Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin

by American Prometheus: The Triumph;Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

  568 “I came to have”: Gibney, “Finding Out Different,” in St. John People, pp. 150–67.

  569 “Gibney, never come to my”: Doris and Ivan Jadan, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 14; Inga Hiilivirta, interview by Sherwin, 1/16/82, p. 8; Ericson, interview by Sherwin, 1/13/82, p. 8. The feud ended only after both Robert and Kitty were dead. Toni thought the whole thing was ridiculous, so one day she got Sabra Ericson to take her next door to see Nancy Gibney and got the whole thing settled.

  569 “You never felt uncomfortable”: Doris Jadan, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, pp. 1–4. Ivan Jadan never left the island; he died in 1995.

  569 “Kitty, of course”: Doris Jadan, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 3.

  570 “I don’t remember Kitty”: Ericson, interview by Sherwin, 1/13/82, pp. 14, 19.

  570 “She was the great trouble”: Doris Jadan, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 6.

  570 “He treated her”: Sis Frank, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 7.

  570 “There might be a dead spot”: Sis Frank, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, pp. 2, 8.

  570 “Robert was a very humble” and subsequent quotes: Hiilivirta, interview by Sherwin, 1/16/82, pp. 3–5; Hiilivirta, interview by Bird, 3/26/01.

  571 Limejuice became: Hiilivirta, interview by Sherwin, 1/16/82, p. 4.

  571 “brought back to him”: Ibid., p. 5.

  571 “Sis, come with me”: Sis Frank, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 2.

  571 “He was an unassuming”: Ericson, interview by Sherwin, 1/13/82, pp. 14–15.

  571 “He was the gentlest”: John Green, interview by Sherwin, 2/20/82, p. 15.

  572 “She was trying”: Francis Fergusson, interview by Sherwin, 7/7/79, p. 2.

  572 “My God”: Fiona and William St. Clair, interview by Sherwin, 2/17/82, p. 9; Hiilivirta, interview by Sherwin, 1/16/82, p. 4; Doris Jadan, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 4.

  572 Peter seldom came down: John Green, interview by Sherwin, 2/20/82, p. 21.

  572 “She was very sweet”: Hiilivirta, interview by Bird, 3/26/01.

  572 “a dead-serious child”: Gibney, “Finding Out Different,” in St. John People, p. 157.

  572 Extremely shy: Hiilivirta, interview by Sherwin, 1/16/82, p. 17.

  572 “Toni was very pliable”: Ibid., p. 2. Sis Frank, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 5; Ericson, interview by Sherwin, 1/13/82, p. 9.

  572 “Robert didn’t pay”: Ericson, interview by Sherwin, 1/13/82, p. 11.

  572 “a deep regard”: Steve Edwards, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 4.

  573 “Alex was crazy about Toni”: Sis Frank, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 7.

  573 But when Toni: Hiilivirta, interview by Sherwin, 1/16/82, pp. 1–2.

  573 “rag people”: John Green, interview by Sherwin, 2/20/82, p. 12.

  573 “keep your hat brim”: Betty Dale, interview by Sherwin, 1/21/82, pp. 2–3.

  573 “Out of your mind”: Michelmore, The Swift Years, p. 240.

  573 “I never saw Robert drunk”: Doris Jadan, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 8.

  573 He loved The Odyssey: Ericson, interview by Sherwin, 1/13/82, p. 14.

  Chapter Forty: “It Should Have Been Done the Day After Trinity”

  574 “Not on your life”: Glenn T. Seaborg, A Chemist in the White House, p. 106; Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer, p. 275.

  574 When the editors: Thorpe, “J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Transformation of the Scientific Vocation,” dissertation, p. 593.

  575 “Disgusting!” cried one: “Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer,” 6/26/63, folder 2 of Oppenheimer file, HUAC name file, RG 233, NA.

  575 “the scientist who writes: Szasz, “Great Britain and the Saga of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” War in History, vol. 2, no. 3 (1995), p. 329.

  575 “Look, this isn’t a day”: Michelmore, The Swift Years, p. 247–48.

  575 “I have been tempted”: Ibid., p. 248; Teller claimed in his memoirs that he submitted Oppenheimer’s name for the 1963 Fermi Prize (Teller, Memoirs, p. 465).

  575 Actually, many physicists: NYT, 11/22/63; Herken, Cardinal Choices, pp. 307–8.

  575 “My God, did you hear?”: Peter Oppenheimer, e-mail to Bird, 9/7/04; Michelmore, The Swift Years, p. 249.

  576 “figure of stone”: Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. 5, p. 529.

  576 “I think it is just possible”: White House press release, “Remarks of President Johnson, Seaborg, and Oppenheimer,” 12/2/63, Philip M. Stern Papers, JFKL; Seaborg, A Chemist in the White House, p. 186; Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. 5, p. 530.

  576 Teller was in the audience: Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer, pp. 276–77.

  576 Afterwards, John F. Kennedy’s grieving: David Pines, interview by Bird, 6/26/04.

  577 “dealt a severe blow”: Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb, p. 331.

  577 “It would require”: Bird, The Color of Truth, p. 151.

  577 “It’s a lovely show”: Herken, Brotherhood of the Bomb, p. 330.

  577 “Oppenheimer’s partisans”: Strauss, memo to file, 1/21/66, Strauss Papers, HHL.

  577 “That was awful”: Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. 6, p. 22.

  578 “There is nothing”: Ibid., vol. 5, p. 275.

  578 though privately, when he discussed: Peter Oppenheimer, e-mail to Bird, 9/10/04.

  578 “[B]ut I do recognize your Byrnes”: JRO to Gar Alperovitz, 11/4/64, courtesy of Alperovitz; Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, p. 574.

  579 “I begin to wonder”: Heinar Kipphardt, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, pp. 126–27.

  579 “causes one furiously to think”: Szasz, “Great Britain and the Saga of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” War in History, vol. 2, no. 3 (1995), p. 330.

  579 “turned the whole damn farce”: Ibid., p. 329.

  579 “It’s twenty years too late”: The Day After Trinity, Jon Else, transcript, p. 77, Sherwin Collection.

  579 “The subject of the book”: JRO to Dr. Jerome Wiesner, 6/6/66, Stern Papers, JFKL.

  580 “The library is beautiful”: Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. 6, p. 173.

  580 “The trouble is that Robert”: Strauss, memo to file, 4/22/63, Strauss Papers, HHL.

  580 “simply waiting for the bell”: Ibid., 4/29/65, Strauss Papers, HHL.

  581 “even Princeton was too close”: Ibid., 12/14/65, Strauss Papers, HHL.

  581 Construction began in September: Georgia Whidden (IAS), e-mail to Bird, 2/24/04.

  581 “I am going to outlive” and subsequent quotes: Sis Frank, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 3; Verna Hobson, interview by Sherwin, 7/31/79, p. 26.

  582 “dreadful news”: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to JRO, 2/21/66, box 65, JRO Papers.

  582 “faint hope”: Francis Fergusson, interview by Sherwin, 6/23/79, p. 10.

  582 “For the first time Robert”: Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. 6, p. 255.

  582 “physicist and sailor”: Pais, A Tale of Two Continents, p. 399; Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer, p. 279; Michelmore, The Swift Years, p. 253.

  582 “his spirit grew”: Dyson, interview by Jon Else, 12/10/79, p. 4; Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, p. 81.

  583 “vigorous and almost gay”: Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. 6, p. 234.

  583 In mid-July his doctor: JRO to Nicolas Nabokov, cable, 7/11/66, Nabokov folder, box 52, JRO Papers.

  583 “ghost, an absolute ghost”: Sabra Ericson, interview by Sherwin, 1/13/82, pp. 16, 21; Sis Frank, interview by Sherwin, 1/18/82, p. 4.

  583 “You don’t know what I’d”: Hiilivirta, interview by Sherwin, 1/16/82, pp. 9, 12.

  583 “They were, in fact”: JRO to Nicolas Nabokov, 10/28/66, Nabokov folder, box 52, JRO Papers.

  583 “He [Oppenheimer] was a very”: George Dyson, e-mail to Bird, 5/23/03.

  583 “the cancer was very manifest”: JRO to Nicolas Nabokov, 10/28/66, Nabokov folder, box 52
, JRO Papers.

  584 “The last mile”: Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. 6, pp. 299–300.

  584 “I am much less able”: Michelmore, The Swift Years, p. 254.

  584 Early in December: 1966 desk book, box 13, JRO Papers.

  584 “I was rather disturbed” and subsequent quotes: David Bohm to JRO, 11/29/66; JRO to Bohm, draft letter, 12/2/66; and JRO to Bohm, 12/5/66, Bohm file, box 20, JRO Papers.

  585 “Oppenheimer then turned”: Thorpe, “J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Transformation of the Scientific Vocation,” dissertation, pp. 629–30; Thomas B. Morgan, “With Oppenheimer, on an Autumn Day,” Look, 12/27/66, pp. 61–63.

  585 “indifference to the sufferings”: Chevalier, Oppenheimer, pp. 34–35.

  585 “They achieved their goal”: The Day After Trinity, Jon Else.

  585 “I don’t feel very gay”: Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, vol. 6, p. 348.

  586 “battling a cancerous throat”: JRO letter to James Chadwick, 1/10/67, box 26, JRO Papers.

  586 “I knew what he”: Verna Hobson, interview by Sherwin, 7/31/79, p. 10.

  586 “I am in some pain”: Michelmore, The Swift Years, p. 254.

  586 “He could speak only”: Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, p. 81. Marvin Weinstein was a Columbia University–trained physicist who spent the years 1967 to 1969 as a fellow at the institute.

  586 The next day Louis: Louis Fischer to Michael Josselson, 2/25/67, folder 3a, box 5, Fischer Papers, PUL, courtesy of George Dyson.

  587 “he mumbled so badly” and subsequent quotes: Ibid.

  587 “I walked him”: Francis Fergusson, interview by Sherwin, 7/7/79, p. 19, and 6/23/79, p. 10.

  587 “His death was”: JRO death certificate, no. 08006, State Department of Health of New Jersey; Dyson, Disturbing the Universe, p. 81; Sabra Ericson, interview by Sherwin, 1/13/82, p. 20. According to Dr. Stanley Bauer, director of pathology at Princeton Hospital, Oppenheimer’s autopsy report indicated that his liver showed signs of necrosis due to an external toxic substance, presumably the chemotherapy. It also seems that the radiation treatment had completely eradicated Oppenheimer’s throat cancer—in which case, he died as a result of the chemotherapy.

  587 “grieved at the news”: Strauss to Kitty Oppenheimer, cable, 2/20/67, Strauss Papers, HHL.

  588 “Renaissance man”: Ferenc M. Szasz, “Great Britain and the Saga of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” War in History, vol. 2, no. 3 (1995), p. 320.

  588 “The world has lost”: NYT, 2/20/67.

  588 “a man of exceptional”: “Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker, 3/4/67.

  588 “Let us remember”: Congressional Record, 2/19/67.

  588 “In Oppenheimer,” he wrote: Rabi, et al., Oppenheimer, p. 8.

  588 “That’s where he wanted”: John and Irva Green, and Irva Claire Denham, interview by Sherwin, 2/20/82, pp. 1–2.

  Epilogue: “There’s Only One Robert”

  589 Within a year or two: Charlotte Serber committed suicide in 1967.

  589 In 1972, Kitty: Serber, Peace and War, pp. 218–19.

  589 Kitty died of an embolism: Serber, Peace and War, p. 221; Pais, The Genius of Science, p. 285.

  590 “The whole point”: Hilde Hein, The Exploratorium, pp. ix–x, xiv–xv, 14–21.

  590 “Toni always felt”: Robert Serber, interview by Sherwin, 3/11/82, p. 20.

  590 “She could shift”: Sabra Ericson, interview by Sherwin, 1/13/82, p. 9.

  590 The FBI opened: “Letter to Newark,” 12/22/69, sect. 59, JRO FBI files (declassified 6/23/99).

  590 “She made the mistake”: Serber, interview by Sherwin, 3/11/82, p. 18; June Barlas, interview by Sherwin, 1/19/82, pp. 1–7.

  591 “But when she did mention”: June Barlas interview by Sherwin, 1/19/82, p. 1; Ellen Chances interview by Sherwin, 5/10/79.

  591 “her resentment toward”: Inga Hiilivirta interview by Sherwin, 1/16/82, p. 20.

  591 She swam for a long time: Ed Gibney interview by Bird, 3/26/01.

  591 On a Sunday afternoon: June Barlas interview by Sherwin, 1/19/82, p. 5; Fiona St. Clair interview by Sherwin, 2/17/82, p. 4; Sabra Ericson interview by Sherwin, 1/13/82, p. 12.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department. New York: Norton, 1969.

  Albright, Joseph, and Marcia Kunstel. Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy. New York: Times Books, 1997.

  Allen, James S. Atomic Imperialism. New York: 1952.

  Alperovitz, Gar. Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam: The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965. ———. The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

  Ambrose, Stephen E. Eisenhower: The President, 1952–1969. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984.

  Alsop, Joseph and Stewart. We Accuse: The Story of the Miscarriage of American Justice in the Case of J. Robert Oppenheimer. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954.

  Alvarez, Luis W. Alvarez: Adventures of a Physicist. New York: Basic Books, 1987.

  Barrett, Edward L., Jr. The Tenney Committee: Legislative Investigation of Subversive Activities in California. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1951.

  Badash, Lawrence, Joseph O. Hirschfelder, and Herbert P. Broida, eds. Reminiscences of Los Alamos, 1943–45. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980.

  Bartusiak, Marcia. Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time. New York: Berkeley Books, 2000.

  Baruch, Bernard. Baruch: My Own Story. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1957. ———. The Public Years. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1960.

  Belfrage, Cedric. The American Inquisition, 1945–1960. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1973.

  Bell, Daniel. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

  Benson, Robert Louis, and Michael Warner. Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939–1957. Washington, DC: National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency, 1996.

  Bernstein, Barton J., ed. The Atomic Bomb: The Critical Issues. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1976.

  Bernstein, Jeremy. Experiencing Science. New York: Basic Books, 1978.

  ———. Hans Bethe: Prophet of Energy. New York: Basic Books, 1980.

  ———. Quantum Profiles. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.

  ———. The Merely Personal: Observations on Science and Scientists. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001. ———. The Life It Brings: One Physicist’s Beginnings. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. ———. Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004.

  Berson, Robin Kadison. Marching to a Di ferent Drummer: Unrecognized Heroes of American History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.

  Bird, Kai. The Chairman: John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. ———. The Color of Truth: McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

  Bird, Kai, and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds. Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy. Stony Creek, CT: Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998.

  Birmingham, Stephen. Our Crowd. New York: Future Books, 1967.

  ———. The Rest of Us: The Rise of America’s Eastern European Jews. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1984.

  Blackett, P. M. S. Fear, War, and the Bomb: Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948, 1949.

  Blum, John Morton, ed. The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, 1942–1946. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

  Bohlen, Charles E. Witness to History: 1929–1969. New York: Norton, 1973.

  Born, Max. My Life: Recollections of a Nobel Laureate. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975.

  Boyer, Paul. By Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn
of the Atomic Age. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994 (Pantheon, 1985).

  Brechin, Gray. Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

  Brian, Denis. Einstein: A Life. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.

  Brode, Bernice. Tales of Los Alamos: Life on the Mesa, 1943–1945. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Historical Society, 1997.

  Brome, Vincent. The International Brigades: Spain, 1936–1939. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1966.

  Brown, John Mason. Through These Men: Some Aspects of Our Passing History. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956.

  Bruner, Jerome Seymour. In Search of Mind. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

  Bundy, McGeorge. Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. New York: Random House, 1988.

  Burch, Philip H., Jr. Elites in American History. Vol. 3, The New Deal to the Carter Administration. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980.

  Bush, Vannevar. Pieces of the Action. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1970.

  Byrnes, James F. Speaking Frankly. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947.

  Calaprice, Alice, ed. The Expanded Quotable Einstein. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

  Calvovoressi, Peter, and Guy Wint. Total War: The Story of World War II. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.

  Carroll, Peter N. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.

  Cassidy, David. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century. Indianapolis, IN: Pi Press, 2004.

  ———. Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1992.

  Chambers, Marjorie Bell, and Linda K. Aldrich. Los Alamos, New Mexico: A Survey to 1949. Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Historical Society, monograph 1, 1999.

  Chevalier, Haakon. The Man Who Would Be God. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1959. ———. Oppenheimer: The Story of a Friendship. New York: George Braziller, 1965.

  Childs, Herbert. An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Orlando Lawrence. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1968.

  Christman, Al. Target Hiroshima: Deke Parson and the Creation of the Atomic Bomb. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998.

  Church, Peggy Pond. Bones Incandescent: The Pajarito Journals of Peggy Pond Church. Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2001. ———. The House at Otowi Bridge: The Story of Edith Warner and Los Alamos. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1959.