Pandora's Keepers

by Brian Van DeMark

  Nagasaki was not the intended target on the morning of August 9, 1945. The intended target was Kokura, on the northeast coast of Kyushu, but heavy ground haze and smoke obscured Kokura and the aiming point could not be seen. So the B-29 flew on to Nagasaki, and found that it, too, was obscured by clouds racing in from the East China Sea. Running low on fuel, the pilot had time for one final pass over the city. At the last minute, the clouds broke just long enough to give the bombardier a view of the target. A plutonium bomb fell from the B-29 and exploded 1,650 feet above Nagasaki just after 11:00 in the morning.

  There was a blinding bluish-white flash, accompanied by intense glare and heat. The split-second flash was so intense that it caused third-degree burns to exposed human skin up to a distance of a mile. Clothing ignited, telephone poles charred, thatch-roofed houses caught fire. Black or other dark-colored surfaces absorbed the heat and immediately burst into flames. A blast wave followed that roared like an earthquake. People forty miles away felt the concussion. The sky darkened ominously, turning an eerie red and then a ghostly yellow. Huge radioactive raindrops fell from the sky. The scene on the ground was obscured first by a bluish haze and then by a purple-brown cloud of choking dust and smoke. The victims of Nagasaki, like those of Hiroshima, thought they had descended into Hell. They stumbled around, terrified and helpless, in the twilight gloom. Bodies of the dead were so charred that one could not distinguish men from women, backs from chests. As the dust settled and the smoke cleared, the search for victims buried in the rubble began. The flesh of survivors peeled off their bones like gloves from hands as they were pulled screaming and moaning from the debris.

  Far from the human suffering below, the crew of the B-29 stared in shocked amazement at a boiling cauldron where a beautiful, vibrant city had been just moments before. Over four square miles in the center of the city had been flattened and blackened. They watched as a gigantic ball of flame rose in a huge column of thick smoke two miles up in the sky. A massive, swelling mushroom billowed at the top. It seethed like a thousand geysers, changing colors kaleidoscopically. Then it broke free from the stem and a smaller mushroom took its place. It was like a decapitated monster growing a new head.

  After a while, countless men, women, and children began to gather for a drink of water at the banks of the Urakami River. Their hair and clothing were scorched and their burnt skin hung off in sheets like rags. Begging for help, they died one after another in the water or in heaps on the banks. Then radiation began to take its toll. Seventy thousand people died in Nagasaki that day and another 70,000 more over the next five years—a slightly smaller death toll than in Hiroshima because the surrounding hills had deflected the blast and radiation. But the victims of Nagasaki endured equally unspeakable suffering. An American naval officer who visited Nagasaki a month after the bombing described in a letter home to his wife what he felt when he saw the once beautiful city:

  A smell of death and corruption pervades the place, ranging from the ordinary carrion smell to somewhat subtler stenches with strong overtones of ammonia (decomposing nitrogenous matter, I suppose). The general impression, which transcends those derived from the evidence of our physical senses, is one of deadness, the absolute essence of death in the sense of finality without hope of resurrection. And all this is not localized. It’s everywhere, and nothing has escaped its touch. In most ruined cities you can bury the dead, clean up the rubble, rebuild the houses and have a living city again. One feels that is not so here. Like the ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, its site has been sown with salt and ichabod [“the glory is departed”] is written over its gates. 16

  Groves telephoned Oppenheimer from Washington on the afternoon of August sixth with the news that Hiroshima had been bombed. Oppenheimer was tense. He had been pacing his office and chain-smoking. Groves told him he was proud of his lab. “It went all right?” Oppenheimer anxiously asked. “Apparently it went with a tremendous bang,” the general replied. Remembering the profound impression that the predawn Trinity test had made on him, and hoping that Hiroshima would similarly shock the world, Oppenheimer asked Groves if the bomb had been dropped before sunrise. No, said Groves, the bomb had been dropped in daylight in order to safeguard the plane’s crew. “Everybody is feeling reasonably good about it here and I extend my heartiest congratulations,” Oppenheimer said to Groves, his voice trailing off. “It’s been a long road.” “One of the wisest things I ever did was when I selected the director of Los Alamos,” the general crowed. “Well, I have my doubts, General Groves,” said Oppenheimer, in no mood for self-congratulation at that moment. 17

  Teller learned about Hiroshima on the afternoon of August sixth as he walked from his apartment along the Jemez Mesa to the Tech Area. On the way, he saw another scientist sitting in a jeep parked beneath the Los Alamos water tower. His face was exuberant. He was as exhilarated as a victorious boxer. He called to Teller excitedly: “One down!” Teller did not know what he meant, and walked on toward the Tech Area. There he heard the news. But word of the Hiroshima bombing created no exuberance, no exhilaration, no elation in Teller that afternoon. Instead, he felt worried, concerned, and anxious. A new force was loose in the world. What this new force would do, Teller could not guess.

  When Oppenheimer had returned to Los Alamos after Trinity, he had found Teller’s latest report on superbomb research waiting on his desk. Calculations suggested that a thermonuclear reaction could indeed be triggered by an atomic bomb. On the afternoon of Hiroshima, Oppenheimer went to Teller’s office for a long and private talk. He made it clear to Teller that he, personally, would have nothing further to do with research on a superbomb. If he had his way, Oppenheimer added, Los Alamos would never develop such a weapon. 18 But even in that case, he was solicitous of Teller’s well-being. He did not simply inform Teller of his opinion; he did his best to persuade him that abandoning work on a superbomb was the wisest course.

  When news of Hiroshima reached Szilard at the University of Chicago’s faculty club on the afternoon of August sixth, he reacted with anger, sadness, and horror. His first stop after he heard the news was University President Robert Maynard Hutchins’s office, where he proposed that the Met Lab staff wear black mourning bands on their arms. Hutchins suggested that Szilard find some less provocative way for them to express their anguish. 19 That evening Szilard poured out his guilt and regret in a letter to his beloved Trude:

  I suppose you have seen today’s newspapers. Using atomic bombs against Japan is one of the greatest blunders of history. Both from a practical point of view on a 10-year scale and from the point of view of our moral position. I went out of my way (and very much so) in order to prevent it, but as today’s papers show, without success. It is very difficult to see what wise course of action is possible from here on. 20

  “I always thought it was his way of apologizing,” Trude said after Leo’s death. “It was one of the most important letters he ever wrote to me.” 21

  Compton was in his office at the University of Chicago when news of Hiroshima flashed over the radio. He called together the scientists of the Met Lab, and told them what details he knew. It was a tough audience. Compton expressed his regret for the enormous human suffering caused by the bomb, and accepted his share of responsibility for the decision to drop it. To an acquaintance who decried the atomic attacks, Compton responded, “I favored the use of the bomb, substantially as it was used, and believe now that this was wise.” Yet he obliquely acknowledged moral qualms, arguing that the atomic bombing was no worse than the firebombing of Tokyo that had erased any distinction between combatants and noncombatants. The atomic bomb’s chief difference, he asserted, “was the psychological effect of its surprise use. It was of about the same destructiveness as a raid by a fleet of B-29s using ordinary bombs.” “I say that before God our consciences are clear,” Compton declared, somewhat plaintively. “We made the best choice for man’s future that we knew how to make.” 22

  That night, Oppenheimer called a general meeting in
the Tech Area auditorium. He entered at the rear—not from the side, as was his custom—and made his way up the center aisle amid whistling, cheering, and foot stomping. Once onstage, Oppenheimer pumped his clasped hands above his head like a triumphant prizefighter. When the roar subsided, he read from a message flashed from the B-29 after the drop. There was no hint of regret in his words—no trace of the ambivalence and guilt the private Oppenheimer had expressed to Groves and Teller. The public Oppenheimer played unashamedly to the crowd. A young physicist in the audience that night remembered him strutting in triumph:

  It was too early to determine what the results of the bombing might have been, but he was sure that the Japanese didn’t like it. More cheering. He was proud, and he showed it, of what he had accomplished. Even more cheering. And his only regret was that we hadn’t developed the bomb in time to have used it against the Germans. This practically raised the roof. 23

  As the days passed, Oppenheimer grew depressed as what had really happened started to sink in. To one observer, he seemed “a nervous wreck.” 24 Many physicists shared the moral burden of building such a destructive weapon, but Oppenheimer had been given an opportunity to advise “No”; he could not deny that the death of Hiroshima’s inhabitants was partly his responsibility. When news of Nagasaki reached him on August ninth, he released this statement to the press on behalf of his lab:

  We have believed that the use of this weapon in the war against Japan might help to shorten the war and be a benefit to the world for that reason alone; but above all we have thought that this rather spectacular technical development, and the assured prospect of far more terrifying future developments, would force upon the people of this country, and all the war-weary people of the world, a recognition of how imperative it has become to avert wars in the future; how the cooperation and understanding between nations which has seemed desirable for so long has become a desperate necessity…. 25

  Szilard immediately asked the chaplain of the University of Chicago to include a prayer for the Japanese casualties of the two devastated cities in any memorial service commemorating the end of the war. He offered to relay the prayer to the survivors personally. 26 He then sat down and drafted another petition to President Truman, calling the atomic bombings “a flagrant violation of our own moral standards” and asking that they be stopped. The Japanese surrender on August fourteenth mooted the issue and Szilard never sent his petition. When he tried to publish his first petition to President Truman in Science magazine later that month, Groves ordered it classified “secret” and explicitly forbade Szilard from publishing the second petition anywhere, threatening to imprison him if he did.

  August 6, 1945, had found Bohr in London, awaiting return to his native Denmark. News of Hiroshima had provoked Bohr to speak out and give citizens of the world an understanding of the revolutionary issues involved and some way to deal with them. He wrote a letter to the London Times which appeared on August eleventh under a two-column headline: “Science and Civilization.” It was Bohr’s first public statement about the need for a more open world:

  The formidable power of destruction which has come within reach of man may become a mortal menace unless human society can adjust itself to the exigencies of the situation. Civilization is presented with a challenge more serious perhaps than ever before…. Against the new destructive powers no defense may be possible [and] no control can be effective without international supervision of all undertakings which unless regulated might become a source of disaster.

  Such measures will demand the abolition of barriers hitherto considered necessary to safeguard national interests but now standing in the way of the common security against unprecedented danger. Certainly the handling of the precarious situation will demand the good will of all nations, but it must be recognized that we are dealing with what is potentially a deadly challenge to civilization itself.

  Hiroshima and Nagasaki hit home for Bethe when photographs of the devastated cities arrived at Los Alamos by special courier several days later. Although Bethe had witnessed the Trinity test and had calculated the effect of an atomic blast over an urban area, he was unprepared emotionally for what he saw when he looked at the grim pictures. “The total destruction, the total leveling of a wide area was really very shocking,” Bethe said with considerable emotion many years later. “It really came to mind when I saw the pictures.” 27

  Lawrence learned of Hiroshima while listening to the radio in his living room. He sensed this meant the end of Japan’s resistance and looked toward the future. “Now we will have no more war and the most backward countries will be able to start catching up,” he told his wife, Molly. 28 On the day Nagasaki was bombed, Lawrence received a phone call from an agitated physicist who condemned the targeting of Japanese civilians and feared the bombings’ effect on the reputation of science. The physicist wrote Lawrence later that day:

  Many people, including some who are prominent and influential, think that science does more harm than good to humanity. Some of these, and some who think oppositely, contend that scientists ought to control the applications of their discoveries, though I for one cannot imagine how they could exercise any control. Some people go so far as to blame scientists for the consequences of their discoveries. I think that it is not far-fetched nor absurd to conjecture that in time to come, people will be saying, “Those wicked physicists of the ‘Manhattan Project’ deliberately developed a bomb which they knew would be used for killing thousands of innocent people without any warning, and they either wanted this outcome or at least condoned it. Away with physicists!” It will not be accepted as an excuse that they may have disapproved in silence. We do not excuse the German civilians who accepted Buchenwald while possibly disapproving in silence. 29

  Lawrence responded that same day:

  In view of the fact that two bombs ended the war, I am inclined to feel that they made the right decision. Surely many more lives were saved by shortening the war than were sacrificed as a result of the bombs. Further, it goes without saying that all of us hope and pray that there will never be an occasion to use another one. The world must realize that there can never be another war.

  As regards criticism of science and scientists, I think that is a cross we will have to bear, and I think in the long run the good sense of everyone the world over will realize that in this instance, as in all scientific pursuits, the world is better as a result. 30

  A short time later Lawrence left Berkeley for Los Alamos, partly to escape reporters clamoring for comment and partly to work with Oppenheimer on a report on postwar atomic efforts. Lawrence reacted impatiently to Oppenheimer’s developing remorse. He felt little of Oppenheimer’s soul-searching guilt. Although Lawrence had initially believed that the bomb would never be used against people and then had been one of the last members of the Scientific Advisory Panel to abandon the idea of a demonstration, he now thought of the bomb as a terrible swift sword that had forced Japan’s surrender. Publicly, Lawrence confidently declared that “the harnessing of atomic energy in a weapon of war will come to be regarded in the future not as a mark of the doom of mankind, but rather as a first step in man’s conquest of a new realm of the universe for his own betterment and welfare.” 31

  Cool and controlled as always, Fermi did not comment publicly. When Japan surrendered on August fourteenth, residents of Los Alamos came out the next day to celebrate the end of the war. Fermi joined in the celebration, but he never once mentioned Hiroshima or Nagasaki in conversations with close friends that day. Fermi remained characteristically mum about his reaction to the bombing, even when his sister Maria, writing from Italy, reported that “All [here] are perplexed and appalled by its dreadful effects, and with time the bewilderment increases rather than diminishes. For my part I recommend you to God, Who alone can judge you morally.” 32

  Fermi had, however, discussed the bomb privately with Oppenheimer. The two had concluded before Hiroshima that nothing could be done to control the bomb after the war if the Am
erican people did not even know that it existed, much less how much destruction it could inflict. Fermi and Oppenheimer believed that only its use would breach the wall of secrecy, and do the sort of shocking and horrific damage that might end war altogether.

  Having witnessed the Trinity test, Rabi had understood the appalling damage the bomb would do to cities. A sensitive and moral man who had expressed misgivings to Oppenheimer early on in the project about making a weapon of mass destruction, Rabi had learned a “frightening thing” in the course of the war: “how easy it is to kill people when you turn your mind to it.” “When you turn the resources of modern science to the problem of killing people,” Rabi later wrote of his feelings in August 1945, “you realize how vulnerable they really are.” 33

  Pollsters reported that the American public backed the use of the atomic bombs against Japan overwhelmingly because it—along with the Soviet Union’s entrance into the conflict—brought the Pacific War to a speedy end. To those who cheered at the time (and they were the vast majority)—that was what mattered most. As Winston Churchill later wrote: “To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.” 34

  Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the culmination of a willingness on the part of American policy makers in World War II to tolerate the killing of noncombatants in the pursuit of victory. And of course the war against Japan had acquired such terrible momentum by the summer of 1945 that there was very little argument against waging war in any way, including in a new and terrible way: using a weapon of mass destruction on civilians in undefended cities. It was a bloody sort of progress: by inflicting suffering, the atomic bomb ended the suffering caused by firebombings and starvation blockades, and it obviated the ghastly specter of a U.S. invasion of the Japanese home islands.