloud from the Mike shot

Elugelab, a tiny island that was part ofEniwetak Atoll, was totally destroyed when theexplosion created a crater about one mile in

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diameter and 175 feet deep at its deepest point.The Mike shot had required several buildings tohouse the cryogenics necessary to cool thethermonuclear fuel to a stable point, weighinga total of 200,000 pounds.6 The Atomic EnergyCommission (AEC) was successful at keepinginformation about the scale of the test secretfrom the press and public.

Two years later, the first shot of the Castleseries (1954), the Bravo shot located on BikiniAtoll, tested a cryogenics-less (dry) weaponthat weighed only 2,000 pounds and wasdeliverable from an airplane. The Bravo shotwould prove to be so immense that it wasimpossible to contain information about itsdestructive power. Whereas the Atomic EnergyCommission (AEC) had been able to limitknowledge of the fact that the Mike shot was atest of a hydrogen weapon, the thermonuclearnature of the Bravo shot was apparent to thewhole world.7 Bravo yielded an explosive forceof 15 megatons of TNT, a force one thousandtimes more powerful than existing fissionweapons and at least twice as powerful as theweapon's designers had predicted.8

The Bravo nuclear device beforedetonation

Beyond the immense yield of the blast of Bravo,it immediately became apparent that thisdetonation had produced vast amounts of

radioactive fallout. The US military Joint TaskForce 7 (which conducted the tests) saw itselfcompelled to raise the “permissible” level ofexposure for its personnel simply because theparticipants had already received the higherdose.9 Since staging grounds on nearby islandshad to be abandoned because of high radiationlevels, all operations had to be conducted solelyfrom ships, impeding proper procedures. Theships were overcrowded from taking on TaskForce personnel who had been evacuated fromthe atolls.10 Radiation levels on atolls to theeast of Bikini reached such alarming levels thatthe Task Force evacuated their 264 residents.11

Many of the islanders (who had been about 100miles from Bravo's epicenter) sufferedradiation sickness, with such effects as loss ofhair and low white blood cel l counts,hemorrhages, and skin lesions.12 The New YorkTimes carried its first article about theexposure of the 264 on March 12, 1954.13

Bravo test at Bikini Atoll (March 1, 1954)

Two days later the Japanese tuna trawlerknown as the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (LuckyDragon # 5) pulled into its slip in the Japaneseport town of Yaizu. On March 1, the day of thetest, the ship had been at anchor over 90 mileseast of ground zero (well outside the 50-mileexclusion zone set up by the Joint Task Force)

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yet it had been exposed to very heavy amountsof fallout from the test. All 23 members of thecrew were ill and one later died from radiationexposure.14

The Bravo test, with its terrible toll on humanhealth and life, marked the end of thesuccessful containment of the issue ofradioactive fallout that the United Statesgovernment had been able to maintain for thefirst nine years of the atomic age. Throughoutits coverage of the Bravo incident in the springof 1954 the New York Times still put the word“fall-out” in quotation marks. Prior to the Bravotest, fallout, when mentioned in the press, wasgenerally referred to as “residual” or“lingering” radiation.

The Lucky Dragon #5 in 1954

The first article to mention radioactive falloutinside the United States was a report ofdownwind fallout from the Trinity test in NewMexico in 1945. Newsweek magazine ran ashort piece on November 12, 1945 reportingthat, “mysterious radioactivity was affectingphotographic film at an Eastman Kodak plant.”The article explained that the film had beenaffected by “radioactive strawboard” used tomake shipping boxes. The boxes used “strawcut in Illinois on August 6, just 21 days afterthe explosion of the first atomic bomb in NewMexico” (no mention is made of the fact that

this was also the day that Hiroshima wasbombed). The article stated that “radioactiveresidues” had “fallen” on the field of straw.15

The American public became aware ofdangerous levels of radioactive fallout after theBikini tests in 1946. David Bradley’s influential1948 record of Operation Crossroads, No Placeto Hide, was essentially a book about fallout.“What happened at Crossroads was the clearestmeasure yet of the menace of atomic energy.Less spectacular perhaps than Hiroshima andNagasaki, the Bikini tests give a far clearerwarning of the lingering and insidious nature ofthe radioactive agent that makes it such anideal weapon for use on civil populations.”16

This perspective echoed more officialpronouncements: Admiral William Blandy, thehead of the Joint Task Force that conducted thetests, was quoted in Time two weeks aftertesting had concluded with the single phrase,“It’s a poison weapon.” A picture below thequote showed sai lors trying to scrubradioactivity off of an Operations Crossroadsship, which remained contaminated, “Like theblood on Bluebeard’s key.”17

Bradley described a medical decision he hadconfronted as a physician and radiologicalmonitor for Operation Crossroads. A sailor inhis late teens was sent to see Dr. Bradleybecause he had been cut by a piece ofradioactive cable. “The sailor told us the nameof the ship; it was one of the beached vesselsand was moderately contaminated on deck. ‘Wewas trying to get her clear for the trip to Kwaj.I was heaving in on one of the cables when itbroke and tore my hand. Don't seem too bad,but one of the Geiger men was there and hesent me right over here.’” Bradley explained tothe sailor that, “in laboratories and plantswhere people are working with purifiedplutonium there is a policy which requiresimmediate high amputation for anyone in asimilar situation.” The sailor solemnly nodded,“You’re the doctor.” This harrowing incidentpainted a grim picture of “lingering” radiation

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as capable of contaminating a person long aftera nuclear explosion, and made clear that thecontamination was dangerous enough torequire removing a limb to stave off thepossibility of a more severe fate.18

Radioactive contamination claimed more thanfishermen aboard ships at Bikini and limbsfrom US servicemen. Time reported in 1947that “At one university, two entire buildingshave been so radioactivated that they can nolonger be used for atomic work; at anothercenter, a researcher in one afternoon infected alaboratory so badly that the walls had to betaken down and replaced.”19 Radiation seemedinfectious, insidious, and persistent.

In the frenzy following the first Soviet nuclearweapon test in late 1949, military speculationon the possible use of radiological poisons as aweapon separate from the use of actual nuclearweapons began to find expression in thepopular press. “An invisible dust of radioactive‘death sand’ could spread over cities of theearth and kill their populations by radioactivitywithout the noisy warning of an atomic bomb,”declared the Science News Letter. Leavingnothing to the imagination, the articleexplained that “Very fine sand would be coatedwith these radioactive poisons and spread verythinly over the area where it is desired to wipeout life.” That same week Time reported that,“Less than a ton of death sand, evenlydistributed, would make Manhattan adeathtrap.” 2 0

Such speculation was fairly rare before 1954,but the Bravo test put fallout on the map: in theyears immediately after the test thousands ofarticles a year would appear with the word“fallout” in the title. The test itself was a sourceof mysterious and powerful stories. “Whetherthe public should be told the truth about thedevastating fall -out from the H-bombexplosions is the subject of a bitter behind-scenes argument between the AEC and theCivil Defense Administration,” cautioned “The

Inside Story” in Newsweek on November 8,1954, “One estimate now is that the H-bombtested last March at Eniwetok rendereduninhabitable an elliptical area of 4,000 squarem i l e s — n e a r l y t h e s i z e o fConnecticut—downwind from the blast.”21

The scale of the Bravo fallout was told inpersonal terms in the Saturday Evening Post inJuly 1957, in a story titled, “We Were Trappedby Radioactive Fallout,” by Dr. John C. Clark,the Commander of the Firing Party for theBravo test. Clark told how he and eight othersin the control room for the Bravo test, locatedin a sand-covered bunker about a dozen milesaway from ground zero, had to take shelter forabout twelve hours in a small room in thebunker when soon after the blast radiationreadings in the main room in the controlbunker spiked to dangerously high levels.

Radiation levels outside of the bunker weresubstantially higher still so the men wereunable to escape since no ship or helicoptercould come close (in fact they were all in theprocess of moving further back because of thefallout). The men in the bunker determined thetiny communications room had the lowestlevels of radioactivity and they barricadedthemselves in to wait for the radiation levels tofall sufficiently to execute a rescue. “We werenot exactly a happy bunch as we sat around inthat small back room. We had been forced toturn off the air conditioner because it broughtin fallout particles from outside. The entirebuilding soon got hot and sticky.” A little overan hour later, “our generator began failing andthe lights gradually went out, leaving us indarkness.” This was around 8:00 in themorning—help finally arrived at 5:30 in theaf ternoon. The men came out o f thecommunications room to determine if theradiation levels outside had made it safeenough to dash to a rescue helicopter. Clarkadded the ghostly detail that when they cameout, and then ran to the rescue helicopters, “Tokeep the ‘hot’ dust off of our bodies, we

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wrapped ourselves completely in bed sheets,cutting holes only for our eyes.” The next day,writes Clark, they found out that the radiationlevels just outside their bunker had beenlethal.22

While many AEC-friendly articles dismissed thedanger of fallout in the mid-fifties, there werecountless references to fallout as unspeakablydangerous. Fallout was referred to as, “theultra-modern horror, radioactive smog,” and as“fantastically poisonous radioactivity.”23 Thestory of how fallout was impacting the peoplewho lived downwind from the Nevada Test Sitewas broken open by journalist Paul Jacobs inhis seminal article, “Clouds from Nevada,”published in The Reporter in May 1957. Jacobs’article told of cancers and other deadly healthproblems becoming endemic among the down-winders. He told of seven-year old MartinBardolini dying of leukemia as a result ofexposure to fallout, of people who had lost theirhair, and of the residents of St. George, Utah,who had been “continuously exposed forsixteen days to atmospheric contamination.” Hewrote about massive die-offs of sheep andcattle after fallout clouds from nuclear testshad passed over their grazing lands, and of“bead-like particles” of fallout raining down onlocal ranches.24

By the mid-fifties, “residual” and “lingering”radiation had given way to almost universal useof the word “fallout.” Maps were printed inmagazines and newspapers showing the pathsof fallout clouds from tests in Nevada over thecontinental United States. The Bravo test hadopened the eyes of Americans about thedangers of nuclear testing, and how radioactivetheir world was becoming—what they wouldsee with these new eyes would very muchsurprise them.

Behind the Radioactive Curtain: Monstersand Aliens

Surrounded by army t roops a iming

flamethrowers into the burning egg chamberwhere the last of the terrifying giant ants laydying, the heroes of the 1954 movie Them!considered the origin of the mutants.

T h e t r a i l e r f o r T h e m !(http://youtu.be/SXZZXhVY_mI)

"If those monsters got started as a result of thefirst atomic bomb test in 1945, what about allof the others that have been exploded sincethen?"25 This question, expressing Americans’anxiety about atomic testing during themid-1950s, was to be answered in abundanceby Hollywood filmmakers.26

A giant ant from Them! (1954)

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The Army torches some giant ants inThem!

Between 1945 and 1965, over five hundredscience-fiction films, many depicting suchthreats as the giant ants in Them! werereleased to the theatergoing public.27 On film,the atomic age was filled with regeneratemonsters and invading aliens. In these movies,radiation functioned as a catalyzing element,legitimizing the birth into our world of evil anddestructive forces. Whether these threatsmaterialized as monsters generated orregenerated from beneath the ocean, thedesert, or the polar icecaps, or as invadingaliens who sought to destroy the Earth,radiation functioned as their life-giving source:the threat either was born out of radiation orwas feeding off it. Atomic test sites, nuclearpower plants, and atomic labs were commonscience-fiction movie settings.

Atomic monsters of the 1950s, having passedthrough a baptism of radiation, possessed alicense to terrorize and were resistant toconventional military weapons. Two types ofmonsters were used in movies to typify thethreat: the first kind were the monstersportrayed in films like Godzilla, in whichdormant primordial threats were reawakened,often by the testing of an atomic bomb; thesecond set of movies postulated the release ofradiation from earlier atomic tests, whichtypically caused a genetic mutation in natureand resulted in a monstrous and unnaturalthreat to the human race from some other

species; these latter are know as the “giantbug” movies.

The first type of primordial monsters usuallytargeted cities, while the giant bugs tended tostay close to atomic facilities. Both of theseexamples, Godzilla and Them!, were released in1954, following the publicity from the Bravotest and i ts subsequent radioact ivecontamination of islanders, fisherman andservicemen.

Honda Ishiro made the classic film Gojira inJapan and released it in the fall of 1954.28 TheAmerican director Terrell O. Morse later shotseparate footage of the American actorRaymond Burr, which was spliced into anedited version of the Japanese original, and thisversion was released in the United States inApril 1956 as Godzilla! King of the Monsters.29

An H-bomb test was the event that freedGodzilla from the ocean floor. The first hint weget that something monstrous is afoot is when aJapanese fishing boat bursts into flames on thehigh seas and sinks; the use of this image justafter the tragedy of the Daigo Fukuryu Marubecame known in Japan was, according toHonda, deliberate.30 Godzilla, an ancientdinosaur-like monster, emerges from the waterand eventually trashes most of Tokyo.

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Gojira! Godzilla (1954)

Godzilla emits radioactive-fire breath, and ashe stomps through Tokyo, he blazes aradioactive trail, burning Japanese boats andtorching cities just as bombs do. The scenesthat depict Tokyo after the destruction referboth to the nuclear devastation of Hiroshimaand Nagasaki and the 1945 firebombing ofTokyo and every other Japanese city with apopulation in excess of 50,000 people. Thesudden presence of this monster is legitimizedby its birth in an atomic explosion; no furtherexplanation is necessary.

In The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), adinosaur frozen under the North Pole is thawedout by an atomic test, freeing it to swim alongthe coast to march on New York City. In ItCame from Beneath the Sea (1953), an octopusmade radioactive in an H-bomb test, grows togiant size, and attacks San Francisco.31 Each ofthese monsters goes through an atomic rebirthin order to regenerate into this world andthreaten its cities. Each is able to accomplish

this rebirth as the result of weapons testing,not through the general destruction of a full-scale nuclear war. This plot device highlightsthe growing fears of Americans (and Japanese)of radioactive contamination during this periodof intensive atmospheric testing—fears bothconnected to and separate from fears of anactual nuclear attack.

The first and most successful of the giant-bugmovies of the 1950s was Them!32 Released inJune 1954, the movie hit theaters just after thenewspapers were full of stories aboutradioactive fish from the Bravo test and thesickness of the Fukuryu Maru crew and thePacific islanders.33 Them! is the story of a giantant colony that formed on the desert floor atthe Trinity site as a result of the radiationunleashed by that first atomic test. The giantants, which Spencer Weart describes as “thesize of buses,” had to be destroyed at any cost;the i r very ex is tence threatened a l lhumankind.34 It is interesting to note thatthough much of Them! takes place in NewMexico, the desert sets are filled with Joshuatrees, which do not grow in New Mexico butare native to the area of the Nevada Test Site.

The giant ants are not in themselves evil; it ismerely that when normal ant behavior isenlarged on such a monstrous scale, thechange upsets the balance of nature, ultimatelythreatening human society. This theme is trueof almost all the giant–bug movies, such asTarantula, The Deadly Mantis, and The BlackScorpion.35 Because of their radioactive birth,these monsters are inherently stronger andmore deadly than they were in their pre-mutantform, and this unnatural strength and sizemakes their normal behavior unnaturallyviolent. In the sense that monsters like Godzillarepresent a regeneration of primordial forces ofdestruction, the giant ants of Them! representthe birth of a new and modern form of monster:a future monster that represents a man-madeshift in the natural balance.

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Among the most powerful indictments of ourown knowledge of atomic energy was the 1958Canadian movie, The Fiend Without a Face. Inthis film, the monsters that threaten humansociety are our own brains. The threatoriginates in the mind of Professor Walgate, ascientist. Attempting to move objects with hismind, when his equipment is struck bylightning, Walgate succeeds. This burst ofenergy allows his thought to take on existenceindependent of his brain. This individuatedthought begins to tap into the permanentenergy source of an “atomic pile” that powers anearby “atomic radar” station. Soon hundreds,if not thousands, of these thoughts have takenform by using atomic power as an energysource. The monsters, invisible through most ofthe film, begin to kill some of the localresidents. The manner by which they kill isparticularly instructive; they suck out theirvictims’ brains and spinal cords through twopuncture wounds at the base of the skull; oneof the townsfolk describes them as “mentalvampires.” The invisible monsters increase theenergy output from the pile, “feeding,” as itwere, and become visible: they are brainsattached to spinal cords

The “brain and spinal-chord” monster inFiend Without a Face (1958)

they use to propel themselves like inchworms.Under siege by thousands of these monsters,the military heroes of the film blow up thepile’s control room, killing the faceless fiends.36

The symbolism of this movie is boldlycondemning of even the knowledge of atomicenergy: here the monsters that threaten societyare actually the thoughts of scientists (theirphysical form is that of brains). These thoughtsdirectly feed on atomic energy to exist, gainpower, and kill. These thoughts are given adestructive ability that is independent of thewill of the scientist in whose head theyoriginate. The movie states simply: atomic-powered scientific thought is monstrous andevil. Our brains have become our own worstenemies.

For alien invaders in fifties sci-fi films,radiation often functions as the marker of anaccess point to the earth. Alien invasionsfrequently set up home bases near atomicfacilities. Often it is these same facilities thatare the targets of the invasion, the alienssomehow being desperate for new sources ofpower or even desperate to kidnap atomicscientists for their prized and specializedknowledge.37

Whether it was atomic energy or weapons thatgave these monsters or aliens authority toenter into our world, surely the Nevada desertwas where they would enter. In Killers fromSpace (1954), alien invaders have set up shopin caves beneath the Nevada Test Site and arefeeding off the energy released by each bombblast. They use this energy, and the energyfrom an attached atomic-power-generatingstation, to grow gigantic bugs and animals,which they intend to set loose in order to takeover the planet. These aliens resurrect anatomic scientist (Peter Graves), whose planethey have caused to crash immediatelyfollowing an atomic test, because they aredesperate to obtain his knowledge aboutupcoming tests. Eventually, Graves destroysthe aliens and their giant mutant army bycutting the power flow from the atomic plantfor ten seconds. This interruption causes thealiens’ base to explode in a nuclear blast,complete with mushroom cloud (borrowed from

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film of the second 1946 Bikini test).38

An alien from This Island Earth (1955)

In This Island Earth (1955), nuclear scientistsare again the targets of invading aliens as theinvaders are in need of experts to help themrefuel their dying planet. Targeted scientistsare f irst contacted by being sent theschematics to a sophisticated device that cancommunicate and transport matter. Once theEarth scientists have constructed the device,the aliens begin to communicate with them andenlist their help. In this instance, the naturaltechnological curiosity of the nuclear scientistsprovides an entry point to admit alien forcesinto this world.39

In futurist fiction, aliens who threaten to takeover Earth because of their need for atomicpower were invited here because we hadcrossed the nuclear threshold. Rather thanliberating us, our achievement of this level ofpower has made us the target of intergalacticviolence. Atomic power and weapons haveopened a doorway through which terrors fromfar-off worlds are given license to destroy us.These aliens were invariably portrayed astechnologically more sophisticated extensionsof ourselves: they, too, relied on violence toachieve their goals.

All such conjectures seemed natural because bythe mid-1950s, the Nevada desert had becomea mythic zone where supernatural events couldbe expected to occur. In The Amazing ColossalMan (1957), a man who walked onto theNevada Test Site as a “plutonium bomb” wasbeing tested, becomes a giant and then attacksLas Vegas.40 In Attack of the 50-Foot Woman(1957), a woman is turned into a giant by analien whom she meets in the Nevada desert.41

Many of these movies, like Killers from Space,begin with a shot which pans across the desertlandscape, always showing the Joshua treesthat had come to symbolize the test site. ToAmericans in theaters everywhere, the image ofa Joshua tree silhouetted in the Nevada deserthad become a cultural marker announcing thatthe supernatural was just around the corner.

Cold War Equivalency: Political Fallout inPopular Culture

Because of its unique characteristics andprofound dangers, nuclear icons played afascinating part in fueling a political critique ofthe Cold War that was expressed in the codedlanguage of popular culture. Science-fictionnarratives, both in fiction and in film, pioneeredthis use of popular-culture texts as effectivetools for criticizing the Cold War, presentingideas that could not be safely expressed inmore mainstream channels of culture anddiscourse.

One of the most subversive pol i t icalperspectives subtly expressed through popularculture was the idea that there was nodifference between the United States and theSoviet Union: both could be seen as belligerentsuperpowers whose actions threatenedhumanity. From this perspective, the bullyingof smaller countries into bipolar “blocs” andthe commitment of the wealth of both societiesto an endless arms race made the two rivalsseem virtually interchangeable.

While scientists and politicians would have putthemselves in danger had they openly

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articulated such a critique, Americans acceptedthe idea when they found it expressed in thepopular 1951 science-fiction film, The Day theEarth Stood Still.42 Often described as aChristian allegory, in which the peaceful andChrist-like Klaatu (who takes the Earth nameMr. Carpenter) descends from the heavens todeliver the new law of nonviolence to the barelymature earthlings, The Day the Earth StoodStill contained radical messages folded into thevery structure of the film’s narrative.43

Klaatu and Gort in The Day the EarthStood Still (1951)

Klaatu sees only a brutish and violent species;the differences so essential to Cold Warbilateralism were absent when he looked at us.In a telling scene, the chief of staff to theAmerican president who visits Klaatu in thehospital after he is wounded (Klaatu did theUnited States a favor by landing in Washington,DC) asks the alien why he has come to Earth.Klaatu explains that his message is for theleaders of all the nations of the world and thatthey must gather the following day in order toreceive it. The American shrugs: “I’m afraidthat given our present political situation, that isquite impossible.” He is, of course, alluding tothe tensions of the Cold War, which in 1951made an easily convened meeting of Stalin andTruman unthinkable. Klaatu seemed mildlyamused. “I do not care about your petty

political squabbles,” he chides. To characterizethe Cold War as a petty political squabble in1951 was a radical critique of the Cold War.Klaatu informs the human race that thosebeings living on other planets had no interest inh u m a n s s o l o n g a s t h e y r e m a i n e dtechnologically unsophisticated. But once theyhad developed nuclear weapons, and weretherefore a threat to other planets, they werenow being included in an intergalacticpeacekeeping program in which giant robotswould destroy any planet that continued tomanufacture nuclear weapons. Klaatu showedus that in a world armed with nuclear weapons,all people, regardless of nationality, shared asingle, common destiny.

Klaatu's final warning from The Day theE a r t h S t o o d S t i l l(http://youtu.be/YnkuO6s2vrM)

The Day the Earth Stood Still expresses aprogressive assessment of the Cold War, inwhich the violence of human society is theenemy of all beings, Earthborn or not; butcritiques of this sort were by no means limitedto the left. The 1952 B-movie Red Planet Marsexpressed a right-of-center critique of the ColdWar that equally demonized both communismand capi ta l i sm, the Sov iets and theAmericans.44 In Red Planet Mars, an Americanscientist (the ubiquitous Peter Graves) receivesradio signals from Mars; these are interceptedas well by a corrupt Soviet scientist. Themessages, at first aimed at the United States,have the effect of undermining capitalism bysuggesting that Mars is a planet of abundantenergy and food. Declaring that thesetechnologies can easily be transferred to Earth,the messages from Mars cause the bottom todrop out of the energy and food markets. TheAmerican economy goes into a tailspin, and thefilm draws its audiences along with thesuspicion that perhaps the messages arecoming from the evil Soviet scientist. Suddenly,the Soviet Union receives messages thatquestion the atheist nature of its society. These

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messages are phrased as though they werecoming directly from God. The effect on Sovietsociety is to cause the citizens to rise upagainst their Communist leaders andreestablish the Russian Orthodox Church. Inthe end, the Soviet scientist tries to convincethe American scientist that he was the sourceof all of the messages and that he hates bothsocieties. But as they all die together in theclimactic final scene, a further message arrives,confirming that God was the source of themessages all along.

While both these films used Christianity as avehicle for critiquing the Cold War, it is strikingthat both used science fiction to articulate thatopinion. Science fiction, with its inherentsuspension of the rules of the real world,allowed the audiences of these films to gain aperspective on the world of the Cold War, onenot reado;u found in mass culture. It allowedAmericans to step back and see their momentin history from a “big-picture” vantage point,recognizing problems in which they hadpreviously been too caught up to see clearly.

Antonio Prohias’s black and white spies in“Spy Vs. Spy” in Mad Magazine (1960s)

The early 1960s gave children a hint at theequivalence of the United States and the SovietUnion in the comic strip “Spy Vs. Spy,” drawnby Antonio Prohias, that ran in Mad magazine.The black spy and the white spy, an obviousreference to the dualism of the Cold War, were

n e i t h e r g o o d n o r b a d . T h e y w e r einterchangeable. They were equivalent.45

The notion that the United States and theSoviet Union were equivalent expressed thebelief that it was the will toward violence thatwas the real enemy. But while social scientistsdebated the ways to understand and eradicatethis human capacity, popular culture drew itout to its logical conclusions, so that thecharacteristic itself could be instructive to theviewer without the attendant violence of theactions.46 In this manner, popular culture wasable to criticize the pathologies of nuclear warwithout feeling compelled to transform them.Similarly, much of the science fiction of theearly Cold War period that is set in the distantfuture portrayed Earth as a unified planet witha single government, accomplishing in fictionwhat seemed impossible to accomplishpolitically.47

Critiques of the Cold War were not exclusive toscience-fiction texts; they were also found inliterature expressing antinuclear-weapon andprogressive sentiments, but science fictionmovies and novels had the ability to reach a farlarger audience across a much broaderspectrum of society, including teens andchildren.4 8 With the advent of nuclearweaponry, science fiction had come to play anessential and informing role in Americanpolitical culture.

Conclusion

Radiation was a revolutionary concept to mostAmericans when they first became aware of theclouds blowing over their heads in the wake ofHiroshima and Nagasaki. Popular culture in anuclear age provided a glimpse behind the veilof the atomic future: an Alice in Wonderlandventure beyond the present reality and into theradioactive landscape. Radiation became afavorite plot element in popular-culture textsthat embodied the complex contradictions ofthe atomic age. In plot or setting, radiation

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legitimized breaks in normality. This talismanicquality, of separating normal from supernaturalspace or time, expressed both aspects ofradiation’s physical nature (the invisible abilityto transmute one element to another, theability to affect action at a distance), andaspects of its effect on society (marking apotential end time or a golden era of peace andplenty). As nuclear-weapons tests movedunderground in 1963, so too did the heightenedpublic awareness of radiation, and it becameless frequently invoked in popular culture. Butjust like that cloud Scott Thomas rose toconsider from the deck of his boat in TheIncredible Shrinking Man, the actual dangerswere not really gone, just once againimperceptible to the senses. 4 9

The c losing monologue from TheI n c r e d i b l e S h r i n k i n g M a n(http://youtu.be/Bp3iHjGBfT4)

It was a uniquely postmodern world thatunfolded every day; at the same time thatfallout was killing the sheep of downwindranchers in Nevada and Utah by the thousands,moviegoers across America could watch aliens,intent on destroying humanity, breeding andraising hordes of giant bugs and reptilesunderneath the Nevada desert.50 Wearing 3-Dglasses and striding boldly into the future,Americans seemed as ready to explore this landof tomorrow as they had been to fund itscreation with their tax dollars. As Americansgot into their cars and headed westward totake the kids to Disneyland, radioactive cloudsleft Nevada and drifted eastward, seeding thefuture with monsters, mutants and mystery.

This is a revised, expanded and illustratedversion of an article that appeared in the June1, 2012 Culture and Conf l ict Review(http://nps.edu/programs/ccs/webjournal/Article.aspx?ArticleID=115)

Robert Jacobs is an associate professor at theHiroshima Peace Institute at Hiroshima CityUniversity. He is the author of The Dragon's

Tai l : Americans Face the Atomic Age(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1558497277/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (2010), the editor of Fillingthe Hole in the Nuclear Future: Art andPopular Culture Respond to the Bomb(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0739135570/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (2010), and co-editorof Images of Rupture in Civilization BetweenEast and West: The Iconography of Auschwitzand Hiroshima in Eastern European Arts andMedia (2012-forthcoming). His book, TheDragon's Tail was released in a Japaneselanguage edition by Gaifu in 2012. He is theprincipal investigator of the Global HibakushaProject.

Recommended citation: Robert Jacobs,"Radiation as Cultural Talisman:NuclearWeapons Testing and American PopularCulture in the Early Cold War," The Asia-PacificJournal, Vol 10, Issue 26, No. 1, June 25, 2012.

Articles on related subjects

•Mick Broderick and Robert Jacobs, Nuke York,New York: Nuclear Holocaust in the AmericanImaginat ion from Hiroshima to 9/11(https://apjjf.org/-Mick-Broderick/3726)

•Oishi Matashichi and Richard Falk, The Daythe Sun Rose in the West. Bikini, the LuckyD r a g o n a n d I(https://apjjf.org/-Oishi-Matashichi/3566)

•Robert Jacobs, The Atomic Bomb andHiroshima on the Silver Screen: Two NewD o c u m e n t a r i e s(https://apjjf .org/-Robert-Jacobs/3619)

•Robert Jacobs, Whole Earth or No Earth: TheOrigin of the Whole Earth Icon in the Ashes ofH i r o s h i m a a n d N a g a s a k i(https://apjjf .org/-Robert-Jacobs/3505)

• N a k a z a w a K e i j i , H i r o s h i m a : T h eA u t o b i o g r a p h y o f B a r e f o o t G e n(https://apjjf.org/-Nakazawa-Keiji/3416)

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•Yuki Tanaka, War and Peace in the Art ofTezuka Osamu: The humanism of his epicmanga (https://apjjf.org/-Yuki-TANAKA/3412)

•Michele Mason, Writing Hiroshima andNagasaki in the 21 s t Century: A NewG e n e r a t i o n o f H i s t o r i c a l(https://apjjf.org/-Michele-Mason/3260)Manga(https://apjjf.org/-Michele-Mason/3260)

•Yuki Tanaka, Godzilla and the Bravo Shot:Who Created and Kil led the Monster?(https://apjjf .org/-Yuki-TANAKA/1652)

Notes

1. The Incredible Shrinking Man, dir. JackArnold, prod. Albert Zugsmith (UniversalPictures, 1957).

2. Spencer Weart deals extensively with falloutand radiation in Nuclear Fear: A History ofImages (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1988). See also Paul Boyer, Fallout: A HistorianReflects on America’s Half-Century Encounterwith Nuclear Weapons (Columbus: Ohio StateUniversity Press, 1998). There is also anextensive literature on the political impact offallout. Carolyn Kopp argues that the origins ofthe fallout debate lie in the separationsbetween the sensibilities of different fields,with the scientists most likely to opposenuclear testing being biologists, whosepriorities were very different from those ofpoliticians like AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss.See Carolyn Kopp, “The Origins of theAmerican Scientific Debate Over FalloutHazards,” Social Studies of Science 9:4 (1979):403-422. See also Allan M. Winkler, Life undera Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993);Howard Ball, Justice Downwind: America’sAtomic Testing Program in the 1950’s (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1986).

3. Ralph E. Lapp, Kill and Overkill: TheStrategy of Annihilation (New York: BasicBooks, 1962): 63; Samuel Glasstone, ed., The

Effects of Nuclear Weapons, revised edition,(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,April 1962): 614-15.

4. Sontag, Dowling, and others interpret theartistic response to the atomic bomb in termsof personal psychology, much as the social-science community has done. They locate thesocial violence expressed in the arms racewithin the personal human subconscious.Sontag believed that one reason for socialviolence on this scale is the human need to letout cruel and amoral feelings. See SusanSontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” inAgainst Interpretation (New York: DellPublishing, 1961): 212-28; David Dowling,Fictions of Nuclear Disaster (Iowa City:University of Iowa Press, 1987): 3. Furtherexpression of the Cold War as psychologicaldysfunction can be found in Terrence Holt,"The Bomb and the Baby Boom," TriQuarterly80 (Winter 1990-91): 206-17. Holt writes of thebomb, "it articulates an imaginary pattern ofcause and effect in which the potential victimsof nuclear weapons, the babies of the boom, aremade to seem responsible for their plight.Ultimately, . . . this particular equation ofbabies with the bomb suggests that the nuclearstandoff of the past forty years has answeredneeds in our culture that we are unwilling toadmit, and may be incapable of giving up"(207). Weart also ascribes a fundamentallypsychological nature to the imagerysurrounding atomic weapons.

5. Sontag, “The Imagination of Disaster,” 31.

6. Federal Civil Defense Administration, Factsabout the H Bomb (Washington, DC: USGovernment Printing Office, 1955).

7. In fact it was the undeniable awareness ofthe thermonuclear component of the Castle-Bravo shot that prompted the AEC to finallyadmit publicly that the Mike shot had beenthermonuclear, see Facts about the H Bomb.

8. Herbert York, The Advisors (Palo Alto, CA:

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Stanford University Press, 1976): 73-87;Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms forPeace and War 1953-1961, 172-75.

9. See document, Request to IncreaseMaximum Exposure (EF3/7.3/32cmf), athttp://www.aracnet.com/~pdxavets/b4519007.gif.

10. Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace, 172-75.

11. The fallout cloud created by the Bravo shotextended over 200 miles to the northeast ofground zero, creating a lethally contaminatedarea of 7,000 square miles of the Pacific. TheAEC calculated that many of the islanders (whohad been located about 100 miles from theepicenter of the blast) were exposed toradiation at levels equal to those who had been1.5 miles away from the epicenter of theHiroshima blast. See Samuel Glasstone, ed.,The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, (WashingtonDC: US Government Printing Office, 1962):460-64.

12. Catherine Caufield, Multiple Exposures,(New York: Harper and Row, 1989): 112-13.

13. New York Times, March 12, 1954, 1.

14. The story of the crew of the Daigo FukuryuMaru (its full Japanese name, meaning LuckyDragon No. 5) is told in Ralph Lapp, TheVoyage of the Lucky Dragon (New York: Harperand Brothers Publishers, 1958): 55-88; OishiMatashichi, The Day the Sun Rose in the West.Bikini , the Lucky Dragon and I is theautobiographical account of a crew members(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011).American press coverage can be charted in theNew York Times from March 17, 1954, throughEisenhower's press conference on March 31,1954.

15. “The Active Straw,” Newsweek, November12, 1945, 50.

16. David Bradley, No Place to Hide (Boston:

Atlantic-Little, Brown Books, 1948): xiii.

17. “Problems of the Age,” Time, August 19,1946, 90.

18. Bradley, No Place to Hide, 134-5. Theincident occurred a month after the conclusionof the tests. Bradley did not amputate thesailor’s arm, and there is no further mention ofthe soldier’s health.

19. “Too Hot to Handle,” Time, November 10,1947, 82.

20. “‘Death Sand’ Kills Subtly," Science NewsLetter, August 5, 1950, 83; “Death Sand,”Time, August 7, 1950: 50.

21. “The Inside Story,” Newsweek, November8, 1954, 17.

22. John C. Clark, as told to Robert Cahn, “WeWere Trapped by Radioactive Fallout,”Saturday Evening Post, July 20, 1957, 19,69-70.

23. Helen M. Davis, “Hazards of Smog,”Science News Letter, May 7, 1955, 299;“Atomic Light on the Desert…” Newsweek,March 21, 1955, 31.

24. Paul Jacobs, “Clouds from Nevada,” TheReporter, May 16, 1957, 10-16.

25. Them! dir. Gordon Douglas, prod. DavidWeisbart (Warner Brothers, 1954).

26. See Joyce A. Evans, Celluloid MushroomClouds: Hollywood and the Atomic Bomb(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); JeromeShapiro, Atomic Bomb Cinema: The ApocalypticImagination on Film (New York: RoutledgePress, 2002); Wheeler Winston Davis, Visions ofthe Apocalypse: Spectacles of Destruction inAmerican Cinema (London: Wallflower Press,2003).

27. Patrick Lucanio, Them or Us: ArchetypalInterpretations of Fifties Alien Invasion Films

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(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987):1. See also Mick Broderick, Nuclear Movies: AFilmography (Northcote, AU: Post-ModemPublishing, 1988): 6.

28. Gojira, dir. Honda Ishiro, prod. TanakaTomoyuki (Toho Films, 1954).

29. Godzilla! King of the Monsters! dir. HondaIshiro and Terrell O. Morse, prod. Terry Turnerand Joseph E. Levine (Toho Co.,1956).

30. In the movie, fishermen are shown washingup on shore with "strange burns," much likeevents involving the Daigo Fukuryu Maru,which drifted into harbor with a crew sufferingfrom radiation sickness. See, Yuki Tanaka,“Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created andKilled the Monster?” in, Robert Jacobs, ed.,Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future: Art andPopular Culture Respond to the Bomb(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010):159-170; Chon Noriega, “Godzilla and theJapanese Nightmare: When ‘Them!’ Is U.S.”Cinema Journal 27:1 (Autumn 1987): 63-77.

31. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, dir.Eugene Lourie, prod. Jack Dietz (MutualPictures, 1953); It Came from Beneath the Sea,dir. Robert Gordon, prod. Charles H. Schneer(Universal Pictures, 1953).

32. Them!

33. Japan Gets Radioactive Fish," New YorkTimes, March 17, 1954, 1; "Case of BikiniFishermen Causes Furor in Japan," New YorkTimes, March 28, 1954, E5.

34. Nuclear Fear, 191. In the classic form,scientists and soldiers competed to defeatthese monsters; in this case, the scientists ledthe military. Peter Biskind sees this struggle asthe triumph of liberalism over traditionalism,Seeing is Believing: How Hollywood Taught Usto Stop Worrying and Love the Fifties (NewYork: Pantheon Books, 1983): 101-59. In someplots, like The Thing (from Another World), the

scientists cannot be trusted, and force is thekey to overcoming the threat. Biskind cites thisplot as an example of more right-wing thinking.See The Thing (from Another World), dir.Christian Nyby, prod. Howard Hawks (RKO,1951).

35. Biskind, Seeing is Believing, 6. See,Tarantula, dir. Jack Arnold, prod. Wiliam Alland(Universal, 1955); The Black Scorpion, dir.Edward Ludwig, prod. Frank Medford and JackDietz (Warner Bros., 1957); The Deadly Mantis,dir. Nathan Juran, prod. William Alland(Universal Pictures, 1957).

36. The Fiend without a Face, dir. ArthurCrabtree, John Croydon (AmalgamatedProductions, 1958).

37. Though the relationship of many alieninvasions in films to the Soviet threat of thisearly Cold War period is obvious, thelegit imization of this al ien threat byradioactivity speaks to more than just theSoviet enemy. It speaks to the enemy at home.See, Jodi Dean, Aliens in America: ConspiracyCultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998):171.

38. Killers from Space, dir. and prod. W. LeeWilder (RKO, 1954)

39. This Island Earth, dir. Joseph Newman,prod. William Alland (Universal Pictures, 1955).

40. The Amazing Colossal Man, dir. and prod.Bert Gordon (American International Pictures,1957).

41. Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, dir. NathanHertz, prod. Bernard Woolner, (Allied Artists,1957).

42. The Day the Earth Stood Still, dir. RobertWise, prod. Julian Blaustein (20th Century Fox,1951).

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43. Biskind quotes scriptwriter Edmund Northcommenting on the Christian motifs: "It was myprivate little joke. I never discussed this anglewith producer Julian Blaustein or directorRobert Wise because I didn't want it expressed.I hoped it would be subliminal," Seeing IsBelieving, 152. For an interesting article onreligious themes in atomic imagery in countrymusic, see Charles Wolfe, "Nuclear Country:The Atomic Bomb in Country Music," TheJournal of Country Music 6:4 (January 1978):4-20.

44. Red Planet Mars, dir. Harry Horner, prod.Anthony Veiller (United Artists, 1952).

45. "Spy vs. Spy" first debuted in Mad, January1961. Prohias was a Cuban refugee who wasunwelcome in Cuba because of his anti-Communist cartoons. See Tom Engelhardt, TheEnd of Victory Culture: Cold War America andthe Disillusioning of a Generation (New York:

Basic Books, 1995): 131; Antonio Prohias, Spyvs. Spy: The Complete Casebook (New York:Watson-Guptill, 2001).

46. 46. See, Robert Jacobs, “The PsychologicalBomb: The Relationship of the American SocialScientists to Nuclear Weapons in the EarlyCold War,” Peace & Change 35:3 (July 2010):434-63.

47. The most obvious example of this is thete lev i s ion show Star Trek , w i th i t sinternationally and racially unified crew.

48. Biskind sees this cosmic viewpoint asleftist, Seeing is Believing, 152-57. See also,Andrew Tudor, Monsters and Mad Scientists(Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1989): 39-47.

49. The Incredible Shrinking Man.

50. Justice Downwind, 69-70; Killers fromSpace.