Man of the Hour

by Jennet Conant

  “entering wedge”: VB to JBC, October 24, 1944, Bush-Conant file, NA.

  “This is the first time . . .”: Edward Teller with Judith Shoolery, Memoirs, 202–3.

  “freeze,” “Christy bomb”: Conant, 109 East Palace, 264. James P. Delgado, Nuclear Dawn, 50.

  Trinity, “Batter my heart . . . ,” macabre: Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 571–72.

  Jornado del Muerto, No Trespassing signs, zero point: Conant, 109 East Palace, 236–38. For a detailed description of Trinity test, see Delgado, Nuclear Dawn, 53–59.

  “hundred-ton test”: Ibid., 56.

  “The war is not over . . .”: HC, May 8, 1945.

  “new force,” “charged with the function . . .”: Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, 616.

  Interim Committee, “Now we can start . . .”: Ibid. HLS diary, May 2, 1945, HLS Papers, YU.

  “doubted,” “growing restlessness”: MSL, 300.

  “indiscriminate destruction . . . uninhabited area”: Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists, 335.

  “essential,” “public bickering”: JB to HLS, May 1945, HLS Papers, YU.

  “extravagance in the Manhattan Project . . . might become disastrous,” “nervous memorandum . . . be successful”: Stimson and Bundy, On Active Service, 615–16. HLS diary, March 15, 1945, HLS Papers, YU.

  “Gentlemen, it is our responsibility . . .”: David McCullough, Truman, 390.

  “to make certain . . .”: Norris, Racing for the Bomb, 389.

  “phony”: TNW, 354.

  defended their estimate: MSL, 301.

  “like statesmen and not merely . . . peace of the world”: HLS diary, July 21, 1945.

  “some striking but harmless . . . ,” “a nonmilitary demonstration . . . ,” “Various possibilities . . . ,” “might be a dud”: AQ, 238–39.

  “We were keenly aware . . .”: Ibid.

  “sufficiently spectacular . . . two-thirds of a mile”: Ibid. Monk, Robert Oppenheimer, 447.

  “seemed the ideal weapon . . . at our disposal”: JBC to McGeorge Bundy, November 30, 1946, HLS Papers, YU.

  “burn jobs”: Life, August 20, 1945.

  “the number of people killed . . .”: Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 207–8.

  “precision”: DAS, 66.

  “shortening this war”: St. Clair McKelway, “A Reporter with the B-29’s,” NY, part III, June 23, 1945.

  “far less terrible . . .”: POTA, 62–63.

  “governing factor,” “most adversely affect”: DAS, 63.

  “it had been the capital . . .”: McCullough, Truman, 436.

  “We could not give the Japanese,” “most desirable target . . .”: Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 302.

  without warning: DAS, 73.

  “most important matter . . .”: MSL, 302.

  “join up,” “4F”: Interview with Theodore Richards Conant.

  “great danger . . .”: John Parks to JBC, March 30, 1945, CFP.

  “My father would have none . . .”: Interview with Theodore Richards Conant.

  “pleased to report . . . what I found”: JBC to GRC, July 13, 1945, CFP.

  “This is an interesting trip . . .”: Ibid.

  “How am I going to explain . . .”: NCBT, 290.

  “chief villain,” “Everybody lectured me . . .”: Badash, Hirschfelder, and Broida, Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 59.

  “A few pessimists”: JBC, “Notes on the ‘Trinity’ Test held at Alamogordo bombing range,” VB-JBC file, OSRD, NA (henceforth JBC, “Notes on Trinity”). Reprinted in its entirety in Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 758–61.

  “reversal”: NCBT, 9291–93.

  “a bit tense . . .”: JBC, “Notes on Trinity.”

  “From 10:30 a.m . . .”: Ibid.

  “ignite the atmosphere”: NCBT, 296–97.

  “minus forty-five . . .”: JBC, “Notes on Trinity.”

  “never imagined seconds . . .”: NCBT, 438.

  “Then came a burst . . . actually occurred”: JBC, “Notes on Trinity.”

  “an enormous pyrotechnic display . . . wave,” “Well, I guess there is something . . .”: Ibid.

  “wrapped up in the future”: NCBT, 298.

  “It was only a matter . . .”: JBC to McGeorge Bundy, November 30, 1946, HLS Papers, YU.

  “knocked him off his feet”: Badash, Hirschfelder, and Broida, Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 60.

  “disappeared . . . expected”: JBC, “Notes on Trinity.”

  “off the scale,” “not serious”: Ibid.

  “usual freakiness,” “content of gas shells . . .”: NCBT, 301.

  “Oh, Dr. Conant . . .”: Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer, 240.

  “operation . . . pleased”: Norris, Racing for the Bomb, 406.

  “My first impression . . .”: JBC, “Notes on Trinity.”

  CHAPTER 17: A CHANGED WORLD

  “The unleashed power . . .”: Nancy Peterson Hill, A Very Private Public Citizen, 169.

  “loosed . . . on this earth”: NYT, August 7, 1945. McCullough, Truman, 455.

  “correctness of the action . . .”: MSL, 302.

  “marvel . . . without failure”: NYT, August 7, 1945.

  “Air became flame . . .”: “The War Ends,” Life, August 20, 1945.

  “Atom Age,” “greatest scientific gamble”: BDG, August 7, 1945.

  “The Haunted Wood,” “not with exultation . . . minor planets”: WP, August 7, 1945.

  “Yesterday we clinched victory . . .”: NYT, August 7, 1945.

  “more surely than the rocket . . .”: Winston Churchill, “Potentialities of the New Weapon—Warning for the Future,” radio address, August 10, 1945.

  “devastating strength”: JBC to Harvey Bundy, November 30, 1946, JBCPP.

  “must be the prime objective . . .”: JBC and VB to the Interim Committee, July 18, 1945, as quoted in Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 236.

  “Joey-come-lately,” “hopeless odds . . .”: NYT, August 9, 1945.

  “crumbled and disintegrated . . .”: NYT, August 20, 1945.

  “and the detailed arrangements . . .”: MSL, 303.

  “additional bombs”: LRG’s directive to General Carl Spaatz, July 23, 1945, as quoted in NCBT, 308; McCullough, Truman, 457.

  “taking no chances,” “napalm bombs”: NYT, August 9, 1945.

  “mopping-up operation,” “finish off”: “The War Ends.”

  “royal foul-up,” “clearing”: NCBT, 346–47.

  “ultimate responsibility . . . fellow citizens”: Henry DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes: The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb Under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945), vii.

  “scientific men”: Ibid.

  “GIs in Pacific . . .”: NYT, August 10, 1945.

  “by enduring the unendurable . . . Declaration of Powers”: Delgado, Nuclear Dawn, 115.

  Halibut’s crew: Admiral I. J. Galantin, Take Her Deep! A Submarine Against Japan in World War II (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1987), 223–248.

  “cracked up,” “A severe case . . .”: Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 239.

  “Coming just at this time . . .”: Ibid.

  “mental condition of being shell-shocked”: General Leslie Groves, interview, “Voices of the Manhattan Project.”

  “stark-raving mad”: Interview with Theodore Richards Conant.

  “too dangerous to be loose . . .”: NYT, August 10, 1945.

  “only optimists would have willingly . . .”: JBC, Secret History, 33.

  “The world is changed . . .”: TNW, 416.

  “For military courage . . .”: JBC, “From War to Peace,” HC, September 28, 1945. Harvard Alumni Bulletin, October 6, 1945, 81.

  “could engender such conditions . . .”: Ibid. Also see JBC, “The Fight for Liberty in Peace and War.”

  “fear, panic, and foolish . . .”: JBC, “From War to Peace.”

  “push-button
wars,” “robot planes . . .”: “The Atom Bomb and Future War,” Life, August 20, 1945.

  “There was no defense . . .”: JBC, speech to the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, HC, November 23, 1945.

  “revolution in warfare . . .”: Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 241.

  “We are living in a very different . . .”: Keyes Dewitt Metcalf, My Harvard Library Years, 1937–1955 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 116–17.

  “How many volumes . . . ,” “preserve the material . . .”: Ibid.

  “This would include . . .”: Ibid.

  “It could not be done . . . nothing more about it”: Ibid.

  “mighty thunder”: Delgado, Nuclear Dawn, 61.

  “nervous wreck”: Monk, Robert Oppenheimer, 475.

  “Now I am become Death . . .”: Delgado, Nuclear Dawn, 63.

  “revulsion”: Alice Kimball Smith, A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists Movement in America, 1945–47 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), 77.

  “barbarism,” “mass murder,” “sheer terrorism”: “Opinion,” Time, August 20, 1945.

  “war was now impossible”: Smith, A Peril and a Hope, 77.

  “It is no good trying . . .”: Laura Fermi, Atoms in the Family, 244.

  “What if we hadn’t?”: Teller, Memoirs, 216.

  “felt more or less deeply . . . anywhere, anytime”: Fermi, Atoms in the Family, 245.

  “tragic use . . .”: Chicago Tribune, September 2, 1945.

  “begin an elaborate study . . .”: TNW, 423.

  “Scientist Drops A-bomb . . . ,” “clarify and consolidate”: Ibid. Smith, A Peril and a Hope, 88–89.

  “This place is a bit . . . discussion”: VB to JBC, September 24 and October 1, 1945, VB-JBC file, OSRD, NA.

  “center of affairs . . . letting them loose”: JBC to VB, October 4, 1945, VB-JBC file, OSRD, NA.

  “poison of deception”: MSL, 298.

  “What makes you think . . .”: Interview with GRC.

  “years of frustration”: MSL, 299.

  “hostility”: Ibid.

  “to test out their good faith”: TNW, 412.

  “I think your statement . . .”: JBC to VB, October 4, 1945.

  “world government,” “world state . . .”: Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 34–35.

  “talked atomic bomb . . .”: Hill, A Very Private Public Citizen, 162.

  “could shortly have the bomb . . . the height of folly”: Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 247.

  “under which cooperation . . .”: TNW, 426.

  “The misuse of such energy . . .”: Ibid., 431.

  “Men Who Made the Bomb . . .”: Byron S. Miller, “A Law Is Passed: The Atomic Energy Act of 1946,” University of Chicago Law Review 15, no. 4 (Summer 1948): 800.

  “international security . . .”: Smith, A Peril and a Hope, 174.

  “doesn’t bother me . . .”: JBC to VB, October 23, 1945, VB-JBC file, OSRD, NA.

  “sweating at the very thought . . .”: “Hold That Monster,” Time, November 19, 1945.

  “the greatest challenge . . .”: TNW, 428.

  “wisest of motives . . . ,” “The same men who could command . . .”: Ibid., 435.

  “the implied threat of the bomb . . .”: Ibid., 417.

  “make Russia more manageable . . .”: Sherwin, A World Destroyed, 202.

  “a secret armament race . . .”: TNW, 419.

  “willing and cooperative partners . . .”: Ibid.

  “break his silence . . .”: JBC to VB, October 23, 1945, VB-JBC file, NA.

  “I am very much disturbed . . .”: VB to JBC, November 7, 1945, VB-JBC file, NA.

  “We recognize that the application . . .”: TNW, 464–65.

  “first steps”: JBC to Harry S. Truman, November 15, 1945, VB-JBC file, NA.

  “cheerful liar”: JBC Moscow diary, December 10, 1945, JBCPP.

  “his policy was . . . ,” “still crossed”: Ibid., December 24, 1945.

  “college professors”: TNW, 473.

  “the really crucial time . . .”: JBC, “National Defense in the Light of the Atomic Bomb,” December 3, 1945, JBCPP. JBC gave a similar talk, “Conant on the Bomb,” at the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce on November 20, 1945.

  “by stages”: TNW, 476.

  “a little cynical . . . ,” “headed for a large success . . .”: JBC Moscow diary, December 24, JBCPP.

  “good cheer,” “dwellers of the Kremlin”: MSL, 486–87.

  “most comforting news . . .”: BH, December 28, 1945, reprinted in MSL, 487.

  “The outcome is excellent . . . down the right path”: VB to JBC, January 2, 1945, VB-JBC file, NA.

  CHAPTER 18: ATOMIC CHAOS

  “His success . . .”: “Harvard’s James Bryant Conant: Chemist of Ideas,” Time, September 23, 1946, 60.

  “the atomic bomb is just too dreadful . . .”: Smith, A Peril and a Hope, 228. Public opinion poll: Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 22.

  “In such a world . . .”: “The Presidency: A Policy Is Born,” Time, December 31, 1945.

  “terrifying implications,” “nightmare of global war”: JBC, “National Defense in the Light of the Atomic Bomb.”

  “right now . . . adverse conditions”: JBC testimony, Committee on Military Affairs, House of Representatives, 79th Cong. 1st Sess., part 1, “Universal Military Service Hearings,” November 8–December 19, 1946.

  “not out of despair . . . major threat of war”: JBC, “Conant and the Bomb,” November 20, 1945, Harvard Alumni Bulletin, December 8, 1945.

  “too grand”: DAS, 159.

  Atomic Development Authority: Ibid.

  “dangerous activities . . . ,” “cops,” “A place to begin . . .”: TNW, 536, 540.

  “stages,” “the most constructive analysis . . .”: DAS, 161.

  “Great Fear,” “Elysian daydream”: TNW, 558.

  “We clasped the new bible . . .”: Smith, A Peril and a Hope, 335.

  “youngsters”: Tuttle, “James B. Conant,” 330.

  “suspicions of many senators . . .”: MSL, 493.

  “went boom . . .”: Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon, 161.

  “That was the day . . .”: Monk, Robert Oppenheimer, 500.

  “He wants to run the world . . .”: DAS, 162.

  “tired of babying the Russians . . .”: Ibid., 176.

  “atom spies”: Smith, A Peril and a Hope, 308.

  “two hostile camps . . .”: Steel, Walter Lippmann, 427.

  “From Stettin in the Baltic . . . un-united world”: Ibid., 428.

  “fanatically,” “permanent peaceful coexistence”: Ibid., 433. Also Kennan, Memoirs, 292–95.

  “rocking the boat”: MSL, 506.

  “logical”: Ibid., 493.

  “immediate and certain punishment”: DAS, 165.

  “We are here . . . World Destruction”: Smith, A Peril and a Hope, 338.

  “If I read the signs . . .”: TNW, 577.

  “Literally the fate of the world . . .”: Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 56.

  “stand pat,” “winning weapon,” “The bitter truth . . .”: DAS, 166–69.

  “be in a position of . . .”: MSL, 494.

  “appraisal of the relative strength . . . ,” “accumulated dissatisfactions”: Ibid., 494–95.

  “hatchet men”: Smith, A Peril and a Hope, 303.

  “For all I knew . . .”: Ibid., 497.

  “extreme horror”: Ibid.

  “more liberal thinking . . .”: MSL, 301; Smith, A Peril and a Hope, 15.

  “certain degree of incompatibility . . .”: Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 264.

  “shattered faith”: Smith, A Peril and a Hope, 340.

  “just another weapon”: Delgado, Nuclear Dawn, 157.

  “Nothing Atoll . . .”: Ibid., 154.

  “turned his back . . .”: MSL, 499.

  “scientific celebrity . . . world’s biggest job”: “Harvard’s James Bryant Conant: Chemist of Ideas,” 53, 60.
>
  “atomic harness”: MSL, 500.

  “get-tough”: TNW, 601.

  “very much disturbed . . . wear us down”: VB to JBC, October 21, 1946, VB-JBC file, NA.

  “decidedly stiff . . .”: Ibid.

  “cold war”: George Orwell, “You and the Atomic Bomb,” London Tribune, October 19, 1945.

  “classified,” “the age of the Superblitz”: Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 273.

  “in such an age . . .”: Ibid.

  “a rickety bridge”: Ibid.

  “Their faces were wholly burned . . . 600 beds”: John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Random House, 1946), 51–52, 24–26. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 205.

  “rich repertory of symptoms”: Hersey, Hiroshima, 110.

  “injurious within . . .”: Susan Southard, Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War (New York: Viking Penguin, 2015), 107.

  hibakusha: Hersey, Hiroshima, 110.

  “A-bomb sickness”: Ibid.

  “terrible implications”: “To Our Readers,” NY, August 31, 1946.

  “war criminals . . .”: Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 282–83.

  “What bothered me . . .”: Ibid.

  “paraded their sense of guilt . . . ,” “war is ethically . . .”: JBC to Muriel Popper, June 21, 1968, JBCPP. Amster, “Meritocracy Ascendant,” 150.

  “morally indefensible . . . people of Japan”: Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 202.

  “Christian realism,” “the triumph of experience . . .”: Paul Elie, “A Man for All Reasons,” Atlantic Monthly, November 2007.

  “At the risk . . . Axis powers”: Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 284.

  “does not make sufficiently clear . . . defeated tyranny”: Ibid., 285. For Niebuhr’s full reply, see James G. Hershberg, “A Footnote on Hiroshima and Atomic Morality: Conant, Niebuhr, and an ‘Emotional’ Clergyman, 1945–46,” December 2002 Newsletter, George Washington University.

  “notoriously nondocile”: Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate Story (New York: Harper, 1948), 437.

  “very useful . . .”: VB to JBC, July 18, 1946, JBCPP.

  “never liked mixing . . . legal action”: Hershberg, Harvard to Hiroshima, 285–86.

  “in all probability . . .”: Barton J. Bernstein, “Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” Diplomatic History 17, iss. 1 (January 1993): 35–72. JBC’s efforts to shape popular opinion about the use of the bomb is also examined in James Hershberg, “James B. Conant, Nuclear Weapons, and the Cold War,” 117–80.