This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War (9 page)

BOOK: This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War
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41

encouragement should be given to the resettlement of this personnel in exist
ing cities and villages or new communities in the dispersal zone entirely out
side and physically separate from the developed urban area of Washington and its contiguous suburbs.” Augur called these areas “satellite communi
ties” and emphasized the need for highway systems and rail lines to link them to dispersed government offices. More than a security precaution, dispersal had the potential to end downtown congestion and traffic jams, thus improv
ing the quality of life for area residents—those who moved to the Dispersal Zone, that is.
43

The “Basic Principles and Assumptions” also provided guidelines on the so-called Central Protected Space that the NSRB had mentioned in “Security for the Nation’s Capital.” In Augur’s report, the Central Protected Space became an emergency command post, with facilities for 5,000 executive, congressional, and judicial officials who would evacuate Washington at the first warning of an attack. To function properly, the Central Protected Space required cafeterias, medical clinics, boarding facilities—more than an office, it had to be a self-sustaining environment, with its own utilities, waste disposal, and ventilation. Communication lines would provide reliable contact with military command posts. In the event the Central Protected Space was itself the target of an atomic bomb, hundreds of feet of solid rock cover had to lay atop the underground site. The nearest suitable site lay some 50 miles from the zero milestone marker, in the Blue Ridge mountains near Harpers Ferry. Conveniently, this lay inside the Dispersal Zone outlined for future government buildings.
44

Augur tied up nearly all the loose ends fraying the NSRB’s work. He aligned emergency and long-term dispersal. He pinpointed the location and sketched out the requirements of an emergency command post for the federal civilian echelon. He secured the support of the Defense Department for long-term dispersal. Most important, Augur coordinated dispersal with the Park Commission’s comprehensive plan, thus allowing publication in April of the plan’s long-delayed general summary. Nevertheless, the Park Commission was expected to make concessions. Augur wanted the Park Commission to delete an estimated increase of 100,000 federal workers from its projections about Washington’s 1980 population—long-term dispersal, after all, was supposed to halt the future concentration of federal workers in the District. For the same reason, Augur asked Nolen to reduce the proposed cap on centrally located federal workers from 140,000 to 135,000, the limit desired by the NSRB. And why, Augur wondered, did the Plan call for new federal buildings on East Capitol Street, in the heart of the District? “That location may be acceptable for museums, concert halls and other public buildings of a cultural type and for the headquarters of international organizations, learned societies, etc., but we feel that it definitely should not be used for buildings accommodating headquarter units of the Federal Government.” Augur also reminded Nolen that dispersal was for essential, not nonessential workers, as the Plan recommended.
45

In its general summary of the comprehensive plan, entitled
Washington Present and Future
, the Park Commission accepted some, but not all, of Augur’s recommendations. For example, it dropped the distinction between essential and nonessential workers. It still listed East Capitol Street as a desirable building site but didn’t specify usage, instead suggesting that “permanent structures for functions justifying central locations should be on approved sites [such as East Capitol Street].” On the whole,
Washington Present and Future
was a dispersal-friendly report. It noted the “danger of further overconcentration of Federal employment centers” and provided a map of proposed government employment centers scattered far from the city center. The Plan emphasized that dispersal could solve problems such as overcrowding, haphazard residential development, and traffic congestion within the District. As of 1947, the District held 84 percent of all area jobs, including government positions, while Virginia and Maryland combined had just 16 percent. Shifting employment to the suburban locations thus required highways encircling Washington, new housing and community services, expanded utilities, and protection of sites of natural beauty. Suburban devel
opment also offered the opportunity to drastically improve the District: raze tempos, clear slums, and put in new parks. The projected 30 year implemen
tation of
Washington Present and Future
depended on “this new balance of work places” and “there should be a definite policy to locate as many as possible of the required new employment places away from the center . . . since the Federal Government itself is the major employer, it holds the key to the solution of this problem.”
46

As Augur had made clear in his long-term dispersal statement, he too believed that the federal government held this key. But who
within
the government was responsible for unlocking the door to this metropolitan makeover? And what about the city of Washington and its residents? Augur admitted his report “should be supplemented by a companion study of security for the metropolitan community as a whole, inasmuch as the security of the civilian population and of local services is essential to the continued operation of the government establishment.”
47

District government leaders couldn’t have agreed more; they had already begun to plan for the protection of their city against atomic attack.

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3

The District Defends Itself

Q.
Mr. President . . . do you think you could escape without serious injury i
f
you stood at one end of the National Airport if [an atomic] bomb exploded a
t
the other
?
THE PRESIDENT
. Well now, I have never been on the receiving end of one o
f
those bombs, so I couldn’t comment very well intelligently
.

Q.
Mr. President, could you tell us which end of the airport to stand on
?
[
Laughter
]
THE PRESIDENT
. I couldn’t.
1

H
is nickname was “Snake,” but his title was Brigadier General Gordon Russell Young, engineer commissioner for the District of Columbia. Tall and thin, with a piercing gaze, Young was a career military man who had chased Pancho Villa in Mexico in 1916 and served overseas during both World Wars. His appointment in 1945 as engineer commissioner had brought him into a family business of sorts. Cousin John Russell Young served as the president of the Board of Commissioners; brother Robert was the former commander of the Military District of Washington. By law the engineer commissioner had to serve in the Army Corps of Engineers, a requirement intended to safeguard the federal stake in the District’s infrastructure. Protection from red tape, however, was another matter. “Why, we cannot even switch a nickel from one appropriation to another without the express consent of Congress!” Young complained to a reporter in January 1950.
2

The NSRB proved more lenient than the legislative branch, giving Young a “green light” to implement a civil defense program. He wasted no time. On March 3, approximately 30 District residents, civic and business leaders, and federal officials gathered to listen to Young. Conducting the meeting like a military briefing, he briskly declared, “We will all make a basic assumption as follows: that a national emergency now exists, and that Washington is threatened with the possibilities of (a) an air attack, probably using fission bombs; (b) radiological or bacteriological attack; (c) sabotage by subversive groups.” Young explained that Congress must fund a fulltime local civil defense director and office, which would oversee the drafting of a citywide plan to guard against such attacks and sabotage. Young asked those present to contribute recommendations from their areas of expertise. For example,
the D.C. Hospital Council and Medical Society could contribute guidelines on treatment of attack survivors, while the Washington Board of Trade could plan the resumption of commerce. Intent on meeting every contingency, Young had even invited representatives from the National Zoo. He called upon each organization to name members to a “Temporary Committee on Civil Defense.”
3

Young’s precise instructions capped months of work with the NSRB, which had assumed oversight of the District’s civil defense. This authority derived from two decisions by the President. In March 1949, Truman rejected the idea of creating an independent federal civil defense agency and assigned responsibility for civil defense to the NSRB, instructing it to draw upon other federal agencies and state and local governments.
4
Then in October, Truman told the NSRB that the defense of Washington as a city must be aligned with its work on security for the capital. In turn, General Young instructed his assis
tant Thomas J. Hayes, a young lieutenant colonel in the Army Corps of Engineers, to meet with representatives of the NSRB. The results of Hayes’s meetings provided the basis for Young’s presentation. Hayes also told the General, “initially, at least, we can ignore our special position, think of the city simply as a city, and do a great deal to get realistic planning underway.”
5

During the next four months, the District made modest progress. The commissioners asked Congress for a $30,000 deficiency appropriation and named Metropolitan Police Captain John Fondahl as the interim director of the District’s civil defense. Fondahl was a humorless but hardworking man, who, as a war veteran and Marine Corps Reserve colonel, took his responsibilities very seriously. Fondahl accepted the assignment believing it was temporary; little did he know he would serve as Washington’s civil defense director for the next nine years.
6
The NSRB suggested the commission
ers ask eight Washington doctors and a professor to take federally sponsored courses relating to the medical and radiological effects of atomic weapons. The doctors, who represented the D.C. Department of Health and area med
ical societies and schools, attended a weeklong class held at Johns Hopkins University. Howard University physics professor Herman Branson traveled to Long Island, New York, where he spent five weeks learning radiological monitoring at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
7
The NSRB also asked the Housing and Home Finance Agency to help the District designate shelter space by providing data about construction methods.
8

In May, the
Washington Post
editorialized approvingly about the partner
ship between the NSRB and the District: “Sometimes it has been observed that Washington is the last place the Russians would bomb in any war because that might end the confusion here. This is not an altogether reliable assumption, however, and we are glad that the District government and the National Security Resources Board are getting together on an interim civil defense plan.” Referring to the much-maligned World War II Office of Civilian Defense, the editors advised that rooftop wardens and dancers— “frills and ostentation”—had no place in this work. Instead, the city required and was receiving a no-nonsense plan of self-help.
9

The collaboration between the NSRB and the District tightened when they jointly planned and conducted an elaborate exercise. The NSRB asked Washington, Chicago, and Seattle to respond to imaginary atomic attacks; Washington went first. On May 22, General Young asked his Temporary Committee on Civil Defense to complete a questionnaire about the attack. How would area hospitals handle casualties, for example; how would traffic be controlled? Young told members to assume Washington had just one hour’s advance warning of the attack.
10
Meanwhile the NSRB provided a “hypothetical narrative” about the bombing.

Imagine
. . . June 29, 1950. At 2 p.m. the Air Force issues a Warning Red—enemy aircraft have breached American air space and are approaching the capital. Within an hour, two planes drop atomic bombs: the first explodes 1,800 feet above Independence Avenue and 1st Street SW, close to the Capitol; the second, above Tyler School on 11th Street SE. An initial damage survey counts 80,000 dead, 64,000 injured. Survivors suffer fire and flash burns, radiation sickness, and injuries from falling objects. Only three area hospitals survive the attack intact. Within a one-mile radius of each detonation point, most buildings are reduced to rubble. Dwellings outside of the ground zero circles sustain heavy damage; flash fires have broken out between the National Guard Amory, Thomas Circle, and the Potomac River. In Anacostia, fires rage unabated. Street cars cannot run, debris blocks the passage of the few operable emergency vehicles, and the tracks leading into Union Station are unusable—ties burned and rails buckled in the blasts. The attack destroyed the central telephone exchange, water pressure is dropping due to burst mains, and more than half the police precincts are damaged, their personnel casualties.
11

Using this scenario, Young, Hayes, and Fondahl spent a week reviewing the completed questionnaires, then met with the NSRB to devise an emer
gency plan, right down to use of off-duty police officers and the placement of fire trucks.
12
For all this work, however, Washington’s civil defense program existed only on paper. Congress hadn’t yet granted the paltry $30,000 request to fund civil defense work. General Young had won the enthusiasm of fellow citizens to contribute to their city’s defense, but there was little of substance for them to do. Yet compared to many cities, at least the District was doing
something
to prepare for nuclear war.
13
Wasn’t this better than nothing?

Until June 25, 1950, the answer was yes.

"Some Kind of Border Incident"

Dean Acheson was beat. After a trying week, on Saturday, June 24 the Secretary of State left Washington for his Maryland farm. Security guards accompanied him—threatening mail continued to arrive in the wake of Senator Joe McCarthy’s accusations that the State Department employed communists—but the unflappable Acheson tried to enjoy his day off. At 10 p.m., his phone line to the White House rang. The U.S. ambassador to
the Republic of Korea (South Korea) had just cabled the State Department to report a major attack.
14

Halfway round the globe, 30-year old Army captain Joseph Darrigo was awakened by artillery fire early Sunday morning (Saturday afternoon in Washington). A member of the Korean Military Advisory Group, Darrigo lived along the 38th parallel, the dividing line between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), a communist nation, and South Korea, an ally of the United States. As bullets peppered the stone wall of his home, Darrigo ran to his jeep and sped into the nearest city, Kaesong. There he saw a North Korean train packed with an infantry regiment, making him the first American to witness the invasion of South Korea.
15

In Georgetown that night, influential columnist Joe Alsop presided over one of his famous dinner parties. His guests included Secretary of the Army Frank Pace and Dean Rusk, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs. The evening was cool, the skies starry; after dinner, the men retired to the terrace, cigars and brandy snifters in hand. Then Alsop’s butler summoned Rusk to the telephone. Rusk returned, his face blanched, and said he had to leave, that “some kind of border incident” had broken out in Korea. Pace also left hurriedly, and Alsop and his remaining guests “settled down to argue whether
this was it
” (emphasis in original).
16

They weren’t the only ones. Truman, Acheson, and Rusk, among others, feared that North Korea’s aggression, which they believed the Soviet Union had ordered, might be the first of several worldwide strikes against U.S. allies in Cold War hotspots. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council hastily drafted a denunciation of the invasion and endorsed Truman’s decision to send American troops to defend South Korea. As Acheson wrote, “[t]o back away from this challenge, in view of our capacity for meeting it, would be highly destructive of the power and prestige of the United States.”
17

The invasion stunned the nation, casting a bright spotlight on the vul
nerability of the capital. In Takoma Park, Maryland, a suburb along the District’s northeast border, Mayor Ross Beville swore in a 12-man auxiliary police force, declaring “the town’s determination to have the defense force operating as soon as possible.”
18
Greenbelt reappointed its World War II civil defense director. “Although there is no need for hysteria at this time,” explained a councilman, “we should follow the example of other communities and be prepared.”
19
Area realtors touted lots and houses “beyond the radiation zone.”
20
Rep. Gordon Canfield (R-N.J.) asked 20 colleagues what they would do if atomic bombs fell on Washington. He reported, “[i]nvari
ably the answer was, ‘I would rush for the subway.’ But everyone questioned admitted he did not know whether that was the right thing to do. Nor do I know the answer.”
21
(By “subway,” Canfield meant only the underground tramline connecting the Senate Office Building with the Capitol. The city of Washington didn’t have a subway until the 1970s.) Four days before the invasion, Rep. John McMillan (D-S.C.), chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, had introduced a bill to create a District office of civil defense. Now he hurriedly scheduled hearings to expedite the bill’s passage.

McMillan’s bill authorized the Board of Commissioners to establish an office of civil defense and to appoint a director. It also provided for volunteer training and the drafting of a comprehensive emergency plan. Supporters of the bill included the NSRB, the Bureau of the Budget, and Frank Pace, who declared: “all-out preparation for civilian defense of our capital city is imperative.” Sen. Lester Hunt (D-Wyo.) introduced a matching bill in the Senate, and the NSRB urged the House Appropriations Committee to grant $200,000 for civil defense in the District.
22
Though some legislators ques
tioned the wisdom of speeding the bill to a vote, in early August Congress voted to establish the District of Columbia Office of Civil Defense (DCD) and Truman signed the act, Public Law 686 (81st Cong., 2nd sess.).
23

However, the fight for funding continued. The House subcommittee on District appropriations contended the new office wasn’t prepared to spend more than the original $30,000 request. DCD supporters responded with indignation, even disgust. “Of course, it is going to cost more than $30,000 to organize blood banks and instruct personnel on what to do in the case of an atomic attack, and organize everyone in the District,” exclaimed John Kennedy (D-Mass.). Canfield held up Washington’s civil defense as a model for other cities and states, arguing, “if we are going to cut this appropriation to $1 for every $10 requested, why, they are not going to go ahead. They will have the feeling that the fathers here in Washington think this is all poppycock.” On August 25, the House voted 99 to 75 to increase the DCD’s budget to $290,000, but conferees from the House and Senate reduced that amount to $100,000.
24

BOOK: This Is Only Test How Washington Prepared for Nuclear War
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