Project Sunshine 1953: How the AEC Secretly Collected Baby Bones to Measure Fallout

Short answer: Project Sunshine 1953 was a real, classified Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) program to measure how much strontium-90 from nuclear tests was building up in people worldwide. Its most disturbing part, collecting the bones of stillborn babies and young children under a cover story, is documented in the agency's own letters, released in the 1990s. Here is what the records show.

How Project Sunshine started

By 1953 the U.S. and USSR had set off dozens of nuclear tests in the open air. An earlier AEC study, Project Gabriel, had asked how much fallout the world could absorb. In July 1953 the AEC and the Air Force's RAND Corporation held a secret conference in Santa Monica. Its report recommended "a world-wide assay of the distribution of Sr-90," and that assay "has been designated Project SUNSHINE." The initial summer study was led by University of Chicago chemist Willard Libby, who later became an AEC commissioner and won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for radiocarbon dating.

Strontium-90 matters because the body treats it like calcium and stores it in bone. Growing children absorb the most, which is why the program wanted young bones.

What was sampled

An AEC summary reproduced by the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) lists "soil, alfalfa, animals, dairy products, human bones, rain and other water," from about 20 foreign countries. Labs at the University of Chicago, Columbia University (J. Laurence Kulp) and the AEC's New York office analyzed them. The worldwide survey itself was classified SECRET.

The baby bone letters

The clearest evidence is a December 9, 1953 letter from Robert A. Dudley of the AEC's Division of Biology and Medicine to the University of Rochester's atomic project, asking for "infant skeletons from Japan." It says:

"One type of sample on which we are concentrating is the bones of infants, either stillborn or up to a year or two of age. We have found that stillborn bones are easy to obtain in the United States..."

The letter asks for "perhaps 6 or 8 skeletons" through the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Japan and offers embassy help with shipping. It also explains the secrecy: "the unclassified description of our purpose in obtaining these bones is for Ra analyses... the Ra story is merely incomplete, not false. The complete purpose I have described for you alone."

An October 1953 letter to Libby describes recruiting foreign doctors through "personal contacts," including Rockefeller Foundation connections.

"Body snatching"

In 1995 ACHRE staff obtained declassification of a 1955 AEC transcript, previously "secret." Their memo summarizes Libby explaining the value of "body snatching" for human samples and noting the AEC had hired "an expensive law firm" to "look up the law of body snatching." The staff found no discussion in the transcript of telling the subjects' families.

What came after

The AEC began releasing Sunshine data publicly in the mid-1950s as fallout became a political issue. Independently, from 1958 a citizens' group in St. Louis with Washington University scientists ran the Baby Tooth Survey, collecting hundreds of thousands of children's baby teeth and finding strontium-90 rising in children born after the testing boom. That work fed public pressure behind the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which ended U.S., Soviet and British atmospheric tests.

In 1994 President Clinton created ACHRE to investigate Cold War radiation research. Its 1995 report and briefing books are why these letters are public.

Documented, inferred, or unproven?

Documented: a secret AEC program; infant bones collected in the U.S. and sought abroad; a radium cover story; officials discussing "body snatching."

Reasonable inference: many families never knew. The records show no consent process, though ACHRE did not reconstruct every sample.

Unproven: claims of deliberate harm to children to obtain samples. The records describe collecting remains from those who had already died, and we found no evidence otherwise. Exact sample totals are also not clear from what we reviewed.

Our view (opinion)

The scientific goal, measuring fallout, was legitimate and arguably urgent. The secrecy was the scandal: grieving families were treated as a supply chain. It fits the pattern in our look at MKUltra and the Starfish Prime test: the public learns late, and only because someone forced the files open.

How to read the Sunshine records yourself

Start with the ACHRE briefing book (Georgetown link below). It reproduces the AEC summary, the October and December 1953 letters and the conference invitation, which itself warned that "the existence of the project and the conference itself should not be revealed" beyond official contacts. Then read the 1995 "body snatching" memo on DOE's OpenNet, and finally the 1953 RAND report for the scientific rationale. Two cautions. First, quotes circulate online without dates or senders; match each one to a named letter. Second, separate the program's goal (measuring fallout) from its methods (secrecy and no consent). Both are documented, and both matter.

The same era produced related controversies abroad. In the United Kingdom, the 2010 Redfern Inquiry examined the removal of tissue from deceased nuclear workers for analysis without families' consent. That is a separate British case, not Project Sunshine, but it shows the practice was not unique to the AEC.

Sources

• ACHRE staff memo and briefing book on Projects Gabriel and Sunshine (Georgetown Bioethics Archive): bioethicsarchive.georgetown.edu
• Dudley letter, Dec. 9, 1953 (National Security Archive text): nsarchive2.gwu.edu
• DOE OpenNet, "Project Sunshine" (ACHRE): osti.gov
• DOE OpenNet, ACHRE staff memo "Documentary Update on Project Sunshine 'Body Snatching'": osti.gov
• RAND/AEC, Worldwide Effects of Atomic Weapons: Project Sunshine, R-251-AEC (1953, unclassified edition): nuclearsecrecy.com (PDF)
• Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Final Report (1995).

Frequently asked questions

What was Project Sunshine in 1953?

A classified Atomic Energy Commission program, launched after a July 1953 conference at RAND in Santa Monica, to measure worldwide strontium-90 from nuclear test fallout by testing soil, food, animals and human bones, especially infant bones.

Did the government really collect baby bones?

Yes. AEC letters released by the 1990s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments show officials sought bones of stillborn infants and children up to about two years old, in the U.S. and abroad.

Did families know?

The records show collection ran through personal contacts with doctors who were not told the classified purpose. A 1995 staff memo notes the 1955 transcript does not show discussion of telling families.

What was the cover story?

Contacts were told the bones were for a survey of natural radium. An AEC official wrote that the radium story was 'merely incomplete, not false' because radium was also measured.

What did Project Sunshine lead to?

Its strontium-90 findings, together with public efforts like the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey, fed the debate that led to the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty ending U.S. and Soviet atmospheric testing.