The Apocalypse Factory

by Steve Olson

  On August 15, The Richland Villager released another two-page special edition with the headline filling half the front page: “Peace! Our Bomb Clinched It!” The message of surrender Emperor Hirohito had broadcast to the Japanese people just a few hours earlier seemed to confirm the newspaper’s conclusion:

  The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.

  The vast majority of Americans supported dropping atomic bombs on Japan. When a sample of Americans were asked later in the fall which of four statements best captured their opinion about the bombings, the majority agreed that the United States should have used atomic bombs on two cities, just as it did. Nearly a quarter were even more aggressive, agreeing with the statement that “we should have quickly used many more of the bombs before Japan had a chance to surrender.” Less than 20 percent thought that atomic bombs should not have been used or should have been demonstrated on an unpopulated region. Fear and hatred of the Japanese, stoked by news stories and propaganda since the attack on Pearl Harbor, were widespread in the United States. Newspaper stories, radio commentaries, and newsreels had documented the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers across Asia, including the torture and mutilation of prisoners and the rapes and killings of civilians. Almost 100,000 Americans died in combat in the Pacific theater during World War II, and many families feared for their loved ones if US troops would have to invade mainland Japan to end the war. Emperor Hirohito’s announcement that Japan had surrendered was greeted with widespread celebration and relief.

  Yet from the earliest days, some people began to ask a question that has been debated ever since: Were the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary to force Japan’s surrender? The fact that the surrender came just six days after the Nagasaki bombing seems to clinch the case. But many other things were going on toward the end of the war. Because of the naval blockade and aerial bombardment of industry and railroads, the Japanese economy was on the verge of collapse, with severe shortages of food, fuel, and industrial materials. Truman and his aides knew that top Japanese officials were searching for ways to surrender, though the empire’s military leaders were vowing to wage a final battle against an invading army. Many US military commanders and soldiers thought that an invasion of Japan would be necessary, but they did not know how close Japan was to defeat or that atomic bombs existed. The entry of the Soviet Union into the war on August 8 forced the Japanese leaders to recognize that their position was hopeless. The advent of atomic bombs gave them an excuse to surrender, even though they initially made little distinction between the use of atomic or incendiary weapons. Groves’s single-minded determination to finish and use the bombs, combined with scientists’ fascination with the technology, gave the project a momentum that was hard to reverse. Meanwhile, Truman and his future secretary of state, Jimmy Byrnes, were eager not only to end the war as soon as possible but also to demonstrate the power of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, which they clearly saw as a future adversary.

  The scholarship on what one historian has called “the most controversial issue in all of American history” is vast, and the question of whether the bombings could have been avoided will never be answered definitively. The consensus view of most though not all historians who have studied the issue is that an invasion of Japan probably would not have been necessary to end the war, even if atomic bombs were not ready to drop on Japan in August 1945. But most Americans believe something quite different. Partly because of a postwar public relations campaign carried out by the public officials involved in the decision, Americans largely think that Truman faced a stark choice between atomic bombs and an invasion. That is not true, and it obscures the many factors in play in the summer of 1945. At the same time, a path by which the US government would not have used atomic bombs when they became available is difficult to envision. Whether dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary will always remain one of the great “what ifs” of human history.

  Yet the decision left one undeniable legacy. The idea that the atomic bombs were necessary to end World War II helped create a conviction that nuclear weapons could serve a useful purpose in warfare. They could win a war that threatened American lives and American interests. Granted, that victory could come only at the price of enormous destruction and moral anguish. But if all else failed, nuclear weapons were the ultimate fallback. The United States has never renounced the first use of nuclear weapons, even if their use risks the end of human civilization. Would that be the US stance if Americans did not so forcefully believe that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to end World War II?

  THE MAN WHO DISCOVERED plutonium less than five years before it fueled the Nagasaki bomb was largely excluded from the official deliberations on its use. Glenn Seaborg had been a member of the Franck committee and also had written a letter to Ernest Lawrence arguing “not to use the weapon on Japan without warning but to demonstrate the weapon in the presence of all leading countries including Japan.” However, he never renounced the subsequent bombing of Japan. “I understand and do not quarrel with Truman’s decision to use the bomb on Hiroshima (though I’m not convinced that the follow-up bombing of Nagasaki was necessary),” he later wrote. He agreed with the Scientific Advisory Panel that the Japanese might have interfered with a demonstration or that the failure of a bomb might have emboldened the Japanese. And, as with many other Manhattan Project scientists, he had personal connections to the war. “Some of my cousins whom I’d grown up with in South Gate were stationed in the Pacific islands, preparing for the invasion of Japan, which they were certain would be necessary to force Japan’s surrender. . . . For years after the war, at family reunions they made a point of thanking me for my work—they were convinced that the bomb saved their lives. That gave our achievement personal meaning.”

  Among the other scientists who designed and built the atomic bombs, reactions to the bombings were varied. Three hours after President Truman’s announcement about Hiroshima, Groves called Oppenheimer in Los Alamos. “I’m proud of you and all your people,” he said.

  “It went all right?” Oppenheimer asked.

  “Apparently it went with a tremendous bang.”

  “Everybody is feeling reasonably good about it,” Oppenheimer said. “I extend my heartiest congratulations. It’s been a long road.”

  That evening, Oppenheimer spoke in a Los Alamos auditorium before a cheering crowd of scientists, soldiers, and support staff. At one point, according to a young physicist who was there, he clasped his hands, raised them over his head, and shook them like a prizefighter. He said that he was proud of what they had accomplished together. His only regret was that they had not built atomic bombs in time to use them against the Germans.

  But the mood at Los Alamos quickly darkened. When reports from Hiroshima and Nagasaki began to filter back to the plateau, Oppenheimer and many of his colleagues became increasingly depressed. “As the days passed,” the historian Alice Kimball Smith later wrote, “the revulsion grew, bringing with it—even for those who believed that the end of the war justified the bombing—an intensely personal experience of the reality of evil.”

  The news of the Nagasaki bombing just three days after Hiroshima, before the Japanese leaders had a chance to fully assess the damage and their options, was especially troubling. Like Seaborg, other Manhattan Project scientists expressed doubts about the second bombing, even if they supported the first. Physicist Samuel Allison, who had called out the countdown for the Trinity test, said a few weeks later, “When the second bomb was released, we felt it was a great tragedy.”

  All the members of the Scientific Advisory Panel, not just Oppenheimer, struggled with their feelings. Outwardly, Arthur Compton, the chair of the National
Academy of Sciences committee that had recommended going forward with the project, did not betray ambivalence about the bombings, despite his religious convictions. “Before God our consciences are clear,” he later wrote to a friend. “We made the best choice for man’s future that we knew how to make.” Yet he obviously dwelled on the issue after the war and addressed it at length in his 1956 book Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative. In a section entitled “Choice,” he reiterated the various reasons for dropping atomic bombs cited by political leaders after the war—use of the bombs could prevent an invasion of the Japanese homeland, they would make it possible for the Japanese to surrender with honor, the bombing of Nagasaki sent a message that the United States would continue to use atomic bombs if necessary. But the confusion of a critical paragraph in an otherwise cogently argued book may hint at an underlying ambivalence: “We recognized that victory was necessary if the danger of subsequent Japanese aggression was to be eliminated. The one and only compelling motive for our use of the bomb was to bring a stop to the killing needed to achieve such victory.”

  Ernest Lawrence, whose discovery of the cyclotron had greatly accelerated the pace of nuclear research in the 1930s, found solace in the idea that nuclear weapons would make war obsolete. “As regards criticism of physicists and scientists, I think that is a cross we will have to bear,” he wrote a friend. “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.” Yet he also feared an arms race and believed that the United States must stay ahead of all other nations by quickly developing and stockpiling atomic weapons—an activity he pursued intensely after the war.

  Enrico Fermi, whose discoveries contributed more to the Manhattan Project than those of any other scientist, said hardly anything after the war about the bombings. He had learned in Italy not to comment publicly on political matters. But he still had strong ties to the Chicago scientists and heard from them often. He also heard from people outside the United States who had a different perspective than most Americans. From Italy his sister wrote of the bomb: “All [here] are perplexed and bewildered by its dreadful effects, and with time the bewilderment increases. . . . For my part I recommend you to God, Who alone can judge you morally.” Not until years later did Fermi reveal a bit of his thinking about the development of ever more powerful weapons, and even then with his usual whimsy: “I expect to sleep as well as my insomnia permits. I am a fatalist by nature anyway.”

  As might be expected, Groves never publicly expressed any hesitancy or regret about how the atomic bombs he had built were used. Shortly after the war, he said, “I have no qualms of conscience about the making or using of it. It has been responsible for saving perhaps thousands of lives. If the bomb had not been used the Japs would have held out for 60 to 90 days longer. We knew what that would mean in the sacrifice of human lives.” Only one slight hint has ever emerged that Groves might have questioned the bombing of Nagasaki—and even then his concerns seem mostly tactical rather than humanitarian. Many years later, Alvin Weinberg, a physicist who helped design the Hanford reactors, told an interviewer: “I don’t think the second bomb, the Nagasaki bomb, was necessary. No, that was strictly General Groves. In fact, I was drinking whiskey with Groves one night in a hotel bar in New York after the war and he more or less agreed the second bomb was not needed. He didn’t say why. Groves was first of all a military man.”

  Nor did Truman ever publicly express any regrets about his role in dropping the atomic bombs, going so far as to say that he “never lost any sleep over that decision.” But Truman was also a highly religious man, and it seems unlikely that he closed his heart entirely to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the rest of his life, he wildly exaggerated the number of US soldiers his military officers thought could die in an invasion of Japan, citing figures as high as half a million American lives. After his death, a researcher discovered that Truman had collected many of the books written about atomic bombs in his library. In one of them, he had underlined portions of Horatio’s soliloquy from Hamlet:

  Let me speak to th’ yet-unknowing world

  How these things came about. So shall you hear

  Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,

  Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters

  Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause.

  And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

  Fall’n on the inventors’ heads.

  THE CHEMISTS, PHYSICISTS, METALLURGISTS, and others at the Met Lab in Chicago heard about the bombings the same way other people did—on the radio, through breathless phone calls, in agitated workplace conversations. But they knew better than most what the development of atomic bombs meant for the United States. “In the summer of 1945,” wrote Eugene Rabinowitch, who had been on the Franck committee with Seaborg and Szilard, “some of us walked the streets of Chicago vividly imagining the sky suddenly lit by a giant fireball, the steel skeletons of skyscrapers bending into grotesque shapes and their masonry raining into the streets below, until a great cloud of dust rose and settled over the crumbling city.”

  The man who had first conceived of how an atomic bomb might work wrote a friend that he considered their use against Japan “one of the greatest blunders of history.” Now Szilard set about trying to repair the blunder. He and his colleagues were hampered in what they could say and write because of the secrecy provisions imposed by Groves, who even classified Szilard’s petition to Truman secret when Szilard sought to release it in Science magazine. But gradually they began to find sympathetic editors, journalists, and congressmen they could lobby. He and his colleagues in Chicago and elsewhere were determined to do what they could to shape the postwar uses of the bomb, even if they had failed during the war.

  They based their activism on three premises evident in their earlier writing. First, other nations would soon develop atomic weapons. The Manhattan Project scientists knew their European counterparts from before the war. They understood that the Soviet Union had scientists and engineers who were just as good as those in America. Russian scientists and engineers would not take much longer to construct a bomb than the Manhattan Project had.

  Second, no defense against atomic weapons was possible. They were sufficiently small to be smuggled into any nation, and a single bomb could destroy a city. Furthermore, the Germans had demonstrated, with their V-2 rockets, that explosives could be lofted from one nation to another. The combination of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons would be unstoppable. Perhaps a defensive system would someday be able to intercept some of the missiles, but the rest would get through.

  Third, the only way to protect nations from the terror of nuclear weapons was through some form of international cooperation. Perhaps an international agency under the United Nations, created earlier that year in San Francisco, could control the materials needed to make atomic bombs. Or maybe the United States and other countries could open their laboratories and factories to international inspectors who could ensure that bombs were not being made. It was even conceivable that some sort of world government could take over some of the governmental functions previously conducted by national governments, including anything connected to atomic bombs or nuclear energy. Regardless of the approach taken, some sort of international collaboration and control was essential, the Chicago scientists believed. Otherwise, the outcome was obvious. The nations of the world would begin building and stockpiling nuclear weapons for use against their enemies. And as the number of nuclear weapons in the world grew, some of them eventually would be used.

  Activist scientists needed an organization to marshal their efforts. On September 25, what would soon be known as the Atomic Scientists of Chicago—which later expanded into the Federation of Atomic Scientists and then the Federation of American Scientists—elected a seven-member executive committee that included Szilard, Seaborg, and two other members of the Franck committee. Oak Ridge and Los Alamos soon were in the process of fo
rming similar groups, but the Chicago scientists took the lead.

  They didn’t have long to encounter their first major challenge. Now that the war was over, legislation would be needed to govern the control of atomic energy in the United States. At the beginning of October, Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado and Representative Andrew May of Kentucky introduced a bill that would put atomic energy under the control of a nine-member commission. Drafted largely by two lawyers in the War Department with input from Bush, Conant, and others, the bill gave the commission sweeping powers to establish and operate facilities, regulate all forms of nuclear research, and punish those who violated its directives—responsibilities that Groves and the Manhattan Engineer District had had during the war.

  The more the Chicago scientists read of the draft bill, the more alarmed they became. The May-Johnson bill called for commission members to be part-time and appointed by the president. Members of the military could serve on the commission or as its administrator or deputy-administrator, positions that would have great power if the commission members served just part-time. The commission could label any information it wanted secret, with severe penalties, including up to 30 years in jail, for violations of security regulations. The bill did not address the international control or sharing of nuclear information, only restrictions on how that information could be used and disseminated.

  To the Chicago scientists, the intent of the bill was obvious. This was an attempt by Groves and his allies in government to run America’s postwar nuclear program the same way they had run the Manhattan Project—with strict secrecy, compartmentalization, little input from scientists or the public, and as little international cooperation as possible. America’s political and military leaders obviously thought that the United States could monopolize knowledge about atomic weapons, or at least stay comfortably ahead of other nations. The bill was a sure recipe for an international arms race.