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Edwin A. Martini, Susan L. Smith. Toxic Exposures: Mustard Gas and the Health Consequences of World War II in the United States., The American Historical Review, Volume 122, Issue 5, December 2017, Page 1649, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.5.1649
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Both historians and the public tend to associate the history of chemical warfare with World War I. As Susan L. Smith reminds us in Toxic Exposures, however, mustard gas also played a significant role in World War II, “far greater than most of us realize” (2). While none of the combatant nations employed the weapon directly against enemy forces, Smith writes, “the United States and other Allied nations conducted mustard gas experiments as part of the militarization of medicine and the medicalization of war” (21). As part of an effort to “upgrade older military technologies and create new ones,” the United States and the United Kingdom “exposed thousands of their own servicemen to poison gas as part of their preparation for chemical warfare” (2).
This brief, thoroughly researched account (indeed, notes constitute nearly a quarter of the manuscript) provides the most detailed study to date on the topic. In addition to using sources from multiple archives in the United States and Canada, Smith makes extensive use of testimony provided by 250 U.S. veterans who shared their stories as part of public hearings on the matter in 1992. These soldiers and sailors were not well informed about the testing and were not asked for their consent. Instead, Smith notes, “the scientific method required evidence, and the military provided the necessary human bodies” (22). Although it is difficult to ascertain exactly how many service personnel were exposed as a result of the testing, Smith estimates that the number is likely well above the 60,000 Americans first reported by journalist Karen Freeman in the early 1990s, and includes thousands more Canadians, Britons, and Australians (2, 25).
