by A. J. Baime
At the time of this June 18 conference, Manhattan Project scientists at Los Alamos in New Mexico were straining to meet the July 4 deadline for the first test of an atomic bomb. The scientists had instructions to prove that a bomb could work before Truman left the country to sit at the bargaining table with Stalin and Churchill at the upcoming tripartite meeting in the Potsdam suburb of Berlin. As Oppenheimer later told an interviewer, “We were told that it would be very important—I was told I guess by Mr. Stimson—that it would be very important to know the state of affairs before the meeting at Potsdam at which the future conduct of the war in the Far East would be decided.”
By June 1945, Oppenheimer’s secret laboratory in the New Mexico desert had become a full-blown town. The pace of the work was astounding, especially to the men performing it daily. In March 1943, “Oppie” (as most people at Los Alamos called him) had arrived with the first members of his research team. Now, barely more than two years later, about 4,000 people were living at Los Alamos in some 300 newly constructed apartment buildings, some 50 dormitories and 200 trailers. The residents had their own radio station and their own Los Alamos town council.
Throughout the existence of the Manhattan Project, these scientists and military men worked according to a simple ideology. As put by Oppenheimer: “Almost everyone knew that if [the bomb] were completed successfully and rapidly enough, it might determine the outcome of the war.” Now that the first test was near, however, many of these figures had begun to confront an ambivalence over the morality of their work. Some scientists at Los Alamos had begun hosting meetings to discuss their fears about the effects this bomb would have on Japan and what it would mean for the future of humanity, but Oppenheimer did not approve. That was the work of politicians, he said. Their work was to build a weapon that would end the war. It was only a matter of time, however, before the voice of dissenting scientists demanded to be heard.
On June 11, James Franck—a Nobel laureate—produced a petition signed by seven Manhattan Project scientists in Chicago. Franck attempted to place this document in the hands of the secretary of war. “We feel compelled to take a more active stand now because the success which we have achieved in the development of nuclear power is fraught with infinitely greater dangers than were all the inventions of the past,” the petition read. The scientists determined that there was no hope of avoiding “a nuclear armament race” among nations in the future, particularly with the USSR. Just because the bomb was being born, these scientists believed, did not mandate that it should be used against human targets. The petition pointed out that the United States had “large accumulations of poison gas, but not use them.”
Ultimately, the petition called for “a demonstration of the new weapon . . . before the eyes of representatives of all the United Nations, on [a] desert or a barren island.”
This petition was signed seven days before Truman’s June 18 meeting with his Chiefs of Staff and war cabinet, on the planning of the Japanese invasion. The president was never made aware of it at the time. He was, however, almost certainly made aware of another document, dated June 16: the findings of Robert Oppenheimer’s Scientific Advisory Committee, formed to allow the Manhattan Project scientists to voice an opinion on what should be done with their work. Oppenheimer summed up the findings as follows:
The opinions of our scientific colleagues on the initial use of these weapons are not unanimous; they range from the proposal of a purely technical demonstration to that of the military application best designed to induce surrender. Those who advocate a purely technical demonstration would wish to outlaw the use of atomic weapons, and have feared that if we use the weapons now our position in future negotiations will be prejudiced. Others emphasize the opportunity of saving American lives by immediate military use . . . We [Oppenheimer’s Scientific Advisory Committee] find ourselves closer to these latter views; we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.
On the same afternoon as Truman’s meeting with his military advisors on Japan (June 18), General Eisenhower made his triumphant return to Washington. Roughly a million people lined the streets to praise Eisenhower—“definitely the biggest crowd in the capital’s history,” according to the city’s police department. Here was “Iron Ike,” who had led Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa in the fall of 1942; who had commanded the 1944 D-day invasion of Normandy; who had served as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe. When he marched down the aisle in the House Chamber to the speaking platform, a who’s who of political and military power was there to see him: the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Supreme Court justices, senators, congressmen, diplomats, Mrs. Mamie Eisenhower, everyone but Harry Truman, who chose not to appear, to give Eisenhower all the spotlight. The Washington News called Eisenhower’s roaring reception Congress’s “greatest ovation in 25 years.”
At the speaker’s podium, the general “looked nervous and embarrassed and rather like the high school valedictorian just prior to his speech,” recorded one reporter in the crowd. When Eisenhower began his remarks, many in the crowd believed that they were listening to a speech from the next president of the United States.
That night Truman hosted Eisenhower at the White House for a “stag party.” More than a hundred guests attended. Eisenhower was “a real man,” in Truman’s words, and the president enjoyed himself immensely. The Marine Band Orchestra delivered all the White House favorites. Truman escorted Eisenhower into the State Dining Room, where the formality of place cards was omitted. Eisenhower brought his son John with him, who had graduated from West Point on June 6, 1944—D-day—and had then joined his father on the beaches of Normandy. The day after Eisenhower’s White House fete, Truman wrote Bess: “Eisenhower’s party was a grand success . . . He is a nice fellow and a good man. He’s done a whale of a job. They are running him for President, which is O.K. with me. I’d turn it over to him now if I could.”
The timing of Eisenhower’s return to Washington was fortuitous, for the day after his speech at the Capitol, word came from the Far East that Okinawa had fallen. Truman received a communiqué from a naval aide on June 19: “Okinawa: It is officially stated that the enemy resistance was broken today. A breakthrough was made in two places. The enemy is being pushed off the southern end of the island. Mopping up is under way.” One of the most bitterly fought battles of all time was ending. Officially, the Allies would not declare the victory until June 22. Churchill sent Truman a heartfelt congratulatory cable that summed up this historic battle succinctly: “The strength of will-power, devotion, and technical resources applied by the United States to this task, joined with the death-struggle of the enemy, of whom 90,000 are reported to be killed, places this battle among the most intense and famous in military history.”
Even before the final shot was fired, nearly 100,000 military engineers and construction workers began turning the island of Okinawa into a sprawling staging area with airfields and living quarters for hundreds of thousands of soldiers, in preparation for the November 1 invasion of Japan.
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AT 8 A.M. ON JUNE 19, the morning after Eisenhower’s party at the White House, the president’s motorcade pulled onto the tarmac at an airfield outside Washington. The crew of the Sacred Cow was readying the aircraft in anticipation of a long flight due west, with Truman aboard. Eisenhower showed up to see Truman off (“I didn’t know you could get up this early in the morning, Ike,” Truman joked). It was Truman’s first jaunt aboard this Douglas VC-54C. He had logged his share of flight miles over the years, but he had never flown like this.
The Sacred Cow’s unpressurized cabin had an executive conference room with a big desk located next to a bulletproof window. There was an electric refrigerator in the galley and a fold-down bed; the president had his own private lavatory too. The aircraft’s four Pratt & Whitney engines produced close to 3,000 horsepower, and a sensational amount of noise and vibration.
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Truman’s flight to Tacoma, Washington, was set to land at 5:40 p.m. He planned to visit the state’s capital, Olympia, for a few days’ rest as the guest of an old friend, Governor Monrad Wallgren, who as a senator had served on the Truman Committee. Then the president was scheduled to continue on to San Francisco to address the delegations of fifty nations at the closing ceremonies of the United Nations Conference.
That morning the Washington Post made for good airplane reading. Drew Pearson’s Washington gossip column—“Washington Merry-Go-Round”—was all about the president. “Harry Truman has now been President of the United States for a little over two months—two of the most historic months in the nation’s history,” the column began. There was a new atmosphere in the White House that could be summed up in a word: businesslike. “Truman gives the impression of having a firm grasp on all domestic problems,” Pearson wrote. “He knows them thoroughly—undoubtedly better than Franklin Roosevelt during his latter years, when he was devoting all his time to the war . . . One thing that worries [Truman] most is our foreign affairs. The new President frankly realizes it is his main weakness.”
The Sacred Cow touched down at McChord Field three minutes early (the Washington-to-Tacoma flight took twelve hours and sixteen minutes nonstop). By that time, two other planes had landed at this same airfield—one carrying the White House press corps, the other secret service. Truman stepped out onto the tarmac, where Governor Wallgren and his wife awaited.
“Hello, Harry,” the governor said, offering his hand.
“It sure is swell for you and Mrs. Wallgren to meet me here,” Truman said.
They climbed into an open car and a motorcade cruised through Washington’s capital city, both sides of Olympia’s streets lined with swelling crowds on tippy-toes, straining to catch sight of the new president. The crowds formed “a human lane up the main street,” as one reporter put it. Never had Truman imagined a moment like this one, to be the focal point in such an ebullient celebration of presidential iconography and Americanism. And this western trip was just getting started.
His next few days would enable him to at least attempt to relax; he had but one official appointment, to present a congressional Medal of Honor to a soldier wounded while fighting with General Patton’s Third Army. Truman and Wallgren went fishing. They hiked around Mount Rainier, where the thinness of the air from the high elevation took the president’s breath away. Secret service allowed Truman to drive a car, something he truly enjoyed, and that felt like a grand luxury now. Each morning the press met with Charlie Ross at Governor Wallgren’s mansion, hunting for a story, but there was little Ross could report. Instead, Ross waxed humorously between cigarette puffs about the delicious breakfasts the president and his party were having, knowing that the newsmen were forced to eat Spam, due to rationing.
Behind the scenes the business of running the nation continued. Truman signed bills and issued executive orders. He nominated twelve army officers for three-star general promotions, including Nathan Farragut Twining, a future chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The planning of the Big Three meeting was moving along, cables discussing the details dashing back and forth between continents at electronic speed.
At 9 a.m. on June 25, Truman took off in the Sacred Cow, landing at an airfield in Marin County just north of San Francisco, in the afternoon. With Secretary of State Stettinius sitting beside him, the president rode through Marin. “The whole countryside seemed somehow influenced by the honor of the occasion in which the president of the United States passed by,” Stettinius wrote in his diary. “Suddenly over the shoulder of a hill, there was a view of the mystic white city across the bay—San Francisco, with just a soft touch of sunlight upon it.”
Crossing the Golden Gate, Truman saw a giant WELCOME sign fastened to the bridge’s towering red spires. In the city there was pandemonium; half a million people were out in the streets. “The whole city was all keyed up with excitement,” recalled Henry Reiff of the U.S. delegation to the UN. “Flags flying, crowds gathered about the Hotel Fairmont waiting to catch a glimpse of the president. My, what excitement all over the place!”
Truman must have thought of Woodrow Wilson’s heralded arrival in Paris after World War I, for the League of Nations Conference. Congress had failed to approve the League of Nations treaty, but this time the story would be different. Certainly public opinion was all for the UN. According to the American Institute of Public Opinion, over 80 percent of Americans believed the United States should join this “world organization with police power to maintain world peace.”
At the Fairmont, someone leaned over to Truman and said, “What a tribute this has been to you,” referring to the city’s wild excitement.
“It’s what we stand for—the United States,” Truman said. “They were cheering the office, not the man.”
That afternoon, behind closed doors, Truman had a private talk with Edward Stettinius. Truman had sent ahead a messenger, George Allen of the Democratic National Committee, to inform Stettinius that he would be replaced by Jimmy Byrnes as secretary of state. Stettinius was out, and he could not hide his disappointment. At this triumphant moment for the United Nations—which Stettinius could claim as a great personal victory—he was a wounded man. Truman was appointing him the first U.S. representative to the UN.
“Well, you certainly have done a grand job out here,” Truman said, steadying himself with an old-fashioned. “Are you satisfied with what I am planning?” he asked, referring to Stettinius’s new job.
“We can have a leisurely talk tomorrow,” Stettinius said in between sips of a martini.
“You have got to be satisfied,” Truman said earnestly. “I want you to be.” He promised Stettinius that, with the aid of Charlie Ross, they could spin the move to make it look like somewhat of a promotion for Stettinius. “Don’t you have full confidence in Charlie Ross? Don’t you trust him?”
Stettinius said, “First I want you to know that I respect you and I think you are a straight shooter.” But then: “Mr. President, do you really believe that you can do this thing and put Byrnes in without its appearing publicly like a kick in the pants for me?”
“I sincerely believe it can be done that way,” Truman said.
The following day, Truman, Stettinius, and the other members of the U.S. delegation entered the War Memorial Veterans Building for the signing of the United Nations Charter. The charter itself was laid on a circular table surrounded by the flags of fifty nations, which represented over 80 percent of the world’s population. The charter was five hulking tomes, facsimiles in five languages—English, Russian, French, Chinese, and Spanish. The logistical challenges of creating this document were staggering; a staff of 135 translators had worked around the clock in seven-hour shifts for days, on twenty electric reproduction machines.
Stettinius signed the charter, then Senators Tom Connally and Arthur Vandenberg signed as the two other ranking members of the U.S. delegation. It took hours for all fifty nations to sign, and even then the United Nations had not yet been born, from the point of view of the Americans. The charter would be flown back to Washington, where the Senate would have to vote on it.
As it now stood, the UN consisted of a fifty-nation General Assembly, an eleven-nation Security Council (which would serve as the most powerful peace enforcement agency in the world), an eighteen-nation Economic and Social Council, plus smaller agencies such as a Trusteeship Council and an International Court of Justice. It was, in the words of one reporter covering the conference, “an omen of great hope.” After the signing, the delegations settled in to hear the keynote speaker. Every seat was full when Harry Truman stepped up to the rostrum to address the crowd.
“The Charter of the United Nations,” he said, “which you have just signed, is a solid structure upon which we can build a better world. History will honor you for it. Between the victory in Europe and the final victory in Japan, in this most destructive of all wars, you have won a victory against war itself.�
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There were some Battery D boys in the audience that night, personal guests of the president. Many noticed the strange absence of Bess Truman in the crowd. Truman’s speech was well written by all regards, but he had never mastered the art of public speaking. When he delivered his climactic sentence, he shook his hands in the air awkwardly. The United Nations was being born, he said, for one major purpose: “to find a way to end war!”
At the close of ceremonies, Truman looked forward to laying his head on his pillow in a quiet room at the Fairmont. The English version of the United Nations Charter, with all its signatures, was couriered by a special messenger to an army plane for transport back to Washington. The special messenger’s name was Alger Hiss, a member of the United States delegation to the UN Conference who would later, in 1948, be accused of spying for the Soviet Union, and would be convicted in 1950 of perjury due to this charge. At the time, however, Hiss was an official entrusted with the delivery of this charter. On the airplane, the UN Charter sat inside a locked safe with its own parachute in case of emergency. The safe bore a sign that read, FINDER! DO NOT OPEN. SEND TO THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON.
The day after the closing ceremony, Truman boarded the Sacred Cow again for a flight to Kansas City, where he was about to experience the homecoming of a lifetime.
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The biggest crowds in the history of Jackson County turned out to meet the president when he arrived home in Missouri. His flight landed at 1:28 p.m. on June 27 at Fairfax Field outside Kansas City, Kansas. As soon as the gangway was in place, Margaret Truman ran inside the airplane to hug her father. Bess remained at home, far from the popping camera bulbs. When Truman stepped out of the Sacred Cow, his old friend Roger Sermon—the mayor of Independence—stepped forward.
“By jove, look who’s here,” Truman said. “Hi, Roger, how are you?”