Iroquois Journey: An Anthropologist Remembers

5. The National Research Council

five The National Research Council Late in November 1951, the Division of Anthropology and Psychology of the National Research Council asked me to help organize a conference on disaster studies, a concern of the research branch of the Department of Defense dealing with how the American public might react to an atomic attack. The Department of Defense was prepared to fund future studies, and nrc would impanel a committee and oversee the research. The Division of Anthro and Psych, having decided to appoint an executive secretary —a full-time job with a salary greater than that of a research position at the Smithsonian—had interviewed several candidates, and in the course of our preparations for the conference, I became one. S. S. “Smitty” Stevens, then chairman of the division—a hardnosed experimental psychologist and professor at Harvard—came down from Cambridge to interview me. Smitty took a dim view of anthropology as science but decided I was a communicator, and the fact that I had once been a skier at Dartmouth convinced him that I might do a creditable job. We kept in touch by telephone. The conference was set for December 6. Responsibility lay with Anthro and Psych (what people might do in a disaster was clearly a problem for the behavioral sciences), but the observers of the aftermath of the atomic strikes in Japan had been physicians, and 92 | the national research council so the Division of Medicine also felt a responsibility for the questions the conference would address. The Division of Medicine enjoyed a long-standing relationship with the research branch of the Department of Defense. It was headed by Dean Winternitz, late of Yale Medical School and a terror to his students, who called on me to size me up and urge the sharing of responsibility for the upcoming conference because, in his view, the real experts were physicians. After some discussion we reached a guarded understanding . Later we became friends. Real trouble lay ahead. I failed to persuade Smitty, who was in the midst of some experiment, to come down from Cambridge and chair the conference. He delegated responsibility to Loren Eiseley, vice-chairman of the division, whom I knew as a graceful writer and colleague and whom I trusted had the necessary skills to chair a meeting. I was mistaken. Eiseley was inclined to listen rather than comment, and he soon lost control of the conference, while I sat behind him powerless to define the issues for my superior. Dean Winternitz took over. Defense Department representatives wondered, would the American public panic in an atomic disaster? Physicians, mainly concerned with radiation burns, said little about human behavior in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Someone suggested the British experience during the London Blitz as a model. (I made a note of that.) Obviously, no real experts on behavior in extreme situations were present that day. We would have to find or train them. The first conference on disaster studies had not gone well, and the front office of the National Academy and the nrc was embarrassed : both my division and I were in trouble. Smitty must have defended me, however, because I was appointed executive secretary of the Division of Anthropology and Psychology as of January 1, 1952, and the Committee on Disaster Studies was assigned to my division under a new chairman, the psychologist Carlyle “Jake” Jacobson, dean of medicine at the State University of New York (suny) Upstate Medical Center, a man of strong background in primatology and administration. Smitty, Jake, and I put together a team of behavioral scientists who set about defining the problem and deciding what could be researched. The group opted for behavior in natural disasters such as tornadoes and floods and possibly an assessment of the British experience during the Blitz of London. the national research council | 93 Word went out to the community of behavioral scientists. Anthony Wallace, one of the more innovative minds in anthropology, came down from Philadelphia to find out what I was doing in my new position, particularly disaster studies. He listened as I outlined the state of the art: we were seeking analogs of human behavior in extreme situations; because there were no experts in the field, we would have to find them or train them; and we were looking for people who had observed human behavior in the aftermath of tornadoes and floods. Tony returned...