Robert Oppenheimer has the power to create a literal hell on earth. But he has no authority over the heavens. This annoys him greatly.
General Leslie Groves appears out of the gale. The Manhattan Project’s chief executive is adamantly opposed to a postponement, despite the weather. The general’s motives are less scientific than political: right now, halfway around the world in a small town outside Berlin known as Potsdam, President Harry Truman is attending a summit meeting with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British prime minister Winston Churchill. A successful, on-time detonation of the A-bomb at 4:00 a.m. will immediately be relayed to Truman, who can then share the news about the dawn of the nuclear era over lunch with his fellow world leaders. To the seventy-year-old Churchill, this will come as a triumph, for he has known about the Manhattan Project all along.
For Stalin, however, the news is meant to shock and deter. America’s possession of an atomic bomb will be a vivid warning to the Russian leader that he will be the weaker partner in any future US-Russia negotiations.
The 4:00 a.m. detonation time has been chosen because secrecy is still vital to the success of the Manhattan Project. Any potential observers will be sleeping as the white light turns the pitch-black desert night into sudden daytime, if only for an instant.
Groves, who is just as nervous as Oppenheimer, has managed only a few hours of fitful sleep in his own nearby tent. He is now up for the night.
The two men confer. They agree that passing the hours in the base camp dining hall is no way to prepare for the testing of a nuclear bomb. So they step out in the darkness and drive four miles closer to the bomb site. There, at the half-buried command post known as the control dugout, where a small group of technicians and scientists vital to the detonation make last-minute adjustments, Oppenheimer and Groves reluctantly agree to postpone the Trinity explosion.
But only by an hour.
* * *
More than five thousand miles away in Potsdam, there is also a delay. Harry Truman sits down with Winston Churchill at the same time Oppenheimer and Groves are hunkered together in the control dugout. Truman’s lodging in the mansion at Number 2, Kaiserstrasse is plush and ornate, an opulence that does not suit his homespun style. The crucial postwar conference among the world’s three most powerful leaders has been postponed indefinitely because Joseph Stalin is nowhere to be found, which gives Truman and Churchill time to get to know each other.
Truman’s early days in office were tentative; he merely reacted to the overwhelming events and decisions that had suddenly been thrust upon him. But now, as a noticeably weary Churchill meets with Truman at precisely 11:00 a.m. German time, Truman has found his stride. Rather than be awed by a masterful statesman like Churchill, Truman feels himself to be the man’s equal as they spend two hours in conversation.
There is no discussion of the A-bomb testing taking place far away in New Mexico, nor is there talk of a recently intercepted message to the Japanese ambassador to the Soviet Union from his superiors in Tokyo. In the coded communiqué, Ambassador Naotake Sato insists that Japan will never accept unconditional surrender. They do not discuss these topics because it is likely the Russians have planted listening devices at Truman’s residence.
As Churchill and his small entourage take their leave, there is a shocking development unfolding in London. Little does either man know it, but they will never have the chance to enjoy a working relationship. The results have not yet been announced in London, but war-weary voters in Great Britain have chosen not to reelect Winston Churchill.1 First the death of Franklin Roosevelt and now the ouster of Churchill have cut the list of active Allied wartime leaders down to just two men: Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin. These two adversaries who still pretend to be allies will now forge a whole new world.
* * *
As Winston Churchill departs Number 2, Kaiserstrasse in Potsdam, the Trinity detonation in New Mexico is postponed once again. The blast is rescheduled for 5:30 a.m. With the summer storm now passing, to the immense relief of Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves, it appears there will be no further delays. Groves leaves Oppenheimer at the control dugout, preferring to drive back to the relative safety of base camp. If the blast is as enormous as some fear, there is no telling whether the control dugout will be consumed or not.
At precisely 5:00 a.m., ground zero for Trinity is evacuated. The five soldiers standing guard at the base of the one-hundred-foot tower containing the bomb quickly hustle to their jeeps and race southwest toward base camp. They must drive aggressively over the rough desert roads if they are to arrive before the detonation. In the event of engine trouble, the guards will have a thirty-minute head start on the explosion. “I was sure they would not walk slowly,” General Groves will later write with wry understatement.
In the event that the erstwhile guards are still in the open when the A-bomb goes off, they have been told to lie facedown on the ground with their feet toward the explosion. They are not to open their eyes or look at the light in any way, for it has been predicted that the flash will be so brilliant as to blind them.
By 5:05 a.m.—“zero minus twenty-five minutes” until the detonation—the storm’s violent winds have died down to a calm breeze. A light drizzle speckles the desert sand. The cloud cover is still too thick to see many stars, and will certainly hamper the observation planes.
Robert Oppenheimer leaves the safety of the control dugout’s thick concrete walls. He steps into the fragrant predawn air and stands alone. It has been agreed that base camp is the only place where observers can stand in the open to witness the blast, but Oppenheimer plans to ignore that mandate.
There are two other bunkers just like the control dugout, each situated six miles from the blast site. Both have been covered with dirt to absorb the blast force. Teams of scientists stand ready in these bunkers to analyze the amount of energy released by the explosion and determine whether the bomb detonates in a symmetrical manner.
That is, if the A-bomb explodes at all.
A few days ago, a practice test of the electronic circuitry that would spark the detonation failed miserably. Oppenheimer’s engineers have promised him there will be no problem this morning. Nevertheless, Oppenheimer has made a friendly wager of ten dollars with physical chemistry engineer George Kistiakowsky, betting that Trinity will fail to detonate.
The desert air smells of sagebrush. Morning’s first rays of sunshine are limning the horizon. Trinity’s test site here in the Jornada del Muerto is a flat patch of desert eighteen by twenty-four miles wide. Oppenheimer stares out across that broad expanse, his stomach aching from anxiety and too many cups of coffee. Five miles in the distance, he can clearly see the brightly lit tower containing his gadget. He cannot see the bomb itself, but he knows that it is a round sphere ten feet across, wrapped in a tight coil of wiring. Oppenheimer himself oversaw the moment twelve hours ago when the bomb was hoisted from ground level to the top of the tower.
Inside the control dugout, Oppenheimer’s team of scientists is behaving in an almost giddy fashion, some slathering on sunscreen in anticipation of the explosion’s bright light, others laying down bets as to whether or not the bomb will light the clouds on fire.
Yet no one, not even Robert Oppenheimer, knows exactly what will happen.
An announcement over a nearby loudspeaker breaks the desert silence: “Zero minus twenty minutes.”
Robert Oppenheimer gazes at his bomb and waits.
* * *
Harry Truman looks out over a most amazing sight: the entire American Second Armored Division standing in formation, awaiting his review. Soldiers, half-tracks, and battle-tested Sherman tanks line the German autobahn just outside Berlin, the olive-drab uniforms of American soldiers stretching as far as the eye can see.
Truman’s meeting with Winston Churchill behind him, he now plans to spend the afternoon exploring bombed-out Berlin. But first, the president will enjoy the great privilege of reviewing his conquering army. An old soldier himself, Truman clambers o
ut of his presidential limousine and stands atop a half-track where the crowd can see him.2
As the armored vehicle drives slowly past the troops, Truman is overwhelmed at this display of power. The Second is the largest armored division on earth, a force that has seen action in North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy, and in the battles across Europe that culminated with the German surrender two months ago.
Yet as President Harry Truman looks down into the faces of these brave men—many of them just a year out of high school—he knows that the Second Armored’s war may not be over. Already, one million men comprising thirty divisions are making their way around the world to fight the Japanese. It might be only a matter of weeks until the men of the Second board troopships heading for the Pacific.
That is, unless Harry Truman can find another way to convince the Japanese to accept unconditional surrender.
* * *
At base camp, General Leslie Groves lies in one of the small trenches bulldozed into the earth for blast protection. The time is “zero minus five minutes”—or 5:25 a.m. All around him, scientists press their faces into the earth. Each clutches a small piece of Lincoln Super Visibility welder’s glass, specially designed to protect the eyes from extremely bright light. At the sound of the blast they will be allowed to roll over, sit up, and, through this special glass, witness the world’s first atomic bomb explosion. Groves, ever nervous, finds the quiet to be intense. “I thought only of what I would do if, when the countdown got to zero, nothing happened,” he later admits.
Four miles closer to the impending blast, Robert Oppenheimer feels time slow down. The sensation is tortuous. So much rides on the events of these next five minutes. “Lord,” he says aloud, having temporarily stepped back into the control room, “these affairs are hard on the heart.”
Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell, Groves’s executive officer, cannot help but notice Oppenheimer’s anguish. “Dr. Oppenheimer, on whom had rested a very heavy burden, grew tense as the last seconds ticked off. He could barely breathe. He held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds he stared straight ahead.”
With two minutes to go, a flare is launched to inform one and all that the explosion is near. Oppenheimer once again steps outside the control bunker and lies facedown on the ground next to his brother, Frank.3
At thirty seconds to detonation, the console panel in the control dugout lights up bright red as electrical impulses begin flooding into the bomb. There is still a small chance that the explosion might be scrubbed, but only in the event of electrical difficulties.
At ten seconds, a loud gong echoes through the control dugout as a last reminder for every man to steel himself for what is about to happen.
Chicago physicist Sam Allison, the voice of the control tower, counts down the final seconds. “Three … two … one … NOW!!”
A tremendous light fills the sky, a brightness so intense that those who see it will talk about it for the rest of their lives. “The light of the first flash penetrated and came up from the ground through one’s lids,” Frank Oppenheimer will remember. “When one first looked up, one saw the fireball, and then almost immediately afterwards, the unearthly hovering cloud.”
That cloud is purple, radiating heat that can be felt miles away. “It was like opening a hot oven with the sun coming out like a sunrise,” in the words of one observer at base camp.
One hundred seconds later, an enormous boom erupts as a shock wave follows the explosion: “About like the crack of a five-inch anti-aircraft gun at a hundred yards,” in the eyes of a watching ballistics expert. The explosion is so powerful that more than 180 miles away, in Silver City, New Mexico, two large plate-glass windows shatter.
At the control dugout, the blast bowls over George Kistiakowsky, the man with whom Oppenheimer made a bet that the bomb would not detonate.
“You owe me ten dollars,” he screams to Oppenheimer, who is suddenly lighthearted and relaxed.
“I’ll never forget his walk,” one scientist will remember of Oppenheimer after the blast. “His walk was like High Noon … this kind of strut.
“He had done it.”
* * *
At the same time Oppenheimer’s bomb explodes in New Mexico, twelve hundred miles west in San Francisco, the men of the USS Indianapolis are buzzing about the top secret cargo that has been lifted aboard in the dead of night. At 4:00 a.m., two army trucks pulled up to the dock; one contained a fifteen-foot crate and the other a small tube. Boatswain’s Mate Louie DeBernardi directs the work party that now places straps around the crate so that the gantry crane might lift it on board. Meanwhile, two sailors hoist the small cylinder onto their shoulders by running a crowbar through a small eyelet on the tube, then walk the cylinder onto the USS Indianapolis.
Curious crew members gossip about what might be coming aboard. Just a few days ago, a shipment of 2,500 life jackets was loaded onto the ship—twice the number needed for the 1,200-man crew. While the men saw that as a routine military screwup, this new cargo is obviously of a much more serious nature.
The crate is secured onto the hangar deck in the middle of the Indianapolis. The cylinder is brought into an empty officer’s cabin, where it is lowered onto hinged metal straps that have been welded to the floor. The hinges are closed and padlocked.
“I didn’t think we were going to use B.W. [bacterial warfare] in this war,” remarks Captain Charles McVay III, who has been told nothing about the contents of either package. His orders are to transport the material with all due haste across the Pacific. The Indianapolis was specially chosen for her size—as a heavy cruiser, she is large enough to carry such a load, but also much faster than vessels of greater tonnage. Yet “Cherub” McVay, as the forty-six-year-old career officer was known at the US Naval Academy, has been given very specific instructions: no one must go near it except the marine guards who will stand watch day and night. If the ship should sink, these packages should be placed in a lifeboat and saved at all costs. If the Indianapolis comes under attack and is in the unlikely danger of being boarded by the enemy, he is to jettison everything overboard to keep it out of Japanese hands.
McVay knows better than to ask questions.
Four hours later, at 8:00 a.m., the Indianapolis sails from her berth at the port in San Francisco known as Hunter’s Point. By 8:36 a.m., she passes beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and then beside the Marin Headlands, out to sea. Her first stop is Pearl Harbor, where she will deposit the few passengers now catching a lift to the war zone.
After that, Indianapolis will return to sea.
Next stop: Tinian Island.
* * *
Because of the successful Trinity test, scientists now know that the A-bomb material being shipped across the Pacific will produce the explosive force of nineteen thousand tons of dynamite. In addition to the atomic bomb tested in New Mexico, American scientists have built two other A-bombs. One of them is now aboard the Indianapolis; the plutonium core of the other is just days away from being flown to the island of Tinian. Neither bomb is yet armed.
Robert Oppenheimer and his crew have discovered that the great fireball will shoot up to a height of over forty thousand feet, sucking up great clouds of dust as it ascends. Even as the giant flames faded, northward winds in New Mexico carried radioactive dust across the desert. Alarmingly, the herds of cattle grazing just beyond the blast zone will soon suffer the loss of their hair, indicating that radiation levels around the site are a threat to human life.
Back at ground zero, the steel tower on which the gadget was perched is gone, completely vaporized. There is not much of a crater; instead, the blast has traveled up and out from the ground. For a quarter mile around the blast site the earth is scorched black. The extreme heat has melted the sand into green glass, a material soon to be known as Trinitite.
Of course, such a horrific explosion and burst of light did not go unnoticed. Answering inquiries, the military responds that an ammunition dump at Alamogordo Army Air Field had caugh
t fire.
However, those who can tell the difference between a simple explosion and an earthshaking bang of epic proportions find this difficult to believe. In New Mexico and Texas, newspapers immediately publish stories speculating about what happened. As far away as California, radio broadcasts wonder about the strange events in the New Mexico desert. News spreads up the coast to the state of Washington, where employees at the Hanford Engineer Works quickly deduce that an A-bomb has been detonated. Like Los Alamos, Hanford is a top secret Manhattan Project facility charged with manufacturing plutonium, a vital ingredient in a nuclear explosion.
At almost 8:00 p.m. in Potsdam, more than seven hours after the Trinity detonation, Secretary of War Henry Stimson hands Truman a coded telegram announcing its success. “Operated on this morning. Diagnosis not yet complete but results seem satisfactory and already exceeds [sic] expectations.”
* * *
Harry Truman’s reaction to the news is guarded, pending specifics about the breadth of the blast. In truth, the president is a mere observer of whatever comes next with the A-bomb. He came to the party late, years after FDR foresaw the potential for a nuclear weapon and approved the Manhattan Project. A former World War I artillery officer, Truman sees the bomb as a weapon of war, one with far greater killing capacity than a tank or a missile, but a conventional weapon nonetheless. While he realizes the war’s equation has changed in his favor, he does not yet grasp that Trinity is not just a bomb but also a split-second explosion that has changed the future of mankind. From this day forward, any nation, no matter how small, in possession of a nuclear device can unleash the bowels of hell any time it wishes.
As for sharing the news about Trinity with Joseph Stalin, wherever he might be, that can wait.4
* * *
Robert Oppenheimer drinks a brandy at base camp and sends his own special coded message back to his wife, Kitty, who has recently returned to him from Pittsburgh. Oppenheimer chooses words that he had already told her would signal success: “You can change the sheets.”
Killing the Rising Sun Page 10
