 It's time for the Lawn Jean Chronoscope. A television journal of the important issues of the hour brought to you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. A presentation of the Lawn Jean Wittner Watch Company. Maker of Lawn Jean, the world's most honored watch, and Wittner. Distinguished companion to the world honored Lawn Jean. Good evening. This is Frank Knight. May I introduce our co-editors for this edition of the Lawn Jean Chronoscope? From the CBS television news staff, Larry Lusser and Louis Spanks, associate editor of Time Magazine. Our distinguished guest for this evening is the honorable Chet Hollerfield, representative from California. Tomorrow, while they're permitting, the third and greatest of the hydrogen bomb tests conducted by the United States will take place in the far Pacific. And tonight, we're fortunate enough to have as our guest a member of the Joint Congressional Atomic Energy Committee who was present and privileged to see one of those hydrogen bomb blasts that shook the world. Representative Hollerfield, may I ask you in a word, were you frightened? When I saw the effect of the March 1 blast and the effect of the blast in 1952, I was filled with wonder and awe that man could create a force that would be so powerful as to create that tremendous hole in the ocean coral bed where an island was before. Representative Hollerfield has been a lot of criticism of the United States among our allies overseas about these hydrogen bomb tests and some of this criticism has been in the field that scientists are delving into the unknown. They don't know what's going to happen. Now, do you share these fears? Well, scientists always delve into the unknown. I do not share those fears and I believe that the highly vocal minority of foreign people who have been against this have been against it either because of propaganda which has been fed to them by subversive forces in their country or because of a lack of understanding of the reason that it is necessary for us to have these tests. Representative Hollerfield, the bomb has gotten into the news lately in kind of another way. I think Senator McCarthy has charged and other people have echoed the fact that there was an unreasonable delay in our decision to go ahead with the H-bomb project after we knew the Russians had exploded an A-bomb and that this perhaps was attributable to communist influence. Now, you were on the inside of the committee all during that time. What is your comment on that? My comment on that is that I believe that Senator McCarthy was badly misinformed. The 18 members of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy have issued a statement clarifying this matter. In September of 1949, the first Russian A-bomb was exploded. Four months later, after consideration by the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the General Advisory Committee, and the President's office, again I repeat, four months later President Truman ordered the go-ahead on the hydrogen bomb project. In January of 1950. In January of 1950, four months later. What happened during those four months, sir? During that four months, there was a great deal of briefing going on in these different government agencies. A great deal of consideration was given to whether we should allocate the amount of scarce material that we used in the A-bombs over to an untried project. Whether we would allocate the scientists who were scarce in that top flight range over to this new project and try it with maybe the chance that all of that material and all that time of the scientists would be wasted. And also the fact that we had to appropriate about a billion dollars in order to go into this project. Well, Dr. Oppenheimer's reply to the Atomic Energy Commission charges last week made it clear that his General Advisory Committee was against the hydrogen bomb from the beginning. Now what I'd like to ask you is, do you think it was correct for the Atomic Energy Commission to have suspended Dr. Oppenheimer under the new security regulations? Well, first I'd like to answer the first part of it. The General Advisory Committee of scientists did not take action against going ahead with the H-bomb. They merely took action against going ahead on a crash basis. That's the first part of your question. The second part of your question, I think it would be improper for me to pass judgment on Dr. Oppenheimer because it is upon this question that this high top flight review board is now having hearings with Dr. Oppenheimer and other witnesses and they will be the ones that will pass judgment on whether it was proper or not. I have confidence in this committee of three and believe they'll do a good job. Representative O'Fellerfield, you were talking about the unearthly effects of the hydrogen bomb. In your opinion, will the hydrogen bomb and its blast effects have any possible use for peacetime use of atomic energy? Well, again we're going into the unknown when we predict this on this point. I would say that most of the scientists do not believe that we can harness the hydrogen explosion as we are about to harness the atomic explosion. But who knows what the future will bring? Well, you have often been quoted as believing that the people should be told more about hydrogen bomb explosions. Could you tell us in what general area you think that we should know more than we've been told? Yes, I believe that the American people should be told the truth about what these weapon effects are. Not how to make the bomb or how many we have or how to deliver them or detonate them. But they should be told what the effects will be, both on our enemies and on ourselves if they're used against us. I think this is basic knowledge that they must have to intelligently divide the truth from these terrible rumors that are going around and say that you might set the atmosphere on fire or that you might devastate a 1,500 mile wide, 2,000 mile long area. These are just in the field of fancy and I think unless the people are told the truth they can't tell between truth and fancy. You don't think that Admiral Strauss' appearance at the President's press conference recently was a sufficient announcement on this? Well, I was very much in favor of everything that Admiral Strauss said at the President's press conference. I call attention to the fact, however, that the information he gave was on the bomb that was exploded in November of 1952. It was not on the bomb that was exploded on March the 1st or the later bombs. But didn't he talk about the fishermen? Well, I'm talking about bombs now. You're talking about fishermen. Yes, he did talk about the fishermen who accidentally got into the path of some radio activity. But he didn't talk about the size of the bomb and these films that are going around are about the bomb of 1952, not about the March 1st bomb. And I say that if the people were entitled to the facts on the 1952 bomb, they're also entitled to the facts on the 1954 bombs. Representative Hall of Fame, I ask you is there any reason to believe that these hydrogen bomb blasts could be causing any effect on the weather in the United States or around the world or disturbing the cycles of nature as many people fear? I believe the best information we have from weather scientists and other scientists is that this is not true. Well, may I ask you, sir, do you think our civil defense, if it were warned about the effects of these bombs, is capable of handling a total war in which they were used? Well, I'd like to say this much, that there is no complete answer to hydrogen bomb attack. We have no complete defense against it, and there's no complete answer to it. But there are many answers to things which can be done, which would lessen the effect of a hydrogen bomb attack. And we could put our country in order if we had an effective type of civilian defense. I say that we do not at this time have an effective civilian defense in the United States. And I say that it is necessary because I believe that civilian defense, which includes the protection of the people on the industrial line that are making the products of war, is just as necessary as to have the jet planes and the other implements of war. You've got to keep the pipeline filled or these things cannot be used in military action. And that's what I'm very much interested in. I'd like to see a very effective civilian defense. In other words, you think that the civilians would be on the front line of any defense in this country in the event of a third world war, or a war that if it didn't start with atoms and hydrogen bombs, what might end with them? I'm sure, and there's no responsible military or civilian authority that will say that the civilians will not be in the front line. I think they will be. Now, I think in order to have this effective, we've got to have presidential leadership. We've got to have recognition of the fact that civilian defense is just as important as military defense in our fence. And we've got to have one step to do that would be to put the civilian defense agency on a cabinet status level, to give it the prestige, commensurate with the importance of the job that is to be done. Another thing that I think is absolutely imperative is federal financing. The people of the different cities will not take the complete job of federal financing for the benefit of the nation, and they shouldn't have to. Another thing I think you've got to consider target areas rather than just target cities. And another thing you've got to have compulsory participation. You cannot depend upon volunteer participation if you have a real civilian defense. Well, in the lines of civilian defense representative Holofield, would you advise as Val Peterson, the secretary, that people get out of town and go to the desert or go to the mountains, or is there some other kind of defense possible? Well, there's many different kinds of defense, and the defense would have to be tailored to the individual target area, taking into consideration roads of egress, rivers and water courses, and many other factors which have to do with either evacuation or proper kind of hibernation, let's call it. Representative Holofield, I may ask you as a final question you said before that you thought we should go on with these tests and we were learning a great deal from them. Have we learned anything really useful from these hydrogen bomb tests in the far Pacific? Well, one thing that we have learned, we have learned that we can make a hydrogen bomb, and we know that Russia has made and exploded a thermonuclear type of bomb. Now, if we were not in a position to know that we can do this, we would in my opinion be at the mercy of a subversive foe with ideals different from ours, and they could more or less write the ticket for world domination. But now that we do know that we can do it, we are on a parity as far as strength is concerned with them and possibly ahead of them. Thank you very much, Representative Holofield. It's been the most interesting to have you here tonight. Thank you. The opinions expressed on the Lone Gene Chronoscope were those of the speakers. The editorial board for this edition of the Lone Gene Chronoscope was Larry LeSere and Lewis Banks. Our distinguished guest was the Honorable Chet Holofield, Representative from California. The worldwide reputation of Lone Gene watches was not made in a day nor in a decade. It's been building for close to a century. 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