The next day, Jumbo arrived at Trinity. Just as Groves had predicted, the huge steel bottle turned out to be a monumentally expensive headache from beginning to end. At first, the feasibility of designing the massive container had seemed doubtful. Then, even after the Los Alamos physicists and engineers had satisfied themselves that it was possible, virtually every steel company they consulted had expressed serious doubts. After much haggling back and forth, the Babcock and Wilcox Company was finally persuaded to take up the challenge, and Jumbo was commissioned at enormous expense.
The cost was further compounded by the fact that the 25-foot-long, 214-ton vessel had to be carefully transported over railroads in specially reinforced cars to New Mexico and then transferred to a custom-built, sixty-four-wheel flatbed trailer and towed by tractor thirty miles overland to the test site. But by then, more plutonium was being delivered, and the tremendous steel container was no longer in favor. Oppenheimer and his division leaders were feeling much more positive about implosion, and there was a substantial lobby opposed to using Jumbo at all, on the grounds that it would throw off all their measurements and possibly even create additional dangers. One concern was that if the heat from the explosion did not melt the steel casing, it might send pieces of jagged steel hurtling great distances. Jumbo was sidelined, and the $500,000 albatross was set up a half mile away from ground zero, where it remained unused.
All that spring, as they hurried to complete their preparations for the test, a steady stream of top advisors came to see Oppenheimer, and the Los Alamos scientists were keenly aware that the high-level deliberations concerned the use and consequences of the atomic bomb. Following the Yalta conference, there had been a debate about whether it would be better to encircle Japan and isolate it or to defeat it by direct attack. Both General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz voted for direct assault, and with their support, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the Kyushu invasion plan in April. The target date was set for November 1, 1945. “It was estimated that a force of 36 divisions—1,532,000 men in all—would be required for the final assault, and it was recognized that casualties would be heavy,” Groves reported in his memoir. “In such a climate, no one who held a position of responsibility in the Manhattan Project could doubt that we were trying to perfect a weapon that, however repugnant to us as human beings, could nonetheless save untold numbers of American lives.”
In Washington, Secretary of War Henry Stimson had briefed the new president on the issues created by the development of the bomb, not just as a weapon in the United States’ arsenal, but as a powerful new force in the world. But Stimson was deeply concerned about the international reaction that would result from the bomb’s being tested and used without any advance notice. Niels Bohr had been warning the American government that diplomacy with the Soviet Union was vital and that any sudden use of the bomb would inevitably trigger an arms race. Conant and Vannevar Bush, the head of the OSRD, who were sympathetic to his views, had been lobbying for greater consideration of the issues at stake.
On May 2, Stimson received approval to set up the Interim Committee to advise Truman on the postwar implications of the bomb. It was chaired by Stimson, who, at seventy-seven, was in some ways the wisest and most respected member of the administration and was uniquely qualified to undertake such a grave responsibility. He had been secretary of war under two administrations and secretary of state under Herbert Hoover, and had served as a colonel in World War I. He had also overseen the bomb project from the very beginning, had backed the appointment of Groves, and was one of the few who was knowledgeable about both the military situation and the global ramifications of using atomic weapons. The committee included General George C. Marshall; Ralph A. Bard, undersecretary of the navy; William L. Clayton, assistant secretary of state; George Harrison, a special advisor to Stimson; the incoming secretary of state, James Francis Byrnes; and three key scientific advisors—Karl Compton, Vannevar Bush, and James Conant.
Conant, reluctant to make bomb policy, asked to be excused from the Interim Committee. He was already aware, he reported to Stimson, of “a growing restlessness among scientists actively involved in the program.” Many of the scientists who had joined the Manhattan Project, particularly those who had fled Nazi persecution, had done so because of their fear of a German head start on atomic weapons and because they viewed Hitler’s regime as the supreme enemy. They did not have the same level of conviction about destroying the Japanese. He made no reference to what he felt sure was also their “lack of confidence in those of us who had been determining policy.” Conant feared that as one of the chief administrators of the Manhattan Project, he would be held responsible for the dangers posed by the bomb in the postwar world. He suspected that in helping to craft the vast covert undertaking, and in preserving the extreme secrecy that covered every phase of the research that resulted in hundreds of scientists being kept in the dark, he would ultimately be the focus of considerable suspicion and hostility. He had “serious doubt,” he wrote Stimson, that he and Bush were the proper men to serve on such a committee—“for we have been primarily distant administrators rather than active participants.”
Conant and Bush had in fact given considerable thought to the international problems that would arise from the use of the atomic bomb and had spent the past year trying to convince Stimson and Roosevelt of the necessity of preparing plans for the postwar era. During an inspection trip to Los Alamos in the summer of 1944, Conant and Bush had taken advantage of the opportunity “to discuss at leisure and in complete privacy what the policy of the United States should be after the war was over.” On the basis of that exchange and subsequent conversations, Bush had drafted a memorandum to Stimson in September 1944, which he asked Conant to sign. Conant recalled in his memoir:
This was the first of several papers we sent to the Secretary, signed by both of us, in which we pointed out totally new and alarming situations which would result if no U.S. policy was developed before the war ended and the knowledge of the existence of the bomb was made public. We advocated free exchange of scientific information with other nations, including Russia, under arrangements by which the staff of an international office would have unimpeded access to scientific laboratories, industrial plants and military establishments throughout the world.
Stimson knew Conant did not want to be drawn into the debate, but prevailed on him to serve on the Interim Committee. Conant finally agreed to do so, but only after insisting that some of the more “active participants” in the project also had a seat at the table. As a result, on May 14, at his urging, a four-man Scientific Panel, consisting of Oppenheimer, Fermi, Lawrence, and Met Lab head Arthur Compton, was appointed to provide advice. At the end of the month, Oppenheimer and Fermi traveled to Washington for the top-secret meetings, which were held over two days, on May 31 and June 1. During the first morning session, Stimson dictated the agenda and led a rather lofty discussion that centered on the future of the Manhattan Project, atomic energy, and the need to solidify America’s role as the leader of this unprecedented endeavor, and its potential benefits for mankind. It was brave-new-world talk, and Stimson held the floor as he warmed to his theme, making it clear the administration already had a stake in the postwar advantages of the soon-to-be-tested weapon.
That afternoon, the committee took up the much thornier issue of how to use the bomb against Japan. The question of whether or not the bomb should be used, which, as Conant later observed, “was the most important matter on which an opinion was to be recorded,” received scant consideration. The discussion dealt with the advisability of using it without warning as opposed to conducting a harmless demonstration of its destructive power and then delivering the Japanese an ultimatum. It was primarily a debate over tactics, and with his forceful presence, cool analytic mind, and extraordinary powers of elucidation, it was Oppenheimer’s moment to shine. Perhaps he knew he had been brought in for the day to play the role of atomic expert, or perhaps by then he had reconciled hi
mself to the position advocated by Stimson and Groves, that the bomb was built as a weapon of war and should be used at the earliest date to quickly end the fighting. Certainly, the vision of Fat Man’s ferocity that he articulated for the committee bolstered their case: a single bomb, he told them, would wipe out a city in a flash, a “brilliant luminescence that would rise to the height of 10,000 to 20,000 feet.”
During lunch, the scientists “threshed over” the alternatives to direct military use. Lawrence favored a prior demonstration, but Oppenheimer could not conceive of a technical demonstration that would be spectacular enough to actually induce the Japanese to surrender. He cut through the morass of objections to dropping the bomb and exposed the heart of the problem: any harmless demonstration would result in losing the overwhelming shock effect of surprise. All the security measures surrounding the project had been designed to preserve that element of surprise. The debate tested Oppenheimer’s novice political skills, and eager to prove himself in this new arena, he did much of the talking for the panel. “He told us the uranium bomb couldn’t be tested, because material was being supplied too slowly,” recalled Ralph Bard. “He said the plutonium bomb might be a dud, and would have to be tested, but that even after that he couldn’t guarantee the force of the explosion of the next one. He didn’t say drop the bomb or don’t drop it. He just tried to do his job, which was to give us the technical background.”
The official minutes of the Interim Committee recorded the fateful outcome of the May 31 meeting: “After much discussion, the Secretary [Stimson] expressed the conclusion, on which there was general agreement, that we could not give the Japanese any warning; that we could not concentrate on a civilian area; but that we should make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible. At the suggestion of Dr. Conant, the Secretary agreed that the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by worker’s houses.”
Afterward, the members of the Scientific Panel agreed they would meet again in mid-June to finalize their recommendations to the Interim Committee. In the meantime, the foursome were told they could inform their laboratory personnel about the committee’s work in dealing with the future control of atomic weapons, though without identifying any individual members, and should generally impress upon their colleagues that the government was taking an active role in developing policy. But on his return to Los Alamos, Oppenheimer found the scientists on the Hill obsessed with the outcome of their wartime labors. At the Met Lab, Arthur Compton contended with far greater skepticism and emotional turmoil. Leo Szilard, who had earlier convinced Einstein to alert Roosevelt to the necessity of starting an American bomb program, was once again trying to precipitate American policy and had been agitating the Chicago scientists to oppose combat use of the bomb on “moral grounds” and to strongly push for a public demonstration before killing a multitude of Japanese. Szilard’s protest echoed some of Bohr’s arguments, and it stirred up old doubts and anxieties and resulted in heated discussions about the need for more responsibility on the part of the scientists in making recommendations for the weapon. In an effort to quell the dissension, Compton dispatched a series of committees to study and report on the implications of the atomic bomb.
On June 21, the Scientific Panel met at Los Alamos and, as promised, took time to consider the divergent points of view. The most important of these was written by members of the Met Lab, including Szilard, and chaired by James Franck, Oppenheimer’s old Göttingen professor. The Franck Report stated that a surprise atomic assault on Japan would destroy America’s credibility and precipitate an arms race. It urged that a demonstration take place in the desert or on an uninhabited island, and thereby end the war without any further bloodshed. While Stimson and Groves used bureaucratic channels to effectively block Szilard’s protest from reaching Truman’s ears, Franck was too well liked and respected to ignore, and his document, signed by seven physicists, and carrying a cover letter by Karl Compton, could not be swept under the rug. Instead, they passed the political hot potato to Oppenheimer, who had distinguished himself as the leader of the scientific panel and was already committed to the position that Fat Man might fizzle and that a bloodless demonstration could not be risked.
At Los Alamos, Serber recounted, Oppenheimer presented the problems facing the Interim Committee, the plans for the fall invasion, and the fact that the medical units of the armed services had been told to prepare for half a million casualties. “Given this background, we had no doubts about the necessity of using the bomb,” he recalled. “We spoke of it as a ‘psychological weapon,’ and were sure dropping a bomb on a Japanese city would end the war.” Both Oppenheimer and Fermi argued that physicists “had no claim to special competence in solving political, social or military questions which are presented by the advent of atomic power,” as they wrote in their final report. In the end, the panel came to the conclusion Stimson and Groves had been counting on: “We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternatives to direct military use.”
There were, however, still a number of physicists at Los Alamos who were troubled by their consciences. Bob Wilson, always an instigator, decided to convene a meeting in his laboratory one evening in June to examine the “impact of the gadget” and the issues raised by Szilard’s petition. Wilson had strong moral objections and felt that more discussion was warranted. Oppenheimer, who was consumed with preparations for the test, was not happy about the meeting and at first considered not attending, but when it became clear that a great many of the Tech Area personnel planned to go, he changed his mind. Most of the mesa physicists had long ago come to the conclusion that the bomb would be used, if only because Groves would not want his hugely expensive wartime effort to have been wasted. Priscilla Greene, who attended the meeting with her husband, Bob Duffield, recalled that many also believed the decision should be left to the president, even though they did not have much faith in him, and to experienced leaders like Stimson and Marshall, who understood the military situation. Phil Morrison joined the crowd that jammed the room, and while he sympathized with Wilson’s instinct, he thought it was a dangerous attitude to take at the time. “I supported Oppie and opposed Wilson, because I knew it was inevitable,” he said, “and I thought it was unwise of us to pretend to be owners of the bomb.”
Oppenheimer stood silently to one side and let Wilson have his say. But at some point, he had clearly had enough. As laboratory director, his job was to see to it that nothing distracted his staff from completing their work on the bomb. While he personally may have shared many of Wilson’s concerns about the use of the bomb, not to mention those of the Met Lab scientists, and had devoted many hours to the subject of postwar planning with Niels Bohr, he did not feel this was the time and place for such a discussion. There would be plenty of time to revive the topic when the war was over. He then delivered a brilliant impromptu speech spelling out his conviction that the weapon had to be made known to the world and that was the only way its potential destructiveness would ever be understood and ultimately controlled.
“Oppie totally dominated the meeting,” said Phil Morrison. “He was the boss and had every right to do so. He succeeded in swaying people, but it wasn’t so much to his point of view, as [it was] simply a question of what would happen.” By the time Oppie was finished, Morrison added, there was no support for the petition: “We went away sheepishly.”
By early July, Szilard, realizing he was running out of time, made a last attempt to enlist support for his cause by writing to Edward Teller at Los Alamos, begging him to circulate a petition to the president among his Tech Area colleagues. But Teller, who was still nursing his dream of the Super, and even bigger, more powerful bombs, lined up squarely with Oppenheimer: “The things we are working on are so terrible that no amount of protesting or fiddling with politics will save our souls,” he wrote Szilard. “The accident that we worked out this
dreadful thing should not give us the responsibility of having a voice in how it is to be used. This responsibility must in the end be shifted to the people as a whole and that can only be done by making the facts known.” Later, Teller would complain that he had been perfectly willing to support Szilard, but Oppenhiemer talked him out of it, telling him “in a polite but convincing way that he thought it was improper for a scientist to use his prestige as a platform for political pronouncements.” If Teller is to be believed, it would have been the first time he was inclined to do as Oppenheimer asked since arriving on the Hill.
As the Trinity test neared, Dorothy, in her small office in town, felt the tremendous jump in activity. Although she was never officially told of the date, the term “Trinity” was in the air, and she knew the decisive moment was near. Security had imposed super-secrecy measures, and G-2 was swarming all over town. Trucks, loaded with tons of batteries, cables, and transistors, barreled through town—straight through the main street of Santa Fe—without stopping on their way to the classified test site in the south. The telephone was boiling over, but the usual friendly banter with men in the Tech Area had been replaced by barked orders, and the voices “showed strain and tautness.” A steady stream of project employees, from generals and GIs to technicians and engineers, shuttled back and forth between the Hill and the distant test site. As many as seventy new people a day were checking in, including high army brass and War Department officials. There were more hotel rooms to be arranged for and very few to be found. “I in my backroom felt the tension,” she recalled. “I just felt it in my bones.”
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