The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  Chapter 4

  THE BOMB:

  The Tragedy of a Small Man

  A young second lieutenant, Paul Fussell, was about to be transferred from Europe to the Pacific when he received the news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In 1988, he published Thank God for the Atom Bomb. “For all the fake manliness of our facades,” he wrote, “we cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all.”1

  Generations of Americans have been taught that the United States reluctantly dropped atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men like Fussell who were poised to die if the U.S. invaded. But the story is really more complicated—and much more disturbing.

  With its sights trained on first defeating the Nazis, the United States threw the lion’s share of its resources into the European war. Roosevelt had insisted on the Europe-first strategy. He opposed “an all-out effort in the Pacific.” Defeating Japan, he argued, would not defeat Germany, but defeating Germany would mean defeating Japan, “probably without firing a shot or losing a life.”2

  Following the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese took the offensive early in the war. But the United States scored a major victory at Midway in June 1942 and then began the island-hopping strategy that would continue for more than three years. The Japanese fought fiercely, ensuring that U.S. victory would come at an enormous cost. U.S. industrial production gave the U.S. forces tremendous advantages. By 1943, U.S. factories were churning out almost 100,000 planes a year, dwarfing the 70,000 Japan produced during the entire war. By the summer of 1944, the United States had deployed almost a hundred aircraft carriers in the Pacific, far more than Japan’s twenty-five for the entire war.

  Science also figured prominently in the war effort. Development of radar and the proximity fuze contributed to the Allied victory. But it was the development of the atomic bomb that would change the course of history.

  Science fiction writers and scientists had long pondered the possibility of atomic energy for both peaceful and military purposes. Beginning in 1896, a series of scientific discoveries by Henri Becquerel, Marie and Pierre Curie, and Frederick Soddy and Ernest Rutherford ignited public curiosity about radioactivity. In the early 1900s, comments by Rutherford, Soddy, and others about the enormous energy locked in matter and the possibility of blowing up the universe aroused futuristic apprehension. But they and others also fantasized about the positive uses to which such energy might be put and the utopian societies that could emerge.

  While awaiting the advent of atomic power to create a new Garden of Eden, the public became enamored of the healing powers of radium and other radioactive ingredients. Promoters claimed that their products could heal all sorts of maladies, ranging from baldness to rheumatism to dyspepsia to high blood pressure. One list contained eighty patent medicines with radioactive ingredients that could be inhaled or injected or taken in tablets, bath salts, liniments, suppositories, or chocolate candy. William Bailey claimed that the products produced at the Bailey Radium Laboratories in East Orange, New Jersey, would cure everything from flatulence to sexual debility. Among his products was the Radioendocrinator, which could be worn around the neck to rejuvenate the thyroid, around the trunk to stimulate the adrenals and ovaries, or under the scrotum in a special jockstrap. He did a thriving business, especially with his liquid Radithor, whose saddest and most noteworthy victim was wealthy Pittsburgh manufacturer and playboy Eben Byers. Byers’s physician recommended he try Radithor for his injured arm, and Byers began drinking several bottles a day in December 1927. Not only did it work for his arm, Byers claimed, it gave him new vitality and sexual energy. Believing it was an aphrodisiac, Byers pressed the substance on his lady friends. By 1931, he himself had consumed between 1,000 and 1,500 bottles and started feeling sick. He lost weight, experienced bad headaches, and watched his teeth fall out. Experts decided that his body was slowly decomposing. His upper jaw and most of his lower jaw were removed, and holes appeared in his skull. From there the end came quickly as he succumbed to radioactive poisoning.3

  Among those who warned of atomic energy’s dystopian possibilities was H. G. Wells, who wrote the first atomic war novel—The World Set Free—in 1914. Wells prophesied an atomic war between Germany and Austria on one side and England, France, and the United States on the other in which over two hundred cities were destroyed by the “unquenchable crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs.”4 He later proposed his own epitaph: “God damn you all, I told you so.”

  A brilliant, quirky, Hungarian physicist named Leo Szilard was influenced by Wells’s writing. Szilard, who left Germany soon after the Nazi takeover, had given extensive thought to the possibility of atomic energy. He tried to discuss the feasibility with Rutherford, who dismissed it as the “merest moonshine” and threw Szilard out of his office.5 Undaunted, Szilard took out a patent in 1934 on how a nuclear chain reaction would work, citing beryllium as the most likely element rather than uranium.

  H. G. Wells wrote the first atomic war novel, The World Set Free, in 1914. He prophesied an atomic war between Germany and Austria, on one side, and England, France, and the United States, on the other, in which over two hundred cities were destroyed by the “unquenchable crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs.” He later proposed his own epitaph: “God damn you all, I told you so.”

  In December 1938, two German physicists stunned the scientific world by splitting the uranium atom, making the development of atomic bombs a theoretical possibility. Those in the United States who were most alarmed by this development were the scientists who had escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe, who feared the consequences should Hitler get his hands on such a weapon. Proposing that the United States build its own atomic bomb as a deterrent, the émigré scientists tried but failed to arouse the interest of U.S. authorities. Feeling desperate, in July 1939, Szilard and fellow Hungarian physicist Eugene Wigner solicited the help of the universally admired Albert Einstein, who agreed to write to President Roosevelt, urging him to authorize a U.S. atomic research program. Einstein later regretted the action, admitting to chemist Linus Pauling, “I made one great mistake in my life—when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that the atom bombs be made.”6 He actually wrote three letters to Roosevelt on the subject.

  The scientists were right about one thing. Germany did begin an atomic research program. But, unbeknown to the Americans until late in the war, Germany abandoned its atomic research early on to focus on more immediately available weapons like the V-1 and V-2 rockets. Hitler and Albert Speer had little interest in putting manpower and resources into a weapon they might not be able to use in the current war.

  Despite Roosevelt’s commitment, U.S. research developed at a glacial pace. It languished until fall 1941, when the United States officially received the British MAUD report, which corrected the erroneous belief that five hundred tons of pure uranium might be required to make a bomb—an amount that would stop the program in its tracks. In fact, wartime science administrator James Conant thought it unwise to commit so many resources to the project. Nobel Prize–winning physicist Arthur Holly Compton reported that by the summer of 1941, “The government’s responsible representatives were . . . very close to dropping fission studies from the war program.”7 However, the new calculations showed that only five to ten kilograms were needed and that a bomb was achievable within two years.

  With the new report in hand, Vannevar Bush, the country’s other top science administrator, went to see Roosevelt and Vice President Henry Wallace on October 9. Based on the new information, Roosevelt gave Bush the resources he requested.

  Bush put Compton in charge of bomb design. Compton set up the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. The goal was to produce a self-sustaining chain reaction in an atomic pile. Compton asked J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant and charismatic theoretical physicist, to bring together a team of extraordinary theoreticians
to grapple with a number of important questions. Among Oppenheimer’s “luminaries,” as he called them, were Edward Teller and Hans Bethe, who shared a compartment on the train west to Berkeley, where they were to gather in the summer of 1942. Teller confided what was really on his mind. Bethe recalled, “Teller told me that the fission bomb was all well and good and, essentially, was now a sure thing. In reality, the work had hardly begun. Teller likes to jump to conclusions. He said that what we really should think about was the possibility of igniting deuterium by a fission weapon—the hydrogen bomb.”8 Teller was so gung ho on the fusion bomb that his fellow scientists had a difficult time getting him to focus on the problem at hand—building an atomic bomb. Thus, from nearly the outset of the project, the leading scientists were aware that what lay at the end of the road was not just an atomic bomb, which would vastly multiply human destructive capabilities, but a hydrogen bomb, which could threaten all life on the planet.

  That summer they had a scare so profoundly unsettling that it forced them to halt the project. During their deliberations, the physicists suddenly realized that an atomic detonation might ignite the hydrogen in the oceans or the nitrogen in the atmosphere and set the planet afire. Nuel Pharr Davis, in his study of Oppenheimer and physicist Ernest Lawrence, describes the abject fear that engulfed the room: “Oppenheimer stared at the blackboard in wild surprise, and the other faces in the room, including Teller’s, successively caught the same look. . . . Teller had correctly calculated the heat production of a fission bomb; Oppenheimer saw it, with or without a deuterium wrapper, setting afire the atmosphere of the entire planet, and no one at the conference could prove he was wrong.”9 Oppenheimer rushed east to confer with Compton. In his memoirs, Atomic Quest, Compton explains that he and Oppenheimer agreed that “unless they came up with a firm and reliable conclusion that our atomic bombs could not explode the air or the sea, these bombs must never be made.” Compton reflected, “Better to accept the slavery of the Nazis than to run a chance of drawing the final curtain on mankind!”10 Back at Berkeley, Bethe performed some additional calculations and discovered that Teller hadn’t accounted for the heat that would be absorbed by radiation, which lowered the odds of blowing up the world to three in 1 million—a risk they were willing to chance.

  One of three letters Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt urging him to authorize a U.S. atomic research program. Einstein later regretted this action, admitting to Linus Pauling, “I made one great mistake in my life—when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that the atom bombs be made.”

  On December 2, 1942, the scientists at Met Lab succeeded in creating the first sustained nuclear chain reaction. Given the lack of safety precautions, it’s lucky they didn’t blow up the city of Chicago. Szilard and Italian émigré Enrico Fermi shook hands in front of the reactors as the scientists toasted with Chianti in paper cups to salute Fermi’s leadership. Szilard, however, appreciated what a bittersweet moment it actually was and warned Fermi that December 2 “would go down as a black day in the history of mankind.”11 He was right.

  Artist’s rendition of the first sustained nuclear chain reaction on December 2, 1942, at the Met Lab at the University of Chicago. Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi shook hands in front of the reactors as the scientists toasted with Chianti in paper cups to salute Fermi’s leadership. Szilard, however, appreciated what a bittersweet moment it actually was and warned Fermi that the date would go down in history as a black mark against mankind.

  Slow out of the gate, the United States now embarked on a crash program—the Manhattan Project—under Brigadier General Leslie Groves in late 1942. Groves appointed Oppenheimer to organize and head the project’s main laboratory at Los Alamos in New Mexico’s beautiful Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Most onlookers assumed that the relationship between Groves and Oppenheimer would be a marriage made in Hell. They were opposites in every imaginable way. Groves weighed more than twice as much as the pencil-thin scientist, who, despite being over six feet tall, weighed 128 pounds at the start of the Project and 115 by the end. Groves came from poverty, Oppenheimer from wealth. They were different in religion, taste in foods, smoking and drinking habits, and especially politics. Groves was a staunch conservative, Oppenheimer an unapologetic leftist, most of whose students, friends, and family members were Communists. He admitted that he was a member of every Communist Party front group on the West Coast. At one point, he had given 10 percent of his monthly salary to the Communist Party to support the republican forces in Spain.

  Oppenheimer and Groves were also opposites in temperament. Whereas Oppenheimer was beloved by most of those who knew him, Groves was universally despised. Groves’s assistant, Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Nichols, said that his boss was “the biggest S.O.B. I have ever worked for.” He described him as “demanding,” “critical,” “abrasive and sarcastic,” “intelligent,” and “the most egotistical man I know.” Nichols admitted that he “hated his guts and so did everyone else.”12 But Groves’s gruff, bullying, take-no-prisoners style actually complemented Oppenheimer’s ability to inspire and get the most out of his colleagues in driving the project forward to completion.

  Groves and Oppenheimer at ground zero of the Trinity test. The two leaders of the Manhattan Project were opposites in every imaginable way—in stature, religion, taste in foods, smoking and drinking habits, and especially politics. The two were also opposites in temperament. Whereas Oppenheimer was beloved by most of those who knew him, Groves was universally despised. But Groves’s gruff, bullying, take-no-prisoners style actually complemented Oppenheimer’s ability to inspire and get the most out of his colleagues in driving the project forward to completion.

  That is not to suggest that the scientists and the military didn’t clash over security provisions and other matters. Where possible, Oppenheimer ran interference for the scientists and eased the suffocating grip of military control. Sometimes Oppie, as his friends called him, made his point humorously. On one occasion, Groves told Oppenheimer that he didn’t want him to wear his signature porkpie hats because they made him too recognizable. When Groves next entered Oppenheimer’s office, he found him wearing a full Indian headdress, which Oppenheimer proclaimed he would continue to wear until the end of the war. Groves ultimately relented.

  As the bomb project progressed steadily, so did the Allied effort in the Pacific. By 1944, the United States was capturing more and more Japanese-occupied territories, eventually bringing Japan itself within range of U.S. bombers. In July 1944, the Combined Chiefs of Staff, under General George Marshall, a future secretary of state and Nobel Peace Prize winner, adopted a two-pronged strategy to win the Pacific war: first strangle Japan with an air and sea blockade and pummel the country with “intensive air bombardment”;13 then, with Japan’s military weakened and morale lowered, invade.

  In June 1944, as Allied forces advanced in both the European and Pacific theaters, Churchill and Roosevelt finally delivered on the long-delayed second front, landing 100,000 troops on the beach at Normandy, France. German forces, retreating from the Soviet advance, would now have to fight a real two-front war.

  On July 9, U.S. forces took Saipan. The toll was enormous. Thirty thousand Japanese troops and 22,000 civilians were killed or committed suicide. The United States counted almost 3,000 dead and over 10,000 wounded in the nearly monthlong combat—its highest battle toll to date in the Pacific. For most Japanese leaders, the calamitous defeat offered definitive proof that military victory could not be won. On July 18, Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and his cabinet resigned.

  The next day, just as news of Tojo’s resignation began to circulate, the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago. Franklin D. Roosevelt easily secured the nomination for an unprecedented fourth term. The real contest was over the vice presidency. Henry Wallace had incurred the wrath of party conservatives by calling for a worldwide “people’s revolution,” toward which end the United States and Soviet Union would work together,14 and by champi
oning the cause of labor unions, women, African Americans, and the victims of European colonialism. His enemies included Wall Street bankers and other anti-union business interests, southern segregationists, and defenders of British and French colonialism.

  William Stephenson, head of British intelligence in New York, even deployed Roald Dahl to spy on Wallace when the RAF lieutenant and future writer was posted to Washington, D.C. In 1944, Dahl got hold of a draft of Wallace’s forthcoming pamphlet “Our Job in the Pacific.” What he read, he said, “made my hair stand on end.” Wallace called for the “emancipation of . . . colonial subjects” in British India, Malaya, and Burma, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, and many small Pacific islands. Dahl secreted the manuscript out of Wallace’s friend’s home and rushed it to British officials to copy and transmit to British intelligence and Churchill. “I was later told,” Dahl reminisced, “that Churchill could hardly believe what he was reading.” Wallace wrote in his diary that “the entire British Secret Service was shaking with indignation as well as the British Foreign Office.” British leaders pressured Roosevelt to censure and part ways with his vice president. Stephenson remarked, “I came to regard Wallace as a menace and I took action to ensure that the White House was aware that the British Government would view with concern Wallace’s appearance on the ticket at the 1944 presidential elections.” Dahl, whose main job in Washington was monitoring Wallace’s activities—the two regularly walked and played tennis together—said his “friend” was “a lovely man, but too innocent and idealistic for this world.”15