109 East Palace

by Jennet Conant

  Phyllis Fisher realized their cocoonlike existence was over when she answered a knock on the door, only to find a traveling salesman smiling back at her. She almost fainted from surprise and then, out of habit, so mercilessly interrogated the poor man about how he had managed to get a temporary pass to the site that she never found out what he had for sale. The sudden change in their status from top secret to world famous was jarring for everyone. People walked around in a state of heightened excitement bordering on hysteria, and the post hospital was overrun with scientists requesting headache cures, sleeping pills, and palliatives for nausea and other stomach ailments. In the end, more medication had to be ordered from Bruns Army Hospital in Santa Fe. It turned out that they had grown used to their odd wartime regimen—to armed guards, security passes, censorship, and the predictable shortages of gas, milk, and eggs. Peace, with all its opportunities and uncertainties, was not without its traumas. Anne Wilson had become so accustomed to their insular little world, populated by the most intelligent and diverting individuals she had ever met, that she was initially reluctant to leave, like a bird that has become too attached to its cage. “I found it nerve-wracking,” she said. “Up there, there was safety within the fence.”

  Many others, however, could not wait to kick up their heels. Oppenheimers secretary, Shirley Barnett, had never thought life on the post had many charms, and it did not take much inducement to convince her it was time to clear out. When she discovered a navy plane was flying to California over Labor Day weekend, she decided a little out-of-town trip would be just the way to celebrate their new liberty. She was in charge of scheduling the flight, so she and Charlotte Serber hitched a ride out to the West Coast. They spent a few days in Pasadena and then went to Los Angeles, where they wound up at a house party at Ira Gershwin’s, at which they heard the famous radio comedian Abe Burrows improvise songs at the piano, including one about the bomb. “We had a wonderful time,” recalled Barnett, “but when we came back, I got a blistering note from Parsons, who was in charge of the plane, saying he had been apprised of the fact that Charlotte and I had gone to Pasadena.” If it had not been for the fact that both their husbands were in Japan, they might not have gotten off with just a slap on the wrist. It later turned out the FBI had tracked their misuse of navy aircraft, and the whole escapade was written up in Oppenheimers FBI file, according to Bob Serber, “as evidence of the kind of untrustworthy people he hung out with.”

  In September, the British embassy sent hearty congratulations and money for a grand celebration in honor of “the Birth of the Atomic Era.” Rudolf Peierls had been awarded the Order of the British Empire for his contribution to the project, and Oppenheimer was to receive America’s highest civilian award, the Medal of Merit, from Truman, so this promised to be the party to end all parties. All the members of the British mission, many of whom were set to leave in a handful of days, pooled their ration points and threw themselves into planning skits spoofing security and the Trinity test, and writing hilarious toasts to guarantee that it would be a memorable evening. Engraved invitations were sent out—a marked improvement over the usual mimeographed sheet—and Fuller Lodge was decorated for the gala occasion with the flags of the two Allied nations. The guests assembled at eight, resplendent in their best approximations of black tie and ball gowns—a few even managed white tie and tails—and bellowed their respective anthems, “God Save the King” followed by “The Star Spangled Banner.” “The women worked all day preparing the feast of pork pie and peach truffle,” recalled Dorothy. “The climax was reached when everyone rose to their feet, brandishing their paper cups, and drank the Kings health with sparkling Burgundy.” After the entertainment was over, there was dancing. As she looked up at the “high table,” where the Peierlses and Oppenheimers were seated in good British boarding-school fashion, and at all the familiar smiling faces around the room, she could not help feeling sad that they would all soon be going their separate ways.

  The exodus, which had begun in the heat of August, had reached truly startling proportions. The main road from Los Alamos to Santa Fe was bumper to bumper with the line of cars and trailers of departing workers. They looked like refugees fleeing the parched, drought-menaced plateau, abandoning the mountain as the Indians had centuries before them. The scores of builders, machinists, engineers, electricians, and other specialists were finally returning to their homes and families. The graduate students and SEDs were also going, eager to get back to school before the start of the winter term. Everyone was packing up and preparing to return to the real world. For the first time in more than two years, they had time to think about the future and make plans. They wanted to put their bomb work behind them and pick up the pieces of their old lives. People talked of university jobs, research fellowships, and possible careers in industry. Most of the senior scientists were on leave and would be returning to their former teaching positions, or had plenty of lucrative new offers, and were helping younger colleagues find places. The grapevine was full of who was going where, when, and with whom.

  The academic recruiting had begun even before the war was over, with representatives from the major universities competing for the top brains at the Manhattan Project, eager to secure their postwar prestige and scientific advances for their institutions. Arthur Compton had already begun talking to Robert Hutchins, the forward-looking president of the University of Chicago, about forming a research institute after the war “to preserve the spirit of Los Alamos.” The basic idea was to keep together some of the laboratory physicists, chemists, engineers, and metallurgists who had enjoyed working together, and form a cooperative endeavor led by Fermi that would allow them to take their developments beyond the narrow and pragmatic purpose of the wartime project.

  By mid-July, it was decided a meeting was necessary between Fermi, and a few of his interested Los Alamos colleagues, and three principals of the university, including Harold Urey. Since, unbeknownst to the university officials, the Trinity test had been completed only days earlier, and no civilians were being allowed up to the classified site, Dorothy gave Fermi permission to use her home for their private conference. No one was to know of the Saturday meeting, and they did not want to be spotted together in town. Dorothy made arrangements for the Chicago party to be picked up at Lamy and taken directly to her home, and then she made herself scarce. Fermi, Sam Allison, and Cyril Smith drove straight from the Hill to her house for the all-day meeting, during which the plans for the three Institutes for Basic Research took shape. “The six men met in Santa Fe, on the terrace of Dorothy McKibbin’s home, on top of a hill with a view of the golden vastness of the desert between the town and the distant mountains,” recalled Laura Fermi. “Over a lunch of sandwiches packed at Fuller Lodge on the mesa the policies for the future institute were discussed.”

  Some of the Los Alamos physicists were adamant they would never again do defense work and were determined to lock themselves in their proverbial ivory towers. Others felt reconciled to the idea that atomic energy was now a reality: its ramifications had to be explored, along with the many new promising areas of research that could benefit society. They argued that it was impossible to stop progress and that the evil lay in the hearts of men and not in scientific discovery. They felt Hiroshima and Nagasaki were proof that the atomic bomb was so destructive that they could now annihilate all mankind, and that nuclear war was therefore no longer a rational means by which countries could settle their differences. After the Potsdam conference, the president had given a radio address in which he had said that what we had done to Japan was “only a small fraction of what would happen to the world in a third world war.” Truman had said the United Nations would work to see that it could never happen again, that “there shall be no next war.” Most of the Los Alamos scientists dearly wanted to believe this was true, and the presidents speech gave them cause for hope.

  There was a growing consensus that the atomic era could not be one of hegemony in the field of atomic weapons, but must be
one of international cooperation and the sharing of knowledge for peaceful purposes. “Hallways, offices, and living rooms teemed with talk,” wrote Alice Smith. “War was now so terrible that effective steps to control it would have to be taken. He [Oppenheimer] recognized the flowering of seeds that he and Niels Bohr had planted even though he had felt duty-bound to discourage organized discussion until the laboratory’s mission was accomplished. Out of his hearing, much of the talk was prefaced by, ‘Oppie says….’”

  The dangers inherent in the new atomic era had come home forcefully to them all after one of the young project scientists was involved in a Tech Area accident and exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. On the night of August 21, Harry Daghlian had been working alone on assembling a mass of uranium 235 when a large twelve-pound chunk of heavy metal slipped out of his fingers and fell on the nearly completed assembly. Although he quickly swept it aside, he saw the blue glow of ionized air as his assembly momentarily went critical. Daghlian called for help, but grew sick even as the ambulance rushed him to the post hospital. There was nothing Louis Hempelmann could do to help him, and Daghlian lingered in excruciating pain for weeks. His hands were burned raw, and became blistered and gangrenous. It took almost a month for him to die. On September 15, with his blood count way down, his body gave out.

  The twenty-six-year-old physicist was Los Alamos’s first casualty, but he served as a terrible reminder that of the thousands of Japanese who had survived the blast but were exposed to a massive dose of radiation and were sentenced to the same slow, horrible death. There was little comfort to be had in the knowledge that the Los Alamos accident had been avoidable. Daghlian had broken two strict Omega site rules: first, by working alone; and second, by failing to use a safe method of assembly so that if any material were dropped it would not cause a chain reaction. For security reasons, his condition was hushed up, though the senior staff knew what had happened and friends went to see him in the hospital. Louis Slotin, his team leader, sat with him every day until he died.

  Guilt, exhaustion, and a restless desire to move on made Oppenheimer impatient to leave the mesa. He announced his intention of returning to academic life as soon as possible, casting the future of the Los Alamos Laboratory in doubt. His decision left many of his loyal followers feeling bereft. “Everyone was very pleased with Oppenheimer and the job he did,” said Harold Agnew, who years later would helm the laboratory. “Los Alamos was very loyal to him.” They were hurt by the rumors that he felt Los Alamos had outlived its usefulness and should be shut down. Those who wanted to stay on wondered who could possibly fill his shoes and redefine the laboratory’s postwar mission.

  But Oppenheimer could not be swayed. He was physically and spiritually depleted. “There was not much left in me at the moment,” the forty-one-year-old physicist explained later. His recent trip to Washington had left him feeling depressed, not only about the international situation and what he had learned from Stimson about Potsdam’s failure to enlist the Russians in cooperation in establishing postwar arms control but also about the president’s injunction against any discussion or disclosures about the atomic bomb. How would they be able to warn the world of the dangers of this new weapon, and work toward responsible international control, if the scientists were all silenced?

  Oppenheimer had also quarreled with his old friend Lawrence about returning to Berkeley, perhaps sensing that the campus was not big enough for two of the project’s brightest stars, and was distractedly entertaining offers from Conant, who was trying to lure him to Harvard, and from his old colleagues at Caltech. If there was any real chance to make a positive contribution to future atomic national policy, he wanted to help, he wrote Lawrence. Summarizing his report to Stimson, he added, “All of us would earnestly do whatever was in the national interest, no matter how desperate or disagreeable; but we felt reluctant to promise that much real good could come of continuing the atomic bomb work just like the poison gasses after the last war.”

  Oppenheimer wanted out of the Manhattan Project and the bomb-making business, even though it was apparent even then that Lawrence, not to mention others, would have “very strong, very negative reactions” to his misgivings. It was not the first time he and Lawrence had disagreed about Oppie’s politics and championing of causes, and it would not be the last. Uncannily foreshadowing the breach that would soon end their friendship, and ultimately divide the field of physics for decades to come, Oppie wrote that Lawrence would do well to remember “how much more of an underdogger I have always been than you. That is a part of me that is unlikely to change, for I am not ashamed of it; it is responsible for such differences as we have had in the past, I think; I should have thought in the long years it would not be new to you.”

  It had been several years since the old Oppenheimer, the Berkeley campus idealist, had been heard from. But now that he had discharged his duty at Los Alamos, he was returning to a more familiar role. The younger laboratory scientists, deeply concerned about how the U.S. government would use its terrible new power, had banded together to form the Association of Los Alamos Scientists (ALAS), and had approached Oppenheimer about helping them bring their views to the press. Its purpose, set forth in a newsletter, was to “urge and in every way sponsor the initiation of international discussion leading to a world authority in which would be vested the control of nuclear energy.”

  In the aftermath of Hiroshima, the newspapers had been filled with sermons railing against the bomb, and resolutions calling for abolishing all kinds of atomic energy, which had come to be seen only as a destructive power. All kinds of ill-conceived schemes were being put forward. Faced with this alarming national trend, ALAS felt an obligation to educate both the policy makers in government and the American public about the bomb so that they could make informed decisions about its future use. They were optimistic they could work with the United Nations to establish a system of international control that would avoid an atomic arms race. ALAS members began holding meetings, drafting statements of principle, publishing articles, and giving speeches in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. With his tenure as head of the weapons laboratory almost over, Oppenheimer felt a little freer to express his own views and agreed to take up their cause. As soon as he formally resigned that fall, he joined the ranks of ALAS.

  In the meantime, Oppenheimer forwarded the ALAS statement of purpose to George Harrison, Stimson’s aide, and attached a polite cover letter stating that he had been informed that “the views expressed in the statement are held very nearly unanimously; that of all the civilian scientists (something over three hundred) who could be reached, only three felt they could not sign the statement.” He added, “[Although I had] no part in the organization of the group or preparation of the statement, you will probably recognize that the views presented are in closest harmony with those I have discussed with the Interim Committee.”

  It was hardly the ringing endorsement his Los Alamos colleagues might have hoped for, but Oppenheimer was still convinced that the political and military leaders were intelligent and reasonable people, and that he could be effective in his role as policy advisor and help them come to responsible decisions. So he did not object when the ALAS statement, which was duly shown to the Cabinet, was immediately classified and its contents sealed. Much to the Los Alamos scientists’ dismay, the public was not to know of their dissent until later. As Alice Smith observed of Oppenheimer’s first forays into diplomacy, he was trying to establish himself as “an inside scientist” and work within established channels. He had developed great confidence in Stimson and his War Department staff, wrote Smith, and “did not realize, with Stimson on the point of retirement, how rapidly their influence was being supplanted by that of advocates of the cold war posture.”

  Not all the physicists at Los Alamos felt that Oppenheimer represented their views. A number of the émigré scientists, including Fermi and Teller, were far from convinced that public understanding and an international arms control authority would solve the worlds p
roblems. There was always the danger another tyrant would come along who would not care how much damage he inflicted in order to impose his will. They took exception to Oppenheimer’s philosophizing and, in particular, to a number of almost religious quotes that had been picked up by the media and widely circulated and were becoming a kind of mournful motif for the last months of the project. Oppenheimer was always referring to the Bhagavad Gita, and after Hiroshima, importance was invested in his allusions to the Hindu sacred text. When some years later, during an address at MIT, he said, “Physicists have known sin,” many of the project scientists were upset and strenuously objected that he had no right to speak for them, especially as they viewed themselves as having done an honorable service for their country. Charles Critchfield, who had been recruited to work at Los Alamos in late 1942 by both Oppenheimer and Teller, shrugged off the Sanskrit quotations as just another example of Oppie’s penchant for grandstanding. “He had a great sense of the dramatic,” he recalled. “He loved to make statements that were completely absurd without any warning if they were supposed to be funny or whether they meant something that you could take seriously.”

  This desire to provoke, which Critchfield noted “might be called a weakness,” had often gotten Oppenheimer into trouble, but after the war it “proved his undoing.” His displays of arrogance—or snobbishness, or narcissism—earned him a reputation for being difficult in Washington, and a number of influential administration insiders, including Lewis Strauss and Alfred Lee Loomis, formed a lasting dislike and distrust of him. Critchfield cited the story of Oppenheimer’s first meeting with Harry Truman, when he walked into the oval office and declared theatrically, “Mr. President, I have blood on my hands.” Put off, Truman offered him a handkerchief and asked him if he wanted “to wipe them.” Afterward, the president reportedly told his aides to put a lid on the Los Alamos director. “Damn it, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have,” Truman snapped. “You just don’t go around bellyaching about it.”