Diana Preston - Before the Fallout

Oppenheimer hit it off at once with Lawrence, just three years his senior, admiring his “unbelievable vitality and love of life. “They socialized and womanized together, drinking Oppenheimer’s famous frozen martinis from glasses rimmed with lime juice and honey, and eating his specialty, the spicy Indonesian dish nasi goreng, soon nicknamed “nasty gory” by Oppenheimer’s Berkeley friends. They also went riding. Photographs of the two men show Lawrence, tall, sturdy, smiling. Oppenheimer, with a frizz of dark hair, his slighter frame clad in heeled Mexican boots and tight jeans, and a quizzical yet dreamy expression, resembles a young Bob Dylan.

Lawrence the experimentalist and Oppenheimer the theoretician got on well intellectually as well as socially. They attended weekly seminars for theoreticians and experimentalists, where Oppenheimer amazed everyone with his ability to assimilate new ideas, his extraordinary memory, and the fact that he “knew more experimental physics than even the experimental physicists did.” He relished the new horizons opened up by the neutron and the development of powerful machines to probe the nucleus. In 1932 he wrote to his brother, Frank, “We are busy studying nuclei and neutrons and disintegrations; trying to make some peace between the inadequate theory and the absurd revolutionary experiments.”

Just as Oppenheimer had hoped, atomic physics was no longer Europe’s exclusive preserve. On a visit to Berkeley in 1933, John Cockcroft was startled to find it run more like a factory than a laboratory: “The experimenters were divided into shifts: maintenance shifts and experimenters. When a leak or fault developed in the cyclotron the maintenance crew rushed forward to plug the leaks… and fixed the fault when the operating shifts rushed in again.” It was far removed from the small-scale, expense-conscious academic world of the Cavendish and a warning that the Cavendish might soon be outclassed.

The discoveries of 1932 also gave a fillip to Russian atomic physics. Abram Joffe, who had brought Peter Kapitza to England in 1921, had continued to keep abreast of developments in the West. By the early 1930s he was presiding over the Leningrad Physicotechnical Institute—known as “Fiztekh” and the crucible of Soviet physics. Joffe also encouraged Western scientists to study and lecture in Russia. However, until 1932, the only serious nuclear work had been research into cosmic rays. This soon changed. Before the year was out, Soviet scientists had replicated Cockcroft and Walton’s experiments. Also in that year, inspired by reports of Lawrence’s work, the Radium Institute in Leningrad began building Europe’s first cyclotron, while Joffe set up a dedicated nuclear physics group. He soon had thirty scientists working in four laboratories. Igor Kurchatov, who would later direct the Soviet nuclear program, was sufficiently excited by the new science to divert from his study of the behavior of crystals in magnetic fields to head the new group.

With this surge of interest, Peter Kapitza’s absence was increasingly noted, and regretted, by the Soviet authorities. He had retained his Soviet citizenship and made annual visits home at the invitation of the Kremlin. He was a Russian patriot and happy to advise the Soviet government on science and technology in pursuit of Joseph Stalin’s goal of “catching up and overtaking the technology of the developed advanced capitalist countries.” But he had no inclination to return to a place where living conditions were so tough. He would not have enjoyed the conditions faced by one young scientist at Joffe’s institute who found himself sharing a freezing dormitory with eight others and with rats trying to chew at his ears. Kapitza wrote to his mother that life without gas, electricity, water, and apparatus would be simply impossible. Furthermore, in 1930 Rutherford had persuaded the Royal Society and others to give thirty thousand pounds to fund a new laboratory for Kapitza to run.

Kapitza bridged two worlds and took a sly pleasure in doing so. On one occasion he is said to have invited the senior Soviet politician Nikolay Bukharin to dinner with Rutherford solely for the pleasure of being able to make the introduction, “Comrade Bukharin—Lord Rutherford.” Kapitza was elected a member of the Royal Society—a highly unusual honor for a foreigner—and was apparently interested in other prizes of the British establishment. After Rutherford was ennobled, he inquired whether a foreigner could be given a peerage. As it turned out, however, Stalin had other plans for him.

In fact, life was about to change for many members of the international scientific community. Much that had been taken for granted for so long—openness, the freedom to travel and exchange ideas, the right to pursue science without a thought of politics—was about to come under attack. Robert Op­penheimer was one of the few to sense the challenges ahead, writing bleakly but perceptively that “the world in which we shall live these next thirty years will be a pretty restless and tormented place. I do not think there will be much of a compromise possible between being of it, and being not of it.”

The restlessness divined by Oppenheimer was already evident in Japan, which during the 1920s had seen increasing prosperity, much of it prompted by technological change. Developments in Hiroshima were typical. Though many citizens had continued to make their livings in traditional ways—harvesting and drying sardines, cultivating nori (the seaweed which they dried in sheets and used to wrap their sticky rice), growing hemp for ropes and fishing nets and making geta (wooden sandals secured to the foot with thongs)—new industries had grown rapidly. These included manufacturing rayon, rolling tobacco for cigars, and canning food—especially beef boiled in soy sauce for the military commissariats based in the city. The pick of Hiroshima’s manufactured goods were displayed in the green-domed Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall, which was one of the city’s favorite landmarks. Constructed in 1915 to the design of the Czech architect Jan Letzel, it fronted the river near the Aioi Bridge. [18] Hiroshima was also a leading producer of the hair extensions used by many women to create the traditional and luxuriant bunkin takashimada hairstyle. By 1922, 70 percent of Japan’s hair extensions were manufactured in Hiroshima.

Rising wealth had brought many benefits. Hiroshima had become an academic center, with one of the only two higher schools of education in Japan. It was also known for sport: baseball, rowing, and track events flourished, and Japan’s first Olympic gold medalist, Mikio Oda, who triumphed in the triple jump at the 1928 games in Amsterdam, came from the city. A new entertainment district—Shintenchi, meaning, literally, “New World”—was built, which by its peak in the late 1920s had more than 1 20 shops, music halls, theaters, and cinemas. Visitors could attend performances ranging from musical comedy to silent samurai movies. Sunday was the day for going to the cinema, and shortages of daytime electricity did not spoil the fun; the projectionist simply hand-cranked the film past a large gas lamp.

“Modern boys and girls”—as those who espoused Western dress and habits were called—played billiards or had their pictures taken, posed cigarette in hand and dressed in the latest Western fashions, in one of the many photographic studios or just sat and chatted in cafes. Huge billboards gaudily promoted everything from Lion brand toothpaste to scented hair oil. By night elegant electric lanterns fashioned to resemble lilies of the valley cast a glamorous glow. Photographs of the period reveal a relaxed and prosperous ambience in Hiroshima and other leading cities.