Before the Fallout

by Diana Preston

  When the meeting formally reconvened after lunch, the minutes recorded the following decision: "After much discussion concerning various types of targets and the effects to be produced, 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 seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible. . . . the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers' houses." The target of a vital war plant, even closely surrounded by workers' houses, differed from the city center suggested by the Target Committee and was later adjusted toward the latter's views.

  Stimson's diary reveals that he was concerned not only about the effects of the use of the atomic bomb but also about the morality of the growing civilian casualties caused by conventional bombings. Prior to the Interim Committee meeting he acted decisively to remove one city—Kyoto—from the list of potential targets for the atomic bomb. According to Groves, "The reason for his objection was that Kyoto was the ancient capital of Japan, a historical city, and one that was of great religious significance to the Japanese. . . . the decision should be governed by the historical position that the United States would occupy after the war. He felt very strongly that anything that would tend in any way to damage this position would be unfortunate."

  Although Groves pursued the matter several times, this was one of the few occasions when he failed to win. After the war he conceded, "I was very glad that I had been over-ruled." Groves noted that Kyoto benefited by being retained by him on the reserved target list for some time in the hope of changing Stim­son's mind. The city was thus protected from conventional bombing and survived the war virtually intact. Over the next weeks Nagasaki replaced Kyoto on the target list.

  Immediately after the Interim Committee meeting, on i June, Byrnes reported the strategy to the president, who, according to Byrnes, told him "he could think of no alternative and found himself in accord." This, and an entry in Truman's diary for 24 July in which he likened the bomb to the fiery destruction prophesied in the Bible to followr Noah's flood but noting his agreement to its deployment, are the nearest to a recorded decision by President Truman to proceed with the use of the bomb.

  The Interim Committee also discussed at its 31 May meeting the international dimension of nuclear energy and, in particular, relations with the Soviet Union. Oppenheimer argued that the United States should offer "to the world free interchange of information wdth particular emphasis on the development of peace-time uses. The basic goal of all endeavors in the field should be the enlargement of human welfare. If we were to offer to exchange information before the bomb was actually used, our moral position would be greatly strengthened." However, Byrnes quashed the proposals, as the minutes record: "Mr. Byrnes expressed a fear that if information were given to the Russians, even in general terms, Stalin would ask to be brought into the partnership . . . particularly . . . in viewr of our commitments and pledges of cooperation with the British. In this connection Dr. Bush pointed out that even the British do not have any of our blueprints on plants. Mr. Byrnes expressed the view which was generally agreed to by all present that the most desirable program would be to push ahead as fast as possible in production and research to make certain that we stay ahead and at the same time make every effort to better our political relations with Russia." Byrnes had been impressed by evidence from scientists and industrialists that the Soviet Union would take from four to ten years to catch up with the United States and that this would give the latter a major diplomatic advantage throughout the period.

  General Groves introduced a further topic at that meeting: the presence within the project of "certain scientists of doubtful discretion and uncertain loyalty." This was a reference, above all, to the activities of Leo Szilard. Groves was still deeply suspicious of the Hungarian. He had never allowed him to set foot on the Los Alamos site and had for a time had him removed from the project. Although Szilard had been reinstated to work as a consultant at the Met Lab in Chicago, Groves had ordered the FBI to keep him under strict surveillance. Their reports threw up onlv the obvious: "The subject is of Jewish extraction, has a fondness for delicacies and frequently makes purchases in delicatessen stores, usually eats his breakfast in drugstores . . . usually is shaved in a barber shop, speaks occasionally in a foreign tongue, and associates mostly with people of Jewish extraction. He is inclined to be rather absent-minded and eccentric."

  By early 1945 Szilard had become preoccupied by the potential dangers of a nuclear arms race leading to a first strike motivated by fear or perceived danger rather than an actual threat. He was convinced that only an international system of controls could forestall such a danger. He decided that because he was so far out of the Manhattan Project's mainstream and because his nemesis, Groves, had so compartmentalized the project on security grounds, he should approach Roosevelt direct. Because "I didn't suppose that he would know who I was," he asked Albert Einstein for a letter of introduction, which the latter gladly provided. Believing that Eleanor Roosevelt might be a useful conduit to the president, Szilard sent the introductory letter to her in late March. She agreed to meet him in early May, but the president's death intervened.

  Szilard then managed to secure a meeting at the White House on 25 May, where he was told by Truman's appointments secretary that the president had suggested he should meet Byrnes at his home in South Carolina to discuss the issue. The meeting to which Harold Urey and another scientist accompanied him two days later was not a success. (Urey had by now become another of Groves's betes noires. The general thought him completely ineffectual: "He was not a doer himself and could never make decisions. At heart he was a coward.") Szilard lectured Byrnes about the dangers of even testing a bomb, which might provoke an alarmed Stalin to start an arms race. Szilard was "flabbergasted" by Byrnes's contrary "assumption that rattling the bomb might make the Russians more manageable," including in their decisions about their control of eastern Europe and Szilard's Hungarian homeland. Following this mutually unsatisfactory conversation, Byrnes was only too ready to take a firm position on the dissident scientists. The Interim Committee agreed "nothing could be done about dismissing these men until after the bomb has actually been used or, at best, until after the test has been made," but then "steps should be taken to sever these scientists from the program."

  Nevertheless, when he returned to the Met Lab after the committee, Arthur Compton told his colleagues that the committee would be prepared to listen to their views about the future of the atomic project, including, by implication, the concerns of those who had doubts about the deployment of the bomb. The scientists set up committees on topics ranging from research programs to social and political implications. James Franck, whom Groves regarded as "a babe in the woods" when it came to national and international affairs, chaired the latter, and Szilard was an enthusiastic member. Among the recommendations of their thirteen-page report was that the bomb should be demonstrated before it was used against Japanese civilians. Compton sent the report to Stimson "at the request" of the laboratory "for the attention of your Interim Advisorv Committee." He noted that the committee's scientific panel had not yet considered the report. When they did so on 16 June, the four men do not seem to have been in full agreement. Lawrence, with perhaps some support from Fermi, persisted in favor of the demonstration, but Compton and particularly Oppenheimer were strongly opposed. Oppenheimer's report to Stimson—"we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; wre see no acceptable alternative to direct military use"—let Stimson, Byrnes, and the other politicians off the hook.

  Meanwhile Leo Szilard wrote secretly to Edward Teller and other colleagues at Los Alamos, urging support for a petition to Truman advocating a demonstration and the avoidance of an arms race. One paragraph of his letter read, "Many of us are inclined to say that individual Germans
share the guilt for the acts which Germany committed during this war because they did not raise their voices in protest against these acts. Their defense that their protests would have been of no avail hardly seems acceptable even though these Germans could not have protested without running risks to life and liberty. We are in a position to raise our voices without incurring any such risks even though we might incur the displeasure of some of those who are at present in charge of controlling the work on 'atomic power.' "

  Teller felt that before replying "he had to talk to Oppenheimer." To his surprise, an impatient Oppenheimer spoke harshly and vehemently about both Szilard and Franck, questioning "what do they know about Japanese psychology? How can they judge the way to end the war?" He suggested that the decision should be left to "the leaders in Washington and not individuals who happen to work on the bomb project." Teller was relieved "at not having to participate in the difficult judgements to be made." He wrote back to Szilard a six-paragraph letter, concluding, "I feel I should do the wrong thing if I tried to say how to tie the little toe of the ghost to the bottle from which we just helped it to escape."*

  Szilard continued to work on how the dissenting scientists' views could be got to the president. However, Truman, Stimson, and Byrnes, confirmed as secretary of state, had chosen their path. In addition to the ongoing conduct of the war against Japan, they were focusing on the forthcoming conference with Churchill and Stalin in July at Potsdam in defeated Germany. Churchill too had given Britain's formal consent to the use of the bomb against Japan, as required by the Quebec Agreement, by simply initialing a note requesting him to do so. British agreement was noted in the minutes of the U.K.-U.S. Combined Policy Committee meeting, which met in Washington on Independence Day, 4 July. Among the topics for discussion at Potsdam would be the future of eastern Europe, the program of the United Nations, whose charter had been signed on 26 June, and potential Russian participation in the war on Japan. Thinking on the latter had gone through a number of stages. For a considerable time U.S. policy had been that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan was highly desirable. By invading Manchuria, Soviet troops would tie down Japanese divisions and prevent them from being returned to Japan to defend it against American forces.

  The basic terms for Soviet entry into the war against Japan had been settled at Yalta in February 1945. They included the preservation of Outer Mongolia as independent from China and the restoration of the concessions made by Russia at the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904—£, including the return of the southern half of Sakhalin Island. In addition, Russia was to annex the Kurile Islands. Some of the provisions—such as the status of Mongolia—needed the consent of China, and this was left for discussion between the Russian and Chinese governments. Stalin had promised to join the war against Japan no more than two or three months after Germany's defeat. However, by the spring American planners realized that their naval and air forces could prevent Japanese troopships from sailing from Manchuria to the defense of the home island. They began to hope that Soviet entry into the war alone might be sufficient to force the Japanese leadership to surrender without an invasion of the Japanese home islands.

  The U.S. administration was desperately concerned about the cost in Allied lives of such an invasion. Japanese resistance was unrelenting. Kamikaze planes zeroed in on the U.S. carrier fleet protecting the invasion forces off Okinawa. On 11 May an attack on the Bunker Hill killed 396 men, three times more than the number of revolutionary forces who had died in 1775 in the engagement after which the carrier was named. The Allied servicemen could not understand the mentality of those prepared to undertake suicide attacks. Thus they proved highly disturbing, while reinforcing stereotypes of the Japanese as a race apart. So strong was this sense of distance that when an engineering officer on a U.S. warship hit by a kamikaze sometime later found the decaying leg of the pilot, he gave it to his comrades "to make some souvenirs out of it." He recalled, "The guys actually sliced up the bones into cross-sections. They made necklaces out of that pilot."

  Okinawa was not conquered until 21 June. Over 12,000 American servicemen lost their lives on the island or in related operations, together with around 80,000 local people and upward of 1 20,000 Japanese. Three days earlier, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, William Leahy, had told the president that the front-line marine divisions had suffered 3 £ percent casualties on Okinawa and that if, as seemed likely, a similar percentage were lost in the attack on the first of the Japanese main islands, Kyushu, planned for the autumn, casualties would be over one quarter of a million. Truman replied that he "hoped that there wras a possibility of preventing an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other."

  If the Trinity test of the plutonium bomb succeeded, the new weapon might offer such a possibility and also avoid the complication of Russian involvement in Japan and China. Stimson noted in his diary on 14 May that America's wealth and possession of the bomb were "a royal straight flush and we mustn't be a fool about the way wre play it." The next day his diary described the bomb as a "master card."

  The best way of preserving American lives while defeating Japan quickly and limiting Soviet influence preoccupied Truman, Stimson, and Byrnes as they crossed the Atlantic in the cruiser USS Augusta to the Potsdam Conference. So convinced were they of the value of a successful atomic bomb test to the strength of their negotiating position with Russia, that Truman had delayed the conference from the originally proposed date of mid-June until mid-July—the scientists' estimate of the earliest they wrould be ready to conduct the Trinity test. Churchill had been concerned that this delay might allow the Russian hold on eastern Europe to consolidate, so Truman had sent one of his advisers, Joseph Davies, to London to tell him that Truman "didn't want to go to Potsdam to meet Stalin until he knew the outcome of the test."

  The U.S. delegation was also aware that Emperor Hirohito had asked his ministers to put out diplomatic feelers about means to end the war. Both British and American intelligence had decoded subsequent signals by the Japanese foreign minister to Japan's ambassador in Moscow to ask the Soviets to act as an intermediary. According to one of the intercepts, it was "His Majesty's heart's desire to see the swift termination of the war." On the basis of their detailed intercepts, the two allies dismissed the initiative as not offering the unconditional surrender they demanded, which, indeed, it did not. There was disagreement among the Japanese leaders as to the wisdom of opening any negotiations. The militarists believed, in line with samurai tradition, that surrender was dishonorable in any form. The more liberal faction, which included the emperor's keeper of the privy seal, Koichi Kido, saw the need to end the war but feared a military coup if they proceeded too quickly or overtly. Neither faction could contemplate the abdication of the emperor or the loss of the monarchy that unconditional surrender might imply.

  In Los Alamos Oppenheimer and his team, planning the Trinity test of the plutonium bomb, were, in his words, "under incredible pressure to get it done before the Potsdam meeting." They succeeded. At c:5o a.m. on Monday 16 July the sound of an explosion awoke a New Mexico storekeeper. He rushed into the street, where he found another man "just standing there" looking "dumbfounded." When the storekeeper asked him what had happened, the man replied, "Look over yonder, the sun blowed up."

  By early July construction workers at the Trinity test site, which lay on a ninety-mile tract of high desert, the Jornada del Muerto, had completed their task, peppering the arid landscape with bunkers and shelters. The Jornada del Muerto, which translates roughly as "Dead Man's Way," was located in central New Mexico south of Los Alamos. The area designated for the test lay largely within the Alamogordo Air Base, where five hundred miles of cable connected highly sensitive instruments, some of which would have just a split second to relay their data before the blast vaporized them. More than fifty high-speed cameras, some tied to adapted machine gun mountings, would capture the image of the expected mushroom cloud.

  On the night of 12 July, s
cientists began assembling the two hemispheres of plutonium that made up the core of the test bomb. Final assembly took place on 14 July. This entailed fitting a small beryllium initiator between the two hemispheres, then placing the resulting solid sphere into the encircling tamper, or inner shell—a hollowed cylinder of natural uranium. The next and highly tricky task wras to position the core of the bomb within the shell of high explosives that would trigger the implosion process. There were anxious moments when the core would not fit into place. Oppenheimer lost his temper, then paced the ground in seeming silent despair. However, the problem was minor—the plutonium had expanded a little from heat. When, after a few minutes, it cooled, the core snapped easily into position. Later that day engineers slowly hoisted the "gadget," as they called it, onto its platform atop a one-hundred-foot-high steel tower after piling army mattresses beneath the tower in case the bomb slipped and fell. On 1 c July scientists fitted the detonators. Oppenheimer climbed the tower to gaze for himself on the world's first nuclear bomb.

  One crucial element lay outside the scientists' and the politicians' control: the weather. The chief meteorologist for the Trinity site, Jack Hubbard, had identified the optimum conditions for the test, which included visibility greater than forty-five miles, humidity below 85 percent, and clear skies. But the test team did not have the luxury of waiting for optimum conditions. General Groves was insisting that the test take place on 16 July, unless the weather made it quite impossible. Yet more weathermen arrived to help with the complex and vital task of forecasting, including Colonel Ben Holzman, who had helped select the date of the D-Day landings.