Pandora's Keepers (20 page)

Oppenheimer proposed this “little gray home in the west”
⁸
to Groves, and together they drove up to the Ranch School in an unmarked car on November 16, 1942. They arrived there late
in the afternoon. A light snow was falling. Despite the cold November wind, the boys were out on the playing fields in corduroy
shorts. The founder of the school, Ashley Pond, was an enthusiastic advocate of the vigorous outdoor life and did not even
believe in heated sleeping quarters. Oppenheimer and Groves remained outside the gates, taking in the fresh mountain air as
they pored over maps and looked out over the surrounding countryside. Log houses and school buildings were scattered amid
pastures and cropland. It was a lovely place, this clearing in the pine trees 8,500 feet above sea level. The flat green mesa,
separated from the rest of the plateau by the vertical walls of two deep canyons, offered perfect isolation. After taking
it all in, General Groves said simply, “This is the place.”
⁹

The only obstacle to his decision was A. J. Connell, the headmaster of the Los Alamos Ranch School, where forty-three wealthy
boys had been sent, mostly from the East, to be educated and toughened up. When an army officer told the headmaster that the
school had come to the end of its days and would be taken over, Connell replied, “You must be mistaken. The property is not
for sale.” The boys were permitted to finish the school year, but that was it. By the time they left, in the early spring
of 1943, MPs were already guarding the mesa. Connell retired to Santa Fe a broken man, where he died two years later. That
is how the secret lab known as Site Y or the Hill came to be.

On March 16, 1943, Oppenheimer left California by train for New Mexico. He arrived in Santa Fe a few days later and took up
residence at 109 East Palace Avenue in Santa Fe under the alias Mr. Bradley until Kitty and Peter joined him and together
they moved up to the Hill in May. Oppenheimer’s plan was to build an atomic bomb there with just thirty other physicists.
It would be a small community. They would live in the schoolmasters’ houses and eat at the main lodge. What labs were needed
would be squeezed in between the canyon rim and the little pond that graced the front of the lodge. As the realities of the
immense challenge set in, however, Oppenheimer would be forced to recruit more physicists, as well as mathematicians, chemists,
metallurgists, ordnance experts, machinists—all sorts of personnel. By war’s end, Los Alamos would secretly employ more than
four thousand civilian and two thousand military personnel.

Oppenheimer’s original estimate had been low because of inexperience and his lack of ability to understand the dimensions
involved. He had foreseen a theoretical physics laboratory whose main function would be to determine the critical mass, ensure
against predetonation in assembly, and perform the necessary subcritical experiments to test the theory. Oppenheimer had given
little thought to the engineering aspects of a weapon, which would prove to be awesome.

The laboratory started out with nothing except the library books that the Ranch School boys had read and the equipment they
had used to go horseback riding. The only link with the outside world was a hand-cranked Forest Service phone line. Water
was scarce and electricity was intermittent. At the center of Los Alamos was Ashley Pond, named after the school’s founder.
To its east stood Fuller Lodge, the main dining hall. Across an open field was the Big House, which served as a dormitory
for arriving scientists. Between the main road and the mesa’s southern rim were the laboratories, dubbed the Tech Area, one-
and two-story white clapboard and green sheetrock buildings scattered among tall ponderosa pines. The streets created were
unpaved and unnamed.

The scientists who would work in the Tech Area had many questions to answer: How many neutrons were released each time a uranium
nucleus fissioned? How were they absorbed or scattered? How did the neutrons from one fission produce a second fission when
they hit another uranium nucleus? How was a critical amount of fissionable material assembled fast enough to create a powerful
explosion? What would happen during the explosion? The questions sounded very academic, but this was no college campus: a
fenced guarded by MPs surrounded the Tech Area, and special white badges were required for admission.

Oppenheimer knew the physicists he needed would not readily pass up work at established war projects such as radar at MIT,
the proximity fuse at Johns Hopkins, or sonar at San Diego to come to this unknown site in the desert. They would come only
if America’s top physicists were coming, too. So Oppenheimer recruited the stars first, and the others followed fast. Some
he terrified by stressing the prospect of a Nazi atomic bomb. Others he attracted by his descriptions of the immense beauty
of New Mexico. But to all he imparted the feeling of how exciting it would be to participate in the pioneering work. “He spoke
with a kind of mystical earnestness that captured our imagination,” recalled one recruit.
¹⁰
By describing the projected work as crucial to the war effort and exerting a kind of “intellectual sex appeal,”
¹¹
as another recruit put it, Oppenheimer managed to get almost everyone he wanted. “Oppenheimer was the best recruiter and
salesman I’ve ever seen,” said one who eagerly bought his sales pitch. “He expressed his enthusiasm for the project, and aroused
ours.”
¹²
The list of current and future stars was astonishing: Robert Bacher, Robert Christy, Richard Feynman, Donald Hornig, Edwin
McMillan, Philip Morrison, Norman Ramsey, Emilio Segrè, Victor Weisskopf, and Robert Wilson, to name just a few.

If Oppenheimer needed additional ammunition in his recruiting effort, he had it in the form of a personal letter from President
Roosevelt. Addressed to Oppenheimer but meant for everyone on the Hill, the letter conveyed FDR’s appreciation of the project’s
urgency and the country’s thanks for the scientists’ labors:

Secret
June 29, 1943

My dear Dr. Oppenheimer:

I have recently reviewed with Dr. Bush the highly important and secret program of research, development and manufacture with
which you are familiar. I was very glad to hear of the excellent work which is being done in a number of places in this country
under the immediate supervision of General L. R. Groves and the general direction of the Committee of which Dr. Bush is Chairman.
The successful solution of the problem is of the utmost importance to the national safety, and I am confident that the work
will be completed in as short a time as possible as the result of the wholehearted cooperation of all concerned
.

I am writing to you as the leader of one group which is to play a vital role in the months ahead. I know that you and your
colleagues are working on a hazardous matter under unusual circumstances. The fact that the outcome of your labors is of such
great importance to the nation requires that this program be even more drastically guarded than other highly secret war developments.
I have therefore given directions that eveiy precaution be taken to insure the security of your project and feel sure that
those in charge will see that these orders are carried out. You are fully aware of the reasons why your own endeavors and
those of your associates must be circumscribed by very special restrictions. Nevertheless, I wish you would express to the
scientists assembled with you my deep appreciation of their willingness to undertake the tasks which lie before them in spite
of the dangers and the personal sacrifices. I am sure we can rely on their continued wholehearted and unselfish labors. Whatever
the enemy may be planning, American science will be equal to the challenge. With this thought in mind, I send this note of
confidence and appreciation.

Though there are other important groups at work, I am writing only to you as the leader of the one which is operating under
very special conditions, and to General Groves. While this letter is secret, the contents of it may be disclosed to your associates
under a pledge of secrecy.

Very sincerely yours,
Franklin D. Roosevelt
¹³

Oppenheimer answered Roosevelt’s letter with these words:

July 9, 1943

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you for your generous letter of June 29th. You would be glad to know how greatly your good words of reassurance were
appreciated by us. There will be many times in the months ahead when we shall remember them.

It is perhaps appropriate that I should in turn transmit to you the assurance that we as a group and as individual Americans
are profoundly aware of our responsibility, for the security of our project as well as for its rapid and effective completion.
It is a great source of encouragement to us that we have in this your support and understanding.

Very sincerely yours,
J. R. Oppenheimer
¹⁴

The few who were not moved by Roosevelt’s letter were moved by the advantages that scientists enjoyed at Los Alamos. They
got everything they wanted; cost was unimportant. They were given top priority for scarce wartime materials. They interacted
daily with the finest minds in the world. “I was twenty-three years old when I went up to the Hill and met people I never
expected to meet,” recalled a veteran of Los Alamos. “I hadn’t even known that Niels Bohr was still alive, never mind that
I might actually be sitting across the table from him. I was totally overwhelmed by all these people I had read about in textbooks.”
¹⁵
Yes, there would be isolation. But the professional intimacy would make up for it.

Oppenheimer hoped scientists would be inspired to excellence by the beauty of Los Alamos. For many, this happened during their
first meal at Fuller Lodge. In the morning, through a picture window, the rugged chain of the Sangre de Cristos ran like a
dark silhouette along the horizon. Then the sun rose over the ridgeline and the room suddenly filled with brilliant light.
In the evening the ridgeline darkened from violet blue to crimson at sunset. The mountains, the bright clear air, the deep
blue sky, the warm sunshine and cool wind, the wildflowers exploding with color in summer, the walks beneath shimmering aspen
trees that turned brilliant yellow in autumn—all these things exhilarated and sustained scientists in their efforts. This
was the world they hoped to save and understand, and it was breathtaking. They had only to open their hearts a little and
the mesa breathed itself into them, sending them climbing in an elation to a height that no fear could reach.

The mesa was off-limits to outsiders, and armed guards patrolled the perimeter on horseback. Los Alamos did not appear on
any map; its very name was classified. People were fingerprinted and photographed and lectured about the need for secrecy.
They were forbidden to tell anyone the location of the project. They could travel only within a limited radius, and telephone
calls were monitored. It was illegal to mail a letter except in authorized drops, and all mail was censored. Driver’s licenses
and tax returns were made out to numbers rather than to names. Birth certificates for children born there listed simply “Box
1663, Sandoval County Rural.” The secrecy extended to occupations. Even words such as
physicist
and
chemist
were taboo; they were called “fizzlers” and “stinkers” instead. Everyone lived and worked behind a heavily guarded fence
topped with three rows of barbed wire. The fence was a tangible barrier and a constant reminder of Los Alamos’s separation
from the rest of the world and of the war that was somewhere out there.

Oppenheimer accepted the heavy security as a wartime necessity, but he adamantly refused to accept secrecy in one area: scientific
discussion. Here, the normal security procedure of compartmentalization—limiting discussion to a “need to know” basis—was
not followed, despite protests from Army Intelligence. Oppenheimer held weekly symposia on the pressing technical problems
of the moment, inviting solutions not only from the groups working on the problems but from the important cross-fertilization
of agile minds from other disciplines with novel approaches and solutions. Just as in fission itself, one small suggestion
could set off a chain reaction of ideas at a rapid rate. This fostered a cooperative spirit that maintained high morale. It
was also a major reason why the bomb was built in such a short time.

Although the army guarded and administered Los Alamos, the heart of the Tech Area was run by Oppenheimer for the University
of California under a government contract. Scientists came to Los Alamos as civilians, sharing with the military one mission:
to build an atomic bomb as fast as possible and, with it, end the war. The similarities between them began and ended there.
The gulf between their two cultures was immense, the tension almost inevitable. While scientists resented army regimentation
and restrictions, the military found it irritating to have to pander to eccentrics who did not behave according to regulations.
Soon after things got under way, Groves came to Los Alamos and told his staff behind closed doors: “Your job won’t be easy.
At great expense we have gathered here the largest collection of crackpots ever seen.”
¹⁶
On another occasion he told Arthur Compton, “Your scientists don’t have any discipline. You don’t know how to take orders
and give orders.”
¹⁷
Groves could not appreciate the creative dimension of scientific work.

But ultimately Groves did not care what the scientists thought or said about him behind his back as long as project security
was maintained and its mission was accomplished. He knew what he wanted: to maintain the project’s secrecy, to build an atomic
bomb as fast as possible and win the war with it, to tell the British as little as necessary, and to tell the Russians absolutely
nothing. He was not above misleading the scientists if he thought it was for the good of the project. One project scientist
recalled that Groves would, for example, deliberately give Los Alamos excessively optimistic reports about what was being
accomplished at Oak Ridge; likewise, he would give Oak Ridge excessively optimistic reports about how things were going at
Los Alamos. In this way, he could make both groups work harder, since each group would think it was the bottleneck and therefore
get things done faster. On the other hand, Groves was willing to stick his neck out for the scientists. They asked for tremendous
amounts of expensive and difficult-to-obtain equipment, and if they made a convincing case to him, he was willing to go a
very long way to get it. If the Manhattan Project failed, the man who would be the target, and victim, of subsequent congressional
investigations into why $2 billion had been squandered on a useless project would be Groves, not them—and he knew it.
¹⁸