Pandora's Keepers (31 page)

Bohr felt that time was running out. Before leaving the United States to return to his liberated Denmark, Bohr asked Frankfurter
to arrange one last meeting for him with Stimson. On June eighteenth, Stimson’s assistant Harvey Bundy sent the following
in a message to his boss: “Do you want to try and work in a meeting with Professor Bohr, the Dane, before you get away this
week?” Stimson scrawled no in the margin of the message.
⁵¹
Bohr gave up and a few days later sailed for Europe.

*  *  *

Szilard sensed that things were moving fast now, and that he must act quickly if he hoped to avert what he considered a tragedy.
Appalled at the firebombing of civilians, he felt frightened by the gathering force of events. In early July he decided to
draft a petition to President Truman arguing against use of the atomic bomb on moral grounds.
⁵²

The sense of urgency and responsibility that Szilard felt came through forcefully in his covering letter to colleagues:

Enclosed is the text of a petition which will be submitted to the President of the United States. As you will see, this petition
is based on purely moral considerations.

However small the chance might be that our petition may influence the course of events, I personally feel that it would be
a matter of importance if a large number of scientists who have worked in this field went clearly and unmistakably on record
as to their opposition on moral grounds to the use of these bombs in the present phase of the war.

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 those acts. Their defense that their protest would have been of
no avail hardly seems acceptable even though these Germans could have had protests 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.”

The fact that the people of the United States are unaware of the choice which faces us increases our responsibility in this
matter since those who have worked on “atomic power” represent a sample of the population and they alone are in a position
to form an opinion and declare their stand….
⁵³

In the petition Szilard argued that the United States bore special moral responsibility for being the first nation to develop
the bomb:

The development of atomic power will provide the nations with new means of destruction. The atomic bombs at our disposal represent
only the first step in this direction, and there is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available in
the course of their future development. Thus a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature
for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable
scale.

If after this war a situation is allowed to develop in the world which permits rival powers to be in uncontrolled possession
of these new means of destruction, the cities of the United States as well as the cities of other nations will be in continuous
danger of sudden annihilation. All the resources of the United States, moral and material, may have to be mobilized to prevent
the advent of such a world situation. Its prevention is at present the solemn responsibility of the United States—singled
out by virtue of her lead in the field of atomic power.

The added material strength which this lead gives to the United States brings with it the obligation of restraint and if we
were to violate this obligation our moral position would be weakened in the eyes of the world and in our own eyes. It would
then be more difficult for us to live up to our responsibility of bringing the unloosened forces of destruction under control.

Szilard opposed the atomic bombing of Japan on the moral ground that it would open “the door to an era of devastation on an
unimaginable scale.”
⁵⁴

Sixty-seven Met Lab scientists signed Szilard’s petition. The scientists who did not told Szilard that more lives would be
saved by using the atomic bomb than by continuing the bloody war without it. Thousands of American—to say nothing of Japanese—soldiers
were being killed each week, and they felt they would be guilty of permitting this slaughter to continue if they did not urge
use of the bomb to end the war. Still others felt that patriotism demanded the bomb’s use. “Are we to go on shedding American
blood when we have available the means to speedy victory?” one note angrily demanded. “No! If we can save even a handful of
American lives, then let us use this weapon—now! These sentiments, we feel, represent more truly those of the majority of
Americans and particularly those who have sons in the foxholes and warships of the Pacific.”
⁵⁵

Szilard also sent a copy of his petition to friends at Los Alamos. “I hardly need to emphasize that such a petition does not
represent the most effective action that can be taken in order to influence the course of events,” he wrote to Oppenheimer
and other scientists on the Hill. “But I have no doubt in my own mind that from a point of view of the standing of the scientists
in the eyes of the general public one or two years from now it is a good thing that a minority of scientists should have gone
on record in favor of giving greater weight to moral arguments.”
⁵⁶

Szilard urged Teller to both sign the petition and gather signatures for it. Before deciding what to do, Teller went to see
Oppenheimer, who answered him in a polite and convincing way by questioning Szilard’s political judgment. “What does he know
about Japanese psychology?” Oppenheimer told Teller. “How can he judge the way to end the war? The people in Washington are
very wise, they know all the facts. Szilard knows nothing. Don’t do anything.”
⁵⁷
Teller complied, and wrote Szilard a letter to that effect:

Dear Szilard:

Since our discussion I have spent some time thinking about your objections to an immediate military use of the weapon we may
produce. I decided to do nothing. I should like to tell you my reasons.

First of all let me say that I have no hope of clearing my conscience. The things we are working on are so terrible that no
amount of protesting or fiddling with politics will save our souls.

This much is true: I have not worked on the project for a very selfish reason and I have gotten much more trouble than pleasure
out of it. I worked because the problems interested me and I should have felt it a great restraint not to go ahead. I can
not claim that I simply worked to do my duty. A sense of duty could keep me out of such work. It could not get me into the
present kind of activity against my inclinations. If you should succeed in convincing me that your moral objections are valid,
I should quit working. I hardly think that I should start protesting.

But I am not really convinced of your objections. I do not feel that there is any chance to outlaw any one weapon. If we have
a slim chance of survival, it lies in the possibility to get rid of wars. The more decisive a weapon is the more surely it
will be used in any real conflict and no agreements will help.

Our only hope is in getting the facts of our results before the people. This might help to convince everybody that the next
war would be fatal. For this purpose actual combat-use might even be the best thing.

And this brings me to the main point. The accident that we worked out this dreadful thing should not give us the responsibility
of having a voice in how it is to be used. This responsibility must in the end be shifted to the people as a whole and that
can be done only by making the facts known. This is the only cause for which I feel entitled in doing something: the necessity
of lifting the secrecy at least as far as the broad issues of our work are concerned. My understanding is that this will be
done as soon as the military situation permits it.

All this may seem to you quite wrong. I should be glad if you showed this letter to Eugene [Wigner] and to [James] Franck
who seem to agree with you rather than with me. I should like to have the advice of all of you whether you think it is a crime
to continue to work. But I feel that 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 escape.

With best regards.

Yours,
E. Teller
⁵⁸

Teller did not mention Oppenheimer’s opposition to the petition in his letter to Szilard because he knew that Oppenheimer
would see the letter before it was sent.
⁵⁹
In later years, Teller looked back on his refusal to sign Szilard’s petition—and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—as
mistakes. In 1962 he wrote:

I am convinced that the tragic surprise bombing was not necessary. We could have exploded the bomb at a very high altitude
over Tokyo in the evening. Triggered at such a high altitude, the bomb would have created a sudden, frightening daylight over
the city But it would have killed no one. After the bomb had been demonstrated—after we were sure it was not a dud—we could
have told the Japanese what it was and what would happen if another atomic bomb were detonated at low altitude.

After the Tokyo demonstration, we could have delivered an ultimatum for Japanese surrender. The ultimatum, I believe, would
have been met, and the atomic bomb could have been used more humanely but just as effectively to bring a quick end to the
war. But to my knowledge, such an unannounced, high altitude demonstration over Tokyo at night was never proposed.
⁶⁰

And in 1987 he wrote:

I eventually felt strongly that action without prior warning or demonstration was a mistake. I also came to the conclusion
that, although the opinions of scientists on political matters should not be given special weight, neither should scientists
stay out of public debates just because they are scientists. In fact, when political decisions involve scientific and technical
matters, they have an obligation to speak out.

I failed my first test at Los Alamos, but subsequently I have stood by that conviction.
⁶¹

“Could we have avoided the tragedy of Hiroshima?” he wondered. “Could we have started the atomic age with clean hands?”
⁶²
The questions would haunt him to the end of his life.
⁶³

I. I. Rabi did not share Teller’s opinion. When Rabi arrived on the Hill in mid-July, he told Oppenheimer that the war was
almost over, that the Japanese were as good as defeated, but that it was wishful thinking to expect Truman not to use the
bomb. Rabi, who had an office in Washington and understood the mood of the capital, could sense the determination—even the
zeal—there to end the war quickly and decisively. Rabi’s view was equally jaundiced about cowing Japan with a demonstration.
He saw no way to shake them with such a gambit. Who would evaluate such a demonstration—the emperor? “This is absurd,” he
told Oppenheimer. It would be empty “fireworks.” Only the destruction of a city would be “incontrovertible.”
⁶⁴

Oppenheimer was under intense pressure from Groves to prevent political debate over the bomb on the Hill. Oppenheimer’s job,
the general repeatedly told him, was to finish the “gadget”—nothing else. Early on, Oppenheimer had fought compartmentalization
by telling Groves that scientists would work more effectively if they were permitted unfettered discussion among themselves.
Groves had acceded to Oppenheimer’s request, but he had extracted a promise in return: Oppenheimer would limit discussions
strictly to scientific matters. Groves used the bargain he struck with Oppenheimer in the spring of 1943 to restrict debate
about use of the bomb in the summer of 1945.

Although Oppenheimer stopped Szilard’s petition, no one at Los Alamos was more concerned than he was about the role atomic
bombs would play after the war. But Oppenheimer did not think that scientists could do much about postwar problems while the
war was still going on. Better informed than any other scientist on the Hill about the state of play in Washington, Oppenheimer
perhaps also realized that scientists, at the end of the day, had no real voice in the decision to use the bomb. He also probably
knew that those who did have a voice had no need for the opinions of those at Los Alamos or the Met Lab.

An incident earlier in the year suggested Oppenheimer was right. As Allied forces raced toward the heart of Germany, U.S.
Army Intelligence discovered that the Nazis had no atomic bombs. Soon after this was learned, the sensational news swept like
wildfire through the Manhattan Project laboratories, where it was eagerly discussed. “Isn’t it wonderful that the Germans
have no atom bomb?” a physicist said to an army liaison officer at one of the labs. “Now we won’t have to use ours.” The officer,
schooled in the ways of the military and of Washington, looked at him for a long moment, rolled his eyes, shook his head,
and said, “Of course you understand that if we have such a weapon we are going to use it.” His reply shocked the naive physicist.
⁶⁵

Truman never saw Szilard’s petition. Szilard gave it to Compton on July nineteenth, and asked him to keep the signers’ names
secret from Groves. Compton did so, sealing it in a manila envelope addressed “To The President of the United States.” Also
included in the envelope was a poll of 150 Met Lab scientists who had been asked to choose among five possible courses of
action. By far the largest number, 46 percent, voted to “give a military demonstration in Japan, to be followed by a renewed
opportunity to surrender before full use of the weapon is employed.” The phrase “military demonstration in Japan” was later
interpreted by officials in Washington to mean an attack without warning, but many of the polled scientists subsequently contended
that they meant just the opposite: the phrase “before full use of the weapon is employed” meant that they first wanted a demonstration
that would not kill a large number of civilians.
⁶⁶