Pandora's Keepers (35 page)

Teller learned about Hiroshima on the afternoon of August sixth as he walked from his apartment along the Jemez Mesa to the
Tech Area. On the way, he saw another scientist sitting in a jeep parked beneath the Los Alamos water tower. His face was
exuberant. He was as exhilarated as a victorious boxer. He called to Teller excitedly: “One down!” Teller did not know what
he meant, and walked on toward the Tech Area. There he heard the news. But word of the Hiroshima bombing created no exuberance,
no exhilaration, no elation in Teller that afternoon. Instead, he felt worried, concerned, and anxious. A new force was loose
in the world. What this new force would do, Teller could not guess.

When Oppenheimer had returned to Los Alamos after Trinity, he had found Teller’s latest report on superbomb research waiting
on his desk. Calculations suggested that a thermonuclear reaction could indeed be triggered by an atomic bomb. On the afternoon
of Hiroshima, Oppenheimer went to Teller’s office for a long and private talk. He made it clear to Teller that he, personally,
would have nothing further to do with research on a superbomb. If he had his way, Oppenheimer added, Los Alamos would never
develop such a weapon.
¹⁸
But even in that case, he was solicitous of Teller’s well-being. He did not simply inform Teller of his opinion; he did his
best to persuade him that abandoning work on a superbomb was the wisest course.

When news of Hiroshima reached Szilard at the University of Chicago’s faculty club on the afternoon of August sixth, he reacted
with anger, sadness, and horror. His first stop after he heard the news was University President Robert Maynard Hutchins’s
office, where he proposed that the Met Lab staff wear black mourning bands on their arms. Hutchins suggested that Szilard
find some less provocative way for them to express their anguish.
¹⁹
That evening Szilard poured out his guilt and regret in a letter to his beloved Trude:

I suppose you have seen today’s newspapers. Using atomic bombs against Japan is one of the greatest blunders of history. Both
from a practical point of view on a 10-year scale and from the point of view of our moral position. I went out of my way (and
very much so) in order to prevent it, but as today’s papers show, without success. It is very difficult to see what wise course
of action is possible from here on.
²⁰

“I always thought it was his way of apologizing,” Trude said after Leo’s death. “It was one of the most important letters
he ever wrote to me.”
²¹

Compton was in his office at the University of Chicago when news of Hiroshima flashed over the radio. He called together the
scientists of the Met Lab, and told them what details he knew. It was a tough audience. Compton expressed his regret for the
enormous human suffering caused by the bomb, and accepted his share of responsibility for the decision to drop it. To an acquaintance
who decried the atomic attacks, Compton responded, “I favored the use of the bomb, substantially as it was used, and believe
now that this was wise.” Yet he obliquely acknowledged moral qualms, arguing that the atomic bombing was no worse than the
firebombing of Tokyo that had erased any distinction between combatants and noncombatants. The atomic bomb’s chief difference,
he asserted, “was the psychological effect of its surprise use. It was of about the same destructiveness as a raid by a fleet
of B-29s using ordinary bombs.” “I say that before God our consciences are clear,” Compton declared, somewhat plaintively.
“We made the best choice for man’s future that we knew how to make.”
²²

That night, Oppenheimer called a general meeting in the Tech Area auditorium. He entered at the rear—not from the side, as
was his custom—and made his way up the center aisle amid whistling, cheering, and foot stomping. Once onstage, Oppenheimer
pumped his clasped hands above his head like a triumphant prizefighter. When the roar subsided, he read from a message flashed
from the B-29 after the drop. There was no hint of regret in his words—no trace of the ambivalence and guilt the private Oppenheimer
had expressed to Groves and Teller. The public Oppenheimer played unashamedly to the crowd. A young physicist in the audience
that night remembered him strutting in triumph:

It was too early to determine what the results of the bombing might have been, but he was sure that the Japanese didn’t like
it. More cheering. He was proud, and he showed it, of what he had accomplished. Even more cheering. And his only regret was
that we hadn’t developed the bomb in time to have used it against the Germans. This practically raised the roof.
²³

As the days passed, Oppenheimer grew depressed as what had really happened started to sink in. To one observer, he seemed
“a nervous wreck.”
²⁴
Many physicists shared the moral burden of building such a destructive weapon, but Oppenheimer had been given an opportunity
to advise “No”; he could not deny that the death of Hiroshima’s inhabitants was partly his responsibility. When news of Nagasaki
reached him on August ninth, he released this statement to the press on behalf of his lab:

We have believed that the use of this weapon in the war against Japan might help to shorten the war and be a benefit to the
world for that reason alone; but above all we have thought that this rather spectacular technical development, and the assured
prospect of far more terrifying future developments, would force upon the people of this country, and all the war-weary people
of the world, a recognition of how imperative it has become to avert wars in the future; how the cooperation and understanding
between nations which has seemed desirable for so long has become a desperate necessity….
²⁵

Szilard immediately asked the chaplain of the University of Chicago to include a prayer for the Japanese casualties of the
two devastated cities in any memorial service commemorating the end of the war. He offered to relay the prayer to the survivors
personally.
²⁶
He then sat down and drafted another petition to President Truman, calling the atomic bombings “a flagrant violation of our
own moral standards” and asking that they be stopped. The Japanese surrender on August fourteenth mooted the issue and Szilard
never sent his petition. When he tried to publish his first petition to President Truman in
Science
magazine later that month, Groves ordered it classified “secret” and explicitly forbade Szilard from publishing the second
petition anywhere, threatening to imprison him if he did.

August 6, 1945, had found Bohr in London, awaiting return to his native Denmark. News of Hiroshima had provoked Bohr to speak
out and give citizens of the world an understanding of the revolutionary issues involved and some way to deal with them. He
wrote a letter to the
London Times
which appeared on August eleventh under a two-column headline: “Science and Civilization.” It was Bohr’s first public statement
about the need for a more open world:

The formidable power of destruction which has come within reach of man may become a mortal menace unless human society can
adjust itself to the exigencies of the situation. Civilization is presented with a challenge more serious perhaps than ever
before…. Against the new destructive powers no defense may be possible [and] no control can be effective without international
supervision of all undertakings which unless regulated might become a source of disaster.

Such measures will demand the abolition of barriers hitherto considered necessary to safeguard national interests but now
standing in the way of the common security against unprecedented danger. Certainly the handling of the precarious situation
will demand the good will of all nations, but it must be recognized that we are dealing with what is potentially a deadly
challenge to civilization itself.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki hit home for Bethe when photographs of the devastated cities arrived at Los Alamos by special courier
several days later. Although Bethe had witnessed the Trinity test and had calculated the effect of an atomic blast over an
urban area, he was unprepared emotionally for what he saw when he looked at the grim pictures. “The total destruction, the
total leveling of a wide area was really very shocking,” Bethe said with considerable emotion many years later. “It really
came to mind when I saw the pictures.”
²⁷

Lawrence learned of Hiroshima while listening to the radio in his living room. He sensed this meant the end of Japan’s resistance
and looked toward the future. “Now we will have no more war and the most backward countries will be able to start catching
up,” he told his wife, Molly.
²⁸
On the day Nagasaki was bombed, Lawrence received a phone call from an agitated physicist who condemned the targeting of
Japanese civilians and feared the bombings’ effect on the reputation of science. The physicist wrote Lawrence later that day:

Many people, including some who are prominent and influential, think that science does more harm than good to humanity. Some
of these, and some who think oppositely, contend that scientists ought to control the applications of their discoveries, though
I for one cannot imagine how they could exercise any control. Some people go so far as to blame scientists for the consequences
of their discoveries. I think that it is not far-fetched nor absurd to conjecture that in time to come, people will be saying,
“Those wicked physicists of the ‘Manhattan Project’ deliberately developed a bomb which they knew would be used for killing
thousands of innocent people without any warning, and they either wanted this outcome or at least condoned it. Away with physicists!”
It will not be accepted as an excuse that they may have disapproved in silence. We do not excuse the German civilians who
accepted Buchenwald while possibly disapproving in silence.
²⁹

Lawrence responded that same day:

In view of the fact that two bombs ended the war, I am inclined to feel that they made the right decision. Surely many more
lives were saved by shortening the war than were sacrificed as a result of the bombs. Further, it goes without saying that
all of us hope and pray that there will never be an occasion to use another one. The world must realize that there can never
be another war.

As regards criticism of science and scientists, I think that is a cross we will have to bear, and I think in the long run
the good sense of everyone the world over will realize that in this instance, as in all scientific pursuits, the world is
better as a result.
³⁰

A short time later Lawrence left Berkeley for Los Alamos, partly to escape reporters clamoring for comment and partly to work
with Oppenheimer on a report on postwar atomic efforts. Lawrence reacted impatiently to Oppenheimer’s developing remorse.
He felt little of Oppenheimer’s soul-searching guilt. Although Lawrence had initially believed that the bomb would never be
used against people and then had been one of the last members of the Scientific Advisory Panel to abandon the idea of a demonstration,
he now thought of the bomb as a terrible swift sword that had forced Japan’s surrender. Publicly, Lawrence confidently declared
that “the harnessing of atomic energy in a weapon of war will come to be regarded in the future not as a mark of the doom
of mankind, but rather as a first step in man’s conquest of a new realm of the universe for his own betterment and welfare.”
³¹

Cool and controlled as always, Fermi did not comment publicly. When Japan surrendered on August fourteenth, residents of Los
Alamos came out the next day to celebrate the end of the war. Fermi joined in the celebration, but he never once mentioned
Hiroshima or Nagasaki in conversations with close friends that day. Fermi remained characteristically mum about his reaction
to the bombing, even when his sister Maria, writing from Italy, reported that “All [here] are perplexed and appalled by its
dreadful effects, and with time the bewilderment increases rather than diminishes. For my part I recommend you to God, Who
alone can judge you morally.”
³²

Fermi had, however, discussed the bomb privately with Oppenheimer. The two had concluded before Hiroshima that nothing could
be done to control the bomb after the war if the American people did not even know that it existed, much less how much destruction
it could inflict. Fermi and Oppenheimer believed that only its use would breach the wall of secrecy, and do the sort of shocking
and horrific damage that might end war altogether.

Having witnessed the Trinity test, Rabi had understood the appalling damage the bomb would do to cities. A sensitive and moral
man who had expressed misgivings to Oppenheimer early on in the project about making a weapon of mass destruction, Rabi had
learned a “frightening thing” in the course of the war: “how easy it is to kill people when you turn your mind to it.” “When
you turn the resources of modern science to the problem of killing people,” Rabi later wrote of his feelings in August 1945,
“you realize how vulnerable they really are.”
³³

Pollsters reported that the American public backed the use of the atomic bombs against Japan overwhelmingly because it—along
with the Soviet Union’s entrance into the conflict—brought the Pacific War to a speedy end. To those who cheered at the time
(and they were the vast majority)—that was what mattered most. As Winston Churchill later wrote: “To avert a vast, indefinite
butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation
of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.”
³⁴

Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the culmination of a willingness on the part of American policy makers in World War II to tolerate
the killing of noncombatants in the pursuit of victory. And of course the war against Japan had acquired such terrible momentum
by the summer of 1945 that there was very little argument against waging war in any way, including in a new and terrible way:
using a weapon of mass destruction on civilians in undefended cities. It was a bloody sort of progress: by inflicting suffering,
the atomic bomb ended the suffering caused by firebombings and starvation blockades, and it obviated the ghastly specter of
a U.S. invasion of the Japanese home islands.