
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 19, 1995                   TAG: 9504200046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

SCIENTISTS WANTED TO BOMB NAZIS

Many scientists who worked on the first atomic bomb wanted it used on Nazi Germany, but U.S. military planners decided early that Japan would be the target, says a nuclear physicist who has researched the end of World War II.

Arjun Makhijani said his research found the reason was not racial, as many have alleged, but had more to do with an arms race.

At a news conference Tuesday, Makhijani distributed a little-known memorandum on the subject from Gen. Leslie R. Grove, head of the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb. It was dated May 5, 1943 - 15 months before the weapon was used at Hiroshima.

The document expressed fear that if the bomb were dropped on Germany and failed to explode, the dud would help the Germans make their own weapon. Japanese research was not so far advanced.

``What began as a race against a potential nuclear power, Germany, turned into a project to produce a tool of immense military superiority against a nonnuclear-weapon state,'' Makhijani said in a statement.

Makhijani, president of the private Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Md., told reporters:

``The message is that non-nuclear-weapons powers are right to ask the nuclear-weapons powers to provide a guarantee against first use of nuclear weapons.''

by CNB