by Paul Ham
Raised a Catholic in South Carolina, Byrnes converted to Protestantism as an adult. He has been variously described as deceitful, pathologically secretive, a master of the dark arts of political arm-twisting and openly racist. While Byrnes opposed the principle of racial integration, the central tenet behind Roosevelt’s civil liberties program, he refused to join the Ku Klux Klan at a time when it was politically expedient to do so. He shared the Klan’s basic ideas but baulked at their methods; he did not approve of the lynching of black men. His restraint was thought courageous at the time because, as an ex-Catholic, he had much to prove to the hooded Protestants who tended to torment papists when blacks were scarce.51
Whatever Byrnes’ flaws or strengths, his actions must be seen in the light of his record. He was a skilled judge and administrator, and a highly experienced politician of the kind that excelled behind the scenes or on committees. His work as head of the Office of War Mobilization was exemplary at a time of national emergency. His deep knowledge of Washington and his thwarted ambition – he had hoped to succeed Roosevelt as president – quickly established him as Truman’s “big brother” in political terms. As Truman’s personal “coach” on sensitive areas of foreign policy, Byrnes enjoyed great influence over the president well before his elevation to secretary of state. It was Byrnes who, handing Truman a leather-bound transcript of his notes of the Yalta conference in February, urged the inexperienced new leader to adopt a much tougher line on Russia.52
And now Byrnes, the wily former legislator, whom Stalin would delight in calling “the most honest horse thief” he had ever met, prepared to take control of the political and diplomatic direction of the Manhattan Project.
Henry Stimson’s Eclipse
At 10 am on June 31, the members of Henry Stimson’s committee settled into the dark-paneled conference room of the War Department. The air was heavy with the presence of three Nobel laureates and Oppenheimer.
Chairman Stimson opened the proceedings with his familiar, apocalyptic flourish: “We do not regard it as a new weapon merely,” he declared, “but as a revolutionary change in the relations of man to the universe.” The atomic bomb might mean the “doom of civilization”; it might be a “Frankenstein” that would “eat us up” – or it might secure world peace. The bomb’s implications “went far beyond the needs of the present war,” Stimson said. It should therefore be controlled and used in the service of peace.53
Oppenheimer was invited to outline the potential damage that would be inflicted by the bombs. Two different bombs were being developed: the Fat Man plutonium bomb and Little Boy uranium bomb. They used different detonation methods and processes, Oppenheimer explained, yet both were expected to deliver payloads equivalent to 2000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. Nobody yet knew their precise power. More advanced weapons might measure up to 100,000 tons of TNT; and superbombs – thermonuclear weapons – might be the equivalent of 10 million to 100 million tons, Oppenheimer said.54
The scientists nodded impassively, but these figures and the destruction they implied “thoroughly frightened” Byrnes, as he later admitted, and he silently ruminated on the wisdom, or madness, of sharing the secret with Moscow.55 The discussion reinforced his private resolution: Once he was appointed secretary of state, Byrnes would pursue a “go-it-alone” policy that would pointedly exclude the Soviet Union and the rest of the world from America’s nuclear secret.
Discussion soon flared on this very question. Secrecy made eminent sense to many high officials in Washington, who regarded Russia as America’s next enemy, and who had witnessed with alarm Stalin’s east European land grab after Yalta.
Yet the Soviet Union happened at the time to be America’s ally, and some feared that secrecy would infuriate Stalin and sow the seeds of an arms race. Oppenheimer advocated divulging the secret “in the most general terms.” Moscow had “always been very friendly to science,” he rather lamely observed; he felt strongly, however, that “we should not prejudge the Russian attitude.”
General Marshall, too, wondered whether a combination of like-minded powers might control nuclear power; the general even suggested that Russian scientists be invited to witness the bomb test at Alamogordo, scheduled for July. Others agreed that sharing the secret might appease the Russians at a time when they were desperately needed in the Pacific War (or so Truman claimed before the Potsdam Conference, scheduled to start in mid-July).
Byrnes the politician, with an eye on his imminent appointment, was having none of this. He had observed Russian deceit at close quarters at Yalta. And he had powerful allies. If talk of sharing the nuclear secret alarmed him, it enraged Groves, who was violently opposed to sharing the secret he had spent nearly four years trying to keep. In their minds, and the minds of the hardliners in the state department, the bomb’s power would be the future source of US global power.
That possibility was still some time away, though. For now, Byrnes acted to prevent disclosure. If the Americans gave information to the Russians “even in general terms,” he argued, Stalin would demand a partnership role and a stake in the technology. Vannevar Bush chipped in, noting that not even the British possessed blueprints of America’s atomic factories.
Byrnes wrapped up the argument: America should “push ahead as fast as possible in [nuclear] 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.” All agreed. If anyone present noticed this first official recognition of the start of a nuclear arms race – not with Germany or Japan, but with Russia – he dared not say so. Nor were any of the members tactless enough to point out the inconsistency of keeping secrets from those with whom Byrnes hoped to build better political relations.56 Byrnes was right to be wary: The Russians would prove to be utterly untrustworthy, least of all with a secret as potent as this. What nobody in the room then knew, however, was that Stalin was already fully aware of the Manhattan Project, through his spy Klaus Fuchs in Los Alamos.
***
The talks turned to the use of the weapons on Japan. That morning Ernest Lawrence had suggested staging a demonstration of the bomb, to show off its power and intimidate the Japanese, a move the Target Committee had already rejected. Byrnes took just ten minutes over lunch in the Pentagon to kill that idea: The bomb might be a dud, he warned; the Japanese might shoot down the delivery plane; American POWs might be put in the target zone. Nor would a demonstration be sufficiently spectacular to persuade Tokyo to surrender, Oppenheimer added, and Stimson agreed. “Nothing,” Stimson later wrote, “would have been more damaging to our effort to obtain surrender than a warning or a demonstration followed by a dud . . .’57
After lunch the committee examined a fresh point on the agenda: “the effect of the bombing on the Japanese and their will to fight.” Would the impact of a nuclear attack differ much from a firebombing raid, one of the committeemen wondered. That rather missed the point, objected Oppenheimer, stung by the suggestion that mere firebombs were in any way comparable to the power of his gadget.
“The visual effect of the atomic bomb would be tremendous,” Oppenheimer declared. “It would be accompanied by a brilliant luminescence which would rise to a height of 10,000 to 20,000 feet. The neutron effect of the explosion would be dangerous to life for a radius of at least two-thirds of a mile.” The same could not be said of LeMay’s jellied petroleum raids.
Oppenheimer estimated, however, that twenty thousand people would probably die in the attack. Firebombing had killed five times as many in Tokyo on the night of March 9, 1945.58 Nobody on the committee came close to reckoning the true casualty rate of the two atomic bombs, either in the initial strike or in years to come.
***
That afternoon, Stimson revived his personal mission to save Kyoto, his “pet city,” as some derisively referred to it: Japan was not just a place on a map, or a nation that must be defeated, he insisted. The objective, surely, was military damage, not civilian lives. In Stimson’s mind the bomb sh
ould “be used as a weapon of war in the manner prescribed by the laws of war” and “dropped on a military target.”59 The war secretary argued that Kyoto must not be bombed. “It lies in the form of a cup and thus would be exceptionally vulnerable . . . It is exclusively a place of homes and art and shrines.”60
With the exception of Stimson – whose objection to the bombing of Kyoto was in fact partly aesthetic – none of the committeemen made an ethical, moral or religious case against the dropping of an atomic bomb, without warning, on an undefended city largely made up of women, children and the elderly. The businesslike tone of the discussion, the strict adherence to form, and the committee members’ cool pragmatism inhibited the expression of ethical or humanitarian arguments – arguments that would later be set out privately in the diaries of several of the men present.
Older men, such as Marshall and Stimson, shared a fading nostalgia for a bygone age of moral clarity, when soldiers fought soldiers in open combat and spared civilians. They now faced “a newer [morality] that stressed virtually total war,” observed the historian Barton J. Bernstein.61
In truth, the American Civil War and the First World War gave the lie to that “older morality,” as both men knew. Marshall had recommended, for example, on May 29, in discussion with the assistant war secretary John McCloy, the use of poison gas to destroy Japanese units on outlying Pacific islands: “Just drench them and sicken them so that the fight would be taken out of them – saturate an area, possibly with mustard, and just stand off.”62 He meant to limit American casualties by whatever means available.
Stimson drew on old-fashioned, civilized values that said more about a kindly old man’s longing for a better world. America, he believed, was losing its moral compass. The dawn of the atomic era called for a deeper human response, he believed, energized by a spirit of cooperation and compassion. The question in Stimson’s troubled mind was not “Will this weapon kill civilians?” but rather, “If we continue on this course, will any civilians remain?” He poured much of his anxiety into his diary.
The committeemen had thus calmly determined on the annihilation of two cities full of non-combatants. Total war had debased everyone involved.
***
Stimson’s fellow committeemen found his attitude perplexing. He seemed rational, if unpersuasive, and stuck doggedly to particular themes. Privately, however, he felt confused and disturbed, his conscience wracked. Near the end of the meeting he summarized his position on the bomb thus:
• We cannot give the Japanese any warning.
• We cannot concentrate on a civilian area.
• We should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible.
He meant that America should use the bomb to shock the enemy – “to make a profound impression” – with a display of devastation so horrible that Tokyo would be forced to surrender. He continued, however, to insist the target must be military. His statement’s inherent contradiction – how could the bomb shock Tokyo without concentrating on a city and therefore a civilian area? – either eluded Stimson, or he lacked the intellectual honesty to confront it. Regardless, it provoked no comment around the table, and made Conant’s task easier. “The most desirable target,” Conant said, “would therefore be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses.”63
Stimson continued to persuade himself that “workers’ houses” meant a military target. The physicists on the committee’s scientific panel agreed, Groves ticked off another victory, and the war secretary’s self-deception was complete.
In sum, the committee unanimously agreed that the atomic bombs should be used:
• as soon as possible
• without warning
• on war plants surrounded by workers’ homes, in order to make a spectacular impression “on as many inhabitants as possible.”64
In short, they had rubberstamped the Target Committee’s earlier decisions.
A slightly surreal atmosphere lingered in the room, as the men reflected on what they had done: A meeting that had opened with Stimson’s declaration of mankind’s “new relationship with the universe” had ended with the war secretary’s approval of the first atomic attack on the heart of a city, to which he had consented moments after he rejected the bombing of civilians.
As the meeting drew to a close, it was suggested that atomic bombs should be dropped on several Japanese cities at the same time, and Oppenheimer replied that it might indeed be “feasible.” But Groves objected: “We would lose the advantage of gaining additional knowledge concerning the weapon at each successive bombing,” he said, thus underlining the experimental nature of the attack. Nor would the “effect” of the atomic bomb be “sufficiently distinct” – meaning it would be difficult to distinguish between atomic and incendiary destruction. In any case, which cities should they choose? LeMay was expected to exhaust his targets for conventional attack by October. Dropping an atomic bomb on Tokyo had already been dismissed as merely blowing up the residue of conventional raids.65
There was one last piece of business before the meeting was adjourned: the troubling matter of a group of “undesirable scientists” who had recently opposed the use of the bomb on Japan. Many were émigré European physicists who felt their fight was with Germany, not Japan. Several were Jews who had lost their families in Nazi death camps, for whom the battle had a personal dimension. Their guiding spirit was the Hungarian scientist Leó Szilárd, a difficult man who had been influential in establishing the Manhattan Project, but whom Washington now regarded as a perennial irritant.
How might these meddling boffins be subdued? The Interim Committee’s scientific panel seemed best equipped to soothe the dissent in their ranks, so Oppenheimer, Arthur Compton, Lawrence and Fermi were asked to prepare a report on whether “we could devise any kind of demonstration [of the atomic bomb] that would bring the war to an end without using the bomb against a live target.” The committee anticipated, indeed expected, an answer in the negative.66
The Scientists Do Their Duty
The next day – June 1, 1945 – Truman rose early to prepare a statement for Congress. It was a bright summer’s day, and he chose one of his three new seersucker suits, the gift of a New Orleans cotton company. The president felt refreshed after hosting the prince regent of Iraq at a state dinner a few nights earlier. He had spent yesterday – Memorial Day, May 31 – on the presidential yacht, cruising the Potomac, playing poker and preparing his speech for the San Francisco Conference on the creation of the United Nations, then in session. A day earlier he had resolved the problem of succession in the state department by finally approving the timing of the appointment of James Byrnes to replace Edward Stettinius as secretary of state (Byrnes would be sworn in on July 3).
That June morning Truman received Byrnes’ summary of the previous day’s marathon Interim Committee meeting. Byrnes had skilfully exploited his position as the president’s special representative, laying stress where he saw fit, emphasizing the consensus on the weapon’s use and, in effect, relegating Stimson to the sidelines. Byrnes’ upbeat assessment fortified the president for his important speech. Truman told a rapt house:
There can be no peace in the world until the military power of Japan is destroyed . . . If the Japanese insist on continuing resistance beyond the point of reason, their country will suffer the same destruction as Germany . . .67
Few were then aware of the extent to which Japan had already experienced the same destruction as Germany.
On the day of Truman’s speech, four of America’s most powerful industrialists –the presidents of Westinghouse, DuPont, Union Carbide and Tennessee Eastman – attended the second sitting of the Interim Committee, where Byrnes reiterated, in Stimson’s absence, their intention to use the bomb as soon as available without warning on an urban area. All in attendance agreed. The talk then turned to the subject of the forthcoming test of the plutonium bomb in the New Mexican d
esert.68
As the weeks wore on, the Interim Committee’s influence ebbed away. The problem was Stimson. The war secretary harnessed his fading authority to the committee and personally invited the members. Some turned up as a courtesy, but attendance levels swiftly declined. Groves had only attended once: The immediate demands of the atomic mission understandably preoccupied him. He had little time for Stimson’s hifalutin talk – there was a war to be won. Stimson soon lost the attention of the president, Byrnes, and other senior committee members. They refused to be distracted by the war secretary’s portentous vision of a nuclear world.
***
On June 11, the Manhattan Project’s most eminent scientists, Oppenheimer, Arthur Compton, Enrico Fermi and Ernest Lawrence, met in Los Alamos, as agreed a fortnight earlier, to answer the question of whether a demonstration of the bomb would persuade Tokyo to surrender.
The question was effectively redundant: The Target Committee had already answered in the negative. The scientists were merely doing what was politically expedient; their authority was required to silence the voices of dissenting scientists who opposed the atomic strike. Sixty-eight dissenting physicists, led by Dr. James Franck and Dr. Leó Szilárd, would later issue a report and sign a petition against the decision to drop an atomic bomb without warning on a defenseless city.
The scientists took three days to decide that a public demonstration of the bomb was not feasible. They made a point of debating the issues, for the sake of form, aware that their conclusions would not alter the course of history. History had been decided. They simply reconsidered all the scenarios that had been previously rehearsed, and came to the conclusion that a non-combat demonstration was not possible. On June 16, the four men – among whom Oppenheimer exerted the strongest influence – reported to Washington. They recommended “immediate use” of the bomb against a Japanese city in the hope of ending the war and saving American lives. “We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war,” they concluded. “We see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”69
