According to scientific theories of the era, the atom was made up of a nucleus that contained positively charged particles named protons and neutrally charged neutrons; a good distance from the nucleus were electrons, or negatively charged particles, equal in number to the protons. The two never met. With the discovery of the structure of the atom, talk of harnessing the energy within it became a popular subject within the scientific community, particularly in the 1930s. For many, however, this had seemed more like science fiction than reality. “Nonsense,” Ernest Rutherford, one of the most famous physicists of the time, had been inspired to say. Nonsense. It was unimaginable.
But here were the intrepid Americans, this July 1945, having successfully done the impossible: They had tested an atomic bomb. What had been debated and thought about for decades had taken them less than four years to achieve, proceeding from a somewhat abstract idea to an actual weapon the likes of which no one had ever seen. The reality of it was staggering.
The scientific community greeted the news with mixed reactions. There were those who foresaw what was to come—what in their minds meant the end of the war. However, there were also scientists who wished that the experiments had not come to fruition and that nuclear fission had remained science fiction, much as Rutherford had declared it to be. They also foresaw what was to come, but their view of the future was much darker and bleaker.
General Groves was not one who debated the moral questions, nor did he believe that scientists should place their conscience above their work. He did not believe scientists had any right to question whether the bomb should be built at all, much less how it had to be used. Their job was simply to construct it and to test it. The military had the final say, General Groves told them. Morality had no place in the military. They were fighting a war, and there was no time to ask all these philosophical questions.
General Groves was thrilled with the outcome of the Trinity test, which he saw as his dress rehearsal. It was a major step forward, and he was now eager to move ahead with the real thing. But Oppenheimer, Groves’s right-hand man, was suddenly overwhelmed with fear. What had they done? What would they do now? Famously, those who stood by him heard him whisper a notorious passage from Hindu scriptures: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
chapter twenty
The End and the Beginning
In September 1939, Hitler and his army invaded Poland. In June 1940, it was France’s turn to fall to the Germans, and a year later, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. From afar, the United States watched as these events played out and crippled Europe and the Pacific. Then, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Throwing isolation aside, the United States answered this attack with a declaration of war, and the country was finally plunged into World War II.
Aside from being the month when the United States entered the war, December 1941 held another distinction: It was at this time that the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) decided to delve deeply into researching plutonium, the new element scientists had isolated a year earlier at the University of California, Berkeley. The OSRD gave a contract not only to that university but also to the University of Chicago (Met Lab) to continue their studies, and from that day on, the war was fought on two fronts. On the one hand, there was the military front, which the papers reported on with huge headlines and which people followed religiously; and on the other hand, there was the scientific front, the secret scientific track that people knew very little about and that would come to life some years down the road.
In 1945, as World War II continued to rage in both Europe and the Pacific, the Manhattan Project was in full swing. But while the secret project was progressing well, the scientists were still not sure if or when the bomb would be completed, or how it would be used.
Then, two developments shocked the world: First, President Roosevelt died, making way for Truman to become president of the United States; and a few weeks later, on May 7, Nazi Germany surrendered. Having been warned by his officers that the Russians were only days away from the chancellery in Berlin, Hitler chose to die by suicide on April 30, and shortly thereafter his country gave up.
While the war in Germany was over, President Truman found himself in a terrible predicament. The July Trinity test in New Mexico had proved successful and given him an unrivaled weapon that could bring destruction to a city within seconds. Should he use it against Japan? The United States and Japan were still locked in a terrible struggle, with tensions higher than they had ever been before; despite the fact that Japan was being relentlessly bombarded by air raids, the Japanese refused to surrender.
President Truman had two options: He could drop the atomic bomb on Japan or he could become involved in a land invasion of the country, which already had been discussed and code-named Operation Downfall. But Truman knew that such an invasion would cost thousands of American lives. It wasn’t an easy choice, but records show that he was looking for a way to end the war quickly and with as little loss of life on the American side as possible. The outcome was to change not only the course of the war but of history forever.
On July 26, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China issued a warning, with President Truman broadcasting an ultimatum on the air: “We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.”
The island of Tinian was chosen as the base of operations for the atomic bomb attack against Japan. However, there was not going to be any direct connection between Tinian and Los Alamos, where the bomb had been built. Everything had to go through Washington. Oppenheimer did not like that. Having overseen every detail of the bomb’s construction, he wanted to be in close touch with Tinian and with the plane that was going to drop the bomb. There were many ways in which this could go wrong, and he had prepared for such possibilities. Having to go through Washington was an extra step that he didn’t need, one that would waste time in case of an emergency.
Colonel Paul Tibbets was at the helm of the Enola Gay, the plane that was to drop the bomb. Colonel Tibbets was a very experienced pilot, whose previous missions had taken him to Europe and North Africa. Upon his return to the United States, he started working as an engineer for B-29 planes, as well as test-piloting them. He had learned that he would become involved in the Manhattan Project from his father when he received a strange telephone call from Tibbets Sr. telling him that military officers had been snooping around their hometown of Miami, asking about him. Some days later, Uzal Ent, commander of the Second Air Force, had called him, inviting him to meet right away in his office in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
On arriving in Colorado Springs, Colonel Tibbets met and spoke with two additional men besides Uzal Ent, Captain William S. Parsons and Dr. Norman F. Ramsey Jr., whereupon he was told that he had been selected for a special mission. This was a confidential mission, they emphasized, as he sat in the office, listening as Dr. Ramsey, a professor of physics, explained the makings of the atomic bomb.
He was not to say anything about the Manhattan Project, the bomb, or his mission, but he would be allowed to choose the site where he would train, and he could pick his crew. Realizing that the men were serious and unwilling to answer any further questions, Colonel Tibbets agreed to go along and selected Wendover, Utah, as a training site, as well as a few men he already knew as his crew.
At about two o’clock in the morning (noon in Washington) on Sunday, August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay left the small Pacific island of Tinian. “It was a pleasant tropical night,” Colonel Tibbets later wrote. “Around us were cream-puff clouds, their edges outlined by the faint glow of a crescent moon.” The flight was uneventful, and Tibbets and the rest of the crew enjoyed watching a striking sunrise. “And now we were winging toward Japan,” Colonel Tibbets recalled, “surrounded by scattered clouds that were edged with reddis
h gold from the slanting light of the newly risen sun.”
Not ten minutes before they were to drop the bomb, Hiroshima appeared, as early-morning sunlight “glistened off the white buildings in the distance.” The city, aside from its nearly 300,000 inhabitants, was also home to an army base, with 43,000 soldiers.
Thomas Ferebee, the bombardier, caught a glimpse of the Aioi Bridge, the target where he was supposed to drop the bomb. The crew’s navigator, Theodore Van Kirk, also saw the bridge as he glanced out the window. It was 8:15 AM when the bomb dropped over Hiroshima. With the plane now so much lighter, Colonel Tibbets hurried to get as far as possible from the scene.
Once they knew the effects of the bomb could not interfere with the plane’s flight path, Colonel Tibbets brought the plane close enough so that they could catch a glimpse of the damage. But they were not ready for what they saw. It was as if they were witnessing a living thing beneath them, moving and slithering upward. “The city we had seen so clearly in the sunlight a few minutes before was now an ugly smudge,” said Colonel Tibbets.
To Theodore Van Kirk, it appeared like “a pot of boiling black oil.”
And suddenly, the reality of what had just happened swept over them. “My God, what have we done?” whispered Robert Lewis, the copilot.
Tinian and Washington were scheduled to be in continuous communication, but the island was silent for the entire afternoon, with the officials in Washington unaware of what was happening. They heard nothing at noon, as had been planned. As it turned out, the takeoff report didn’t come to Washington until later that evening. Settled in General Groves’s office, officials were pacing up and down, trying to quiet their nerves.
The report arrived late, at precisely the time when they should have been receiving news of what the strike had done to the city of Hiroshima. They read the paper and waited for more news, but none came. Where was the plane now? Finally, at around eleven thirty that evening, they received another report from the plane.
“Clear cut, successful in all respects,” read Colonel Tibbets’s report. “Visual effects greater than Alamogordo [the Trinity test site].” He also let them know that he was back at base camp. While those on the plane would always remember what they had witnessed and live with the sense of dread at what the bomb over Hiroshima had done, for those in Washington there was only a great sense of accomplishment and a shout of exhilaration at the bomb’s success. They had done it.
General Groves called Oppenheimer in Los Alamos to let him know that the bomb had exploded over Hiroshima, that it had worked better than the one at Trinity, and that he was proud of him and of everyone at Los Alamos. General Groves congratulated everyone on a job well done.
The scientists at Los Alamos, and by extension everyone who had been involved in the Manhattan Project, learned about the bomb over Hiroshima after the mission was completed. While Lise Meitner had refused to participate in its development and never wanted to travel to Los Alamos, her nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, had agreed to do a bit of work for the Americans and found himself in Los Alamos when Hiroshima was destroyed. He heard the thunderous running of his colleagues as they rushed down the corridors, shouting to one another that the bomb had exploded, that the Japanese city had been obliterated.
Otto Robert Frisch suddenly recalled the discovery of fission a handful of years earlier, during that Christmas holiday he had spent talking science with his aunt. Some calculations and a sudden moment of inspiration had evolved into this historic moment. He was frightened by what Lise’s reaction would be upon learning what had just occurred in Japan. He would never tell her how many of his colleagues had laughed and congratulated one another on a job well done; how the death of possibly hundreds of thousands of people had prompted many of them to toast one another, or to reserve tables in the city’s better-known restaurants in order to celebrate their success. While he understood that they felt rewarded for having completed a job others had only imagined, he thought some of their reactions “ghoulish.” No, Frisch would never tell any of that to his aunt, Lise.
But he would tell her about those who felt as she did, those who wished the bomb had never come to fruition. About the ones whose sudden desire to flee the Tech Area had overwhelmed them, and how as he left the area he could not help noticing a few of his colleagues vomiting in the bushes or rushing to the bathrooms for a bit of privacy.
President Truman made his announcement about the bomb’s explosion at eleven o’clock the next morning, telling the American people about the detonation over Hiroshima. The world was listening, too.
However, Japan had not yet surrendered. The Americans wanted Japan to surrender unconditionally, but the country was still hanging on. A second bomb then hit the city of Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945; Emperor Hirohito refused to allow more death to come to his people. The war was over.
The twin blasts killed more than two hundred thousand people in the immediate aftermath, and the world learned of the devastating effects that atomic weapons could have. These attacks marked the first time that such catastrophic bombs were used, though the aftereffects have lasted for decades.
Despite the women’s contributions, it was the men who gained the prestige and opportunities coming out of the Manhattan Project. Life magazine ran a series of articles on the project, and the writer profiled those he believed had made the greatest contributions to the bombs: Enrico Fermi, of course; J. Robert Oppenheimer; Edward Teller; and General Leslie Groves. These men, the writer said, had worn the “tunic of Superman.” Readers wanted to know everything about them. Who were they, and where had they come from? How did they work, and where did they find their inspiration? Did they take sugar in their coffee? Did they prefer lemon or milk in their tea? Were they married?
Although Lise Meitner had explained nuclear fission, and with that explanation changed the way scientists looked at atomic science, in essence opening the door to the atomic bomb, she was hardly acknowledged for her contributions, least of all by Hahn, who went on to earn a Nobel Prize for the discovery, having worked alongside the other member of their Berlin team, Fritz Strassmann.
The science historian Ruth Lewin Sime said this about Hahn’s behavior toward Lise Meitner: “Had Hahn made an effort to set the scientific record straight, had he spoken of their long friendship and collaboration, of her leadership of the Berlin team or her contributions to the fission discovery, it would have helped. But he did not. In his mind the discovery had become his, and his alone. In his many interviews he never spoke of his work with Meitner; not once did he even mention her name.… Meitner and her friends were appalled.”
Others bestowed upon Lise Meitner the credit that Otto Hahn did not give her. In November 1945, the Atlantic Monthly quoted Albert Einstein as saying: “I do not consider myself the father of the release of atomic energy. My part in it was quite indirect. I did not, in fact, foresee that it would be released in my time. I believed only that it was theoretically possible.… It was discovered by Hahn in Berlin, and he himself misinterpreted what he discovered. It was Lise Meitner who provided the correct interpretation.”
On July 16, 1945, when the first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico and its loud booms pierced the early-dawn sky, it was hailed as the ushering in of the atomic era. Photographs taken for posterity’s sake show the New Mexico desert prior to the explosion and immediately thereafter; the process of building the bomb and the many miles of wires stretching across its pathways; the forklift lifting the bomb into position. Among the hundreds of photos, there are also those revealing the faces of the scientists, technicians, and officials who worked toward that moment: Oppenheimer, smiling but looking tired; General Groves, surveying the area prior to the detonation and in the hours afterward; Fermi and his colleagues in wrinkly business suits holding tight but obviously satisfied grins, for the results of their experiments were precisely what they had expected; and young army men, wet from the recent downpours, standing alongside the officials.
But anyo
ne who views those photographs will become aware of a strange fact: Very few of the snapshots feature a woman.
In the articles that appeared immediately after the test in July 1945, and in the stories, books, and personal biographies that were published after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, there was hardly any mention of the top-notch female scientists who helped with the development of the nuclear bomb, despite the fact that they had been there, overseeing the project from near and far, contributing to such a degree, one could safely say, that without their knowledge the men who worked on the bomb would not have been able to achieve their goals.
How the female scientists reacted to the outcome of their contributions to the bomb depended on their personal views of science and on their beliefs about how such discoveries could help or hurt humanity. In the wake of the detonations, many were proud of their contributions, for they had helped to end World War II. But others expressed concerns and were stunned by what had occurred, by the number of people who had died, and by how many were still suffering and would continue to suffer. They had been aware that there would be consequences, but as Laura Fermi wrote later in her book: “A blow is no less painful for being expected.”
Whatever their feelings, no one can deny, least of all themselves, that these female scientists were leaders in their fields and that they had a hand in one of the most powerful events that has shaped the course of history.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Elizabeth “Diz” Graves (left, with her daughter, right) was a pioneering physicist who worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico during World War II. She became one of the highest-ranking women of the Manhattan Project.
Hungarian nuclear chemist Elizabeth Rona is best known for her work in radioactive isotopes. She developed an enhanced method for preparing polonium samples, and her techniques were highly coveted by the Manhattan Project scientists.
Atomic Women Page 15