The Manhattan Project
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Copyright
Copyright © 2020, 2007 by the Atomic Heritage Foundation
Preface copyright © 2020 by the Atomic Heritage Foundation
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LCCN: 2020930466
ISBNs: 978-0-7624-7127-0 (trade paperback), 978-0-7624-7126-3 (ebook)
E3-20200520-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Preface: The Manhattan Project Seventy-Five Years Later
From the Editor: Preserving the Manhattan Project Cynthia C. Kelly, President, Atomic Heritage Foundation
Introduction: Richard Rhodes, Author, The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Section One: Explosive Discoveries and Bureaucratic Inertia
Thinking No Pedestrian Thoughts, Richard Rhodes
The Atomic Bombs Burst in Their Fumbling Hands, H. G. Wells
If Only We Had Been Clever Enough, Leona Marshall Libby
What Wasn’t Expected Wasn’t Seen!, Edward Teller
I Had Come Close but Had Missed a Great Discovery, Philip Abelson
Enlisting Einstein, William Lanouette
Albert Einstein to F. D. Roosevelt, Albert Einsten and Franklin D. Roosevelt
A Practically Irresistible Super-Bomb, Otto R. Frisch and Rudolf Peierls
Working for Otto Frisch, J. Wechsler
Likely to Lead to Decisive Results, The MAUD Report, March 1941
“Wild” Notions about Atom Bombs, G. Pascal Zachary
Transatlantic Travails, Andrew Brown
Section Two: An Unprecedented Alliance
The Rather Fuzzy State of Our Thinking, James G. Hershberg
The Stuff Will… Be More Powerful Than We… Thought, Vannevar Bush
You’ll Never Get a Chain Reaction Going Here, Richard Rhodes
The Chicago Pile-1: The First Chain Reaction, Enrico Fermi
Fermi Was Cool as a Cucumber, Crawford Greenewalt
Proceeding in the Dark, General Leslie R. Groves
Swimming in Syrup, Robert Jungk
The Los Alamos Primer: How to Make an Atomic Bomb, Robert Serber
These Were Very Great Men Indeed, Richard Feynman
Misunderstandings and Anxieties, Stephane Groueff
A Weapon of Devastating Power… Will Soon Become Available, Niels Bohr to Winston Churchill
One Top Secret Agreement Too Many, Winston Churchill
Section Three: An Extraordinary Pair
His Potential Outweighed Any Security Risk, General Leslie R. Groves
Scientific Director for the Special Laboratory in New Mexico, James B. Conant and General Leslie R. Groves to J. Robert Oppenheimer
When You Looked at Captain Groves, a Little Alarm Bell Rang “Caution,” Robert S. Norris
Decisive, Confident, and Cool, Robert DeVore
A Bureaucratic Warrior of the First Rank, Robert S. Norris
The Biggest S.O.B., Colonel Kenneth D. Nichols
Not Right—Do It Again., Colonel John Lansdale Jr.
“A Jewish Pan” at Berkeley, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin
The Absentminded Professor, Berkeley Gazette, February 14, 1934
His Head Wreathed in a Cloud of Smoke, Edward Gerjuoy
A Psychiatrist by Vocation and a Physicist by Avocation, Jeremy Bernstein
The Most Compelling Man, Jennet Conant
Appeasing General Groves, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin
Visions of Immortality, Robert S. Norris
An Audacious Gamble, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin
Then Robert Oppenheimer Walked onto the Page, Joseph Kanon
Doctor Atomic: The Myth and the Man, John Adams
A Cascade of Different Oppenheimers, Jon Else
Section Four: Secret Cities
A New and Uncertain Adventure in the Wilderness, Stephane Groueff
A Crazy Place to Do Any War Thing, Stirling Colgate
Excitement, Devotion, and Patriotism Prevailed, J. Robert Oppenheimer
The Case of the Vanishing Physicists, Stanislaw Ulam
Learning on the Job, Rebecca Diven
Life at P.O. Box 1663, Ruth Marshak
A Boy’s Adventures at Los Alamos, Dana Mitchell
Something Extraordinary Was Happening Here, Katrina Mason
A Relief from the Hubbub of the Hill, Katrina Mason
An SED at Los Alamos, Benjamin Bederson
A Bad Time to Get a New Boss, Joseph Kanon
Tumbleweed and Jackrabbits in the Evergreen State, Steve Buckingham
Making Toilet Paper, Roger Rohrbacher
Termination Winds, Michele Gerber
Whoever Gets There First Will Win the War, Leon Overstreet
The Whole Project Was Like a Three-Legged Stool, Walter Simon
Cover Stories, Colonel Franklin T. Matthias
K-25 Plant: Forty-Four Acres and a Mile Long, William J. Wilcox
Tennessee Girls on the Job, Colleen Black
Ode to Life Behind the Fence, Clifford and Colleen Black
Operating Oak Ridge’s “Calutrons,” Theodore Rockwell
Men, Write Home for Christmas, Norman Brown
An Answer to Their Prayers, Valeria Steele
All-Black Crews with White Foremen, Robert Bauman
Manhattan Project Sites in Manhattan, Robert S. Norris
Manhattan Project Sites in Washington, D.C., Robert S.Norris
Monsanto’s Playhouse for Polonium, Stephane Groueff
Mysteries at the Met Lab, Isabella Karle
A Message from Town Management
Section Five: Secrecy, Intelligence, and Counterintelligence
Unprecedented Security Measures, Robert S. Norris
Security: A Headache on the Hill, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin
Mrs. Farmer, I Presume, Laura Fermi
As If They Were Walking in the Woods, Colonel John Lansdale Jr.
Electric Rocket Story Fails to Launch, Charlotte Serber
A Spy in Our Midst, Laura Fermi
> Never… in Our Wildest Dreams, Lilli Hornig
The Youngest Spies, Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel
Enormoz Espionage, Gregg Herken
Undercover Agents at Berkeley, Gregg Herken
Jump Start for the Soviets, David Holloway; Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel
Holes in the Security Fence, Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel
A Calming Role for the Counterintelligence Corps, Thomas O. Jones
The Alsos Mission: Scientists as Sleuths, Robert S. Norris
From France to the Black Forest: Seeking Atomic Scientists, Richard Rhodes
I Have Been Expecting You, Colonel John Lansdale Jr.
Section Six: The Trinity Test
Leaving the Bomb Project, Joseph Rotblat
Anticipating the End of War, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin
Scientists Will Be Held Responsible, Arthur Holly Compton
Advising Against the Bomb, The Franck Report, June 1945
No Acceptable Alternative, The Interim Committee Report, June 1945
Scientists Petition the President, Leo Szilard and Other Scientists
Watching Trinity, Brigadier General Thomas Farrell and General Leslie R. Groves
Babysitting the Bomb, Don Hornig
A Handful of Soldiers at Trinity, Val Fitch
Eyewitness Accounts of the Trinity Test, Edwin McMillan, Kenneth Greisen, Enrico Fermi, Maurice Shapiro, Robert Serber
Violence without Limit, Joseph Kanon
Section Seven: Dropping the Bombs
Aiming for Military and Psychological Effects, Target Committee
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz: Born Too Soon, Frederick L. Ashworth
The 509th Composite Group at Tinian Island, Stephen Walker
Official Bombing Order, 25 July, 1945, Thos. T. Handy
A Very Sobering Event, Operational History of the 509th Bombardment
Massive Pain, Suffering, and Horror, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
Miss Yamaoka, You Look Like a Monster, Richard B. Frank
For All We Know, We Have Created a Frankenstein!, Paul Boyer
The Battle of the Laboratories, President Harry S Truman
The Culmination of Years of Herculean Effort, Henry L. Stimson
Eyewitness over Nagasaki, William Laurence
It Was Over!, Lieutenant Colonel Fred J. Olivi
The Atomic Bomb’s Peculiar “Disease,” George Weller
Section Eight: Reflections on the Bomb
Outwitting General Groves, Harold Agnew
Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists, J. Robert Oppenheimer
You Have Done Excellent Work, J. Robert Oppenheimer
A Citizen’s Guide to the Atomic Bomb: The Smyth Report, Henry DeWolf Smyth
Hersey’s Hiroshima, John Hersey
The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, Henry L. Stimson
History Is Often Not What Actually Happened, Barton J. Bernstein
A Question of Motives, Patrick M. S. Blackett
Thank God for the Atom Bomb, Paul Fussell
The Return to Nothingness, Felix Morley
The Bomb in National Memories, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
Hiroshima in History, J. Samuel Walker
Why Does This Decision Continue to Haunt Us?, Gar Alperovitz
Section Nine: Living with the Bomb
On the International Control of Atomic Energy, Acheson-Lilienthal Report, March 1946
Open Letter to the United Nations, Niels Bohr, June 1950
I Hope Not a Soul Will Remember My Name, Paul Mullins, “Louis Slotin Sonata”
Atoms for Peace, Dwight D. Eisenhower, December 1953
A Cold War Warning: The Russell-Einstein Manifesto, July 1955
A World Free of Nuclear Weapons, George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn
The Nuclear Threat, Mikhail Gorbachev
Thoughts on a 21st-Century Manhattan Project, George A. Cowan
Section Ten: Seventy-Five Years Later
Truman Made the Right Decision, Benjamin Bederson
No Regrets, Leona Marshall Libby
One Atomic Bomb Was Sufficient, Gerhart Friedlander
A Well-Meaning President Made the Worst Decision, Murray Peshkin
An Odd Mix of Feelings, Lilli Hornig
The Perils of Nuclear Fallout, Ralph Lapp
A Global Manhattan Project, Dieter Gruen
A Lack of Trust and Confidence, Herbert L. Anderson
Before We Die, We Have to Tell Our Stories, Keiko Ogura
Doctor, you know our bodies. The atomic bomb is still living, Masao Tomonaga
Such a Tragedy Should Never Happen Again, Kazumi Matsui, Mayor of Hiroshima
Why Do People Need Such Cruel Weapons?, Tomihisa Taue, Mayor of Nagasaki
Mayors for Peace: Achieving a Better World, Yasuyoshi Komizo
Open Discussion Is the Only Way to Solve Problems, Kenji Shiga
Paper Crane Journey, Tomoko Watanabe
Our name is Yamawaki. Where is our father?, Yoshiro Yamawaki
The World Was Forever Changed Here, U.S. President Barack Obama
The Threat of Nuclear War Is Still with Us, George P. Schultz, William J. Perry and Sam Nunn
The Madness of Nuclear Deterrence, Mikhail Gorbachev
The End of Nuclear Weapons or the End of Us, Beatrice Fihn and Setsuko Thurlow
Acknowledgments
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Chronology
Biographies
Bibliography
Credits
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Preface
The Manhattan Project Seventy-Five Years Later
When future generations look back on the twentieth century, few events will rival the harnessing of nuclear energy as a turning point in world history. The 75th anniversary of the Manhattan Project is an opportune occasion to reflect upon the top-secret effort that enabled the Allies to end World War II, but also introduced a major new force in human affairs. As early as 1944, Danish physicist Niels Bohr predicted that atomic weapons could become “a perpetual menace to society.”
This edition of The Manhattan Project adds a section drawn from interviews taken since 2007. In these, Manhattan Project veterans share diverse reflections on the use of the atomic bombs, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors recount their experiences. Also included are the opinions of former United States and Soviet leaders. In the words of Mikhail Gorbachev, the world is “sitting on a nuclear powder keg.”
This new preface traces the efforts to preserve the places and significant properties of the Manhattan Project. Having authentic first-of-a-kind facilities, equipment, and other artifacts is essential to preserving this complex history. As Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, has said, “When we lose parts of our physical past, we lose parts of our common social past as well.” The following tells the story of how critical Manhattan Project properties were salvaged and a national historical park created.
Twenty-five years ago, 50 wooden structures where the world’s first atomic bombs were designed stood deep inside the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s property. The buildings were abandoned in the 1950s and few people even knew they existed.
In 1997, colleagues in the Department of Energy (DOE) alerted me that all of the remaining Manhattan Project properties owned by the laboratory were slated for demolition. While the laboratory was required to mitigate the loss with documents and photographs, preservation was not considered an option.
Given their historic significance, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation agreed to investigate. On November 5, 1998, Council members visiting Los Alamos were struck by the simplicity of the one-story wooden structures located on the “V-Site” where the atomic age was born. As architect Bruce D. Judd commented, the humble V-Site properties were “monumental in their lack of monumentality.” However, laboratory officials ex
plained that Congress appropriated funds to demolish, not restore, them. Without other funds, the properties were doomed.
Fortunately, the White House Millennial Project had convinced Congress to provide $30 million to preserve Federal properties significant to America’s history that were in danger of being lost. After a government-wide competition, two Save America’s Treasures grants were awarded for DOE properties in 1999: $700,000 for the V-Site properties at Los Alamos and $320,000 for the Experimental Breeder Reactor–I in Idaho.
The catch was that the grant funds had to be matched with non-Federal funds. Raising a million dollars became my next mission, prompting me to leave the government after twenty-five years. The first step was to launch the Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF), a tax-exempt non-profit dedicated to preserving and interpreting the history of the Manhattan Project.
Richard Rhodes became AHF’s first board member. Rhodes opened doors to Senators Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and drew enthusiastic crowds to AHF’s events. Eventually, AHF raised the necessary funds for the Save America’s Treasures projects. In 2006, the humble structures of the V-Site were restored and quickly became a touchstone for the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The restoration of the properties at Los Alamos raised questions about what other Manhattan Project properties should be preserved. What about the B reactor at Hanford, Washington, which produced the first plutonium, or the K-25 plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which produced enriched uranium? Tasked with producing a report for Congress, AHF convened a series of public meetings around the country in 2003. The meetings included federal, state and local officials, Manhattan Project veterans, historical societies, and members of the public. For the first time, the public discussed the possibility of establishing a national historical park for the Manhattan Project.
For over a decade, the Congressional delegations from New Mexico, Washington, and Tennessee were instrumental in the success of the legislation for a new park. In 2003, Senators Maria Cantwell of Washington and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico introduced legislation requiring a “special resource study.” With bipartisan, bicameral support, Congress passed the legislation in September 2004. Despite an official policy of “no new parks,” President George W. Bush signed it.
In 2011, the long-awaited study from the National Park Service (NPS) recommended creating a Manhattan Project National Historical Park with units at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Hanford. For the next three years, AHF led a broad national coalition with representatives from the Manhattan Project communities, the National Parks Conservation Association, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.