Diana Preston - Before the Fallout

Nevertheless, when he returned to the Met Lab after the committee, Arthur Compton told his colleagues that the committee would be prepared to listen to their views about the future of the atomic project, including, by implication, the concerns of those who had doubts about the deployment of the bomb. The scientists set up committees on topics ranging from research programs to social and political implications. James Franck, whom Groves regarded as “a babe in the woods” when it came to national and international affairs, chaired the latter, and Szilard was an enthusiastic member. Among the recommendations of their thirteen-page report was that the bomb should be demonstrated before it was used against Japanese civilians. Compton sent the report to Stimson “at the request” of the laboratory “for the attention of your Interim Advisorv Committee.” He noted that the committee’s scientific panel had not yet considered the report. When they did so on 16 June, the four men do not seem to have been in full agreement. Lawrence, with perhaps some support from Fermi, persisted in favor of the demonstration, but Compton and particularly Oppenheimer were strongly opposed. Oppenheimer’s report to Stimson—“we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use”—let Stimson, Byrnes, and the other politicians off the hook.

Meanwhile Leo Szilard wrote secretly to Edward Teller and other colleagues at Los Alamos, urging support for a petition to Truman advocating a demonstration and the avoidance of an arms race. One paragraph of his letter read, “Many of us are inclined to say that individual Germans share the guilt for the acts which Germany committed during this war because they did not raise their voices in protest against these acts. Their defense that their protests would have been of no avail hardly seems acceptable even though these Germans could not have protested without running risks to life and liberty. We are in a position to raise our voices without incurring any such risks even though we might incur the displeasure of some of those who are at present in charge of controlling the work on ‘atomic power.’”

Teller felt that before replying “he had to talk to Oppenheimer.” To his surprise, an impatient Oppenheimer spoke harshly and vehemently about both Szilard and Franck, questioning “what do they know about Japanese psychology? How can they judge the way to end the war?” He suggested that the decision should be left to “the leaders in Washington and not individuals who happen to work on the bomb project.” Teller was relieved “at not having to participate in the difficult judgements to be made.” He wrote back to Szilard a six-paragraph letter, concluding, “I feel I should do the wrong thing if I tried to say how to tie the little toe of the ghost to the bottle from which we just helped it to escape.” [37] In his autobiography Teller reflected that the scientists should have done more to understand what would have been involved technically in a demonstration to the Japanese and then to have informed the politicians.

Szilard continued to work on how the dissenting scientists’ views could be got to the president. However, Truman, Stimson, and Byrnes, confirmed as secretary of state, had chosen their path. In addition to the ongoing conduct of the war against Japan, they were focusing on the forthcoming conference with Churchill and Stalin in July at Potsdam in defeated Germany. Churchill too had given Britain’s formal consent to the use of the bomb against Japan, as required by the Quebec Agreement, by simply initialing a note requesting him to do so. British agreement was noted in the minutes of the U.K.-U.S. Combined Policy Committee meeting, which met in Washington on Independence Day, 4 July. Among the topics for discussion at Potsdam would be the future of eastern Europe, the program of the United Nations, whose charter had been signed on 26 June, and potential Russian participation in the war on Japan. Thinking on the latter had gone through a number of stages. For a considerable time U.S. policy had been that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan was highly desirable. By invading Manchuria, Soviet troops would tie down Japanese divisions and prevent them from being returned to Japan to defend it against American forces.

The basic terms for Soviet entry into the war against Japan had been settled at Yalta in February 1945. They included the preservation of Outer Mongolia as independent from China and the restoration of the concessions made by Russia at the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904—£, including the return of the southern half of Sakhalin Island. In addition, Russia was to annex the Kurile Islands. Some of the provisions—such as the status of Mongolia—needed the consent of China, and this was left for discussion between the Russian and Chinese governments. Stalin had promised to join the war against Japan no more than two or three months after Germany’s defeat. However, by the spring American planners realized that their naval and air forces could prevent Japanese troopships from sailing from Manchuria to the defense of the home island. They began to hope that Soviet entry into the war alone might be sufficient to force the Japanese leadership to surrender without an invasion of the Japanese home islands.

The U.S. administration was desperately concerned about the cost in Allied lives of such an invasion. Japanese resistance was unrelenting. Kamikaze planes zeroed in on the U.S. carrier fleet protecting the invasion forces off Okinawa. On 11 May an attack on the Bunker Hill killed 396 men, three times more than the number of revolutionary forces who had died in 1775 in the engagement after which the carrier was named. The Allied servicemen could not understand the mentality of those prepared to undertake suicide attacks. Thus they proved highly disturbing, while reinforcing stereotypes of the Japanese as a race apart. So strong was this sense of distance that when an engineering officer on a U.S. warship hit by a kamikaze sometime later found the decaying leg of the pilot, he gave it to his comrades “to make some souvenirs out of it.” He recalled, “The guys actually sliced up the bones into cross-sections. They made necklaces out of that pilot.”

Okinawa was not conquered until 21 June. Over 12,000 American servicemen lost their lives on the island or in related operations, together with around 80,000 local people and upward of 120,000 Japanese. Three days earlier, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, William Leahy, had told the president that the front-line marine divisions had suffered 35 percent casualties on Okinawa and that if, as seemed likely, a similar percentage were lost in the attack on the first of the Japanese main islands, Kyushu, planned for the autumn, casualties would be over one quarter of a million. Truman replied that he “hoped that there was a possibility of preventing an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other.”

If the Trinity test of the plutonium bomb succeeded, the new weapon might offer such a possibility and also avoid the complication of Russian involvement in Japan and China. Stimson noted in his diary on 14 May that America’s wealth and possession of the bomb were “a royal straight flush and we mustn’t be a fool about the way we play it.” The next day his diary described the bomb as a “master card.”

The best way of preserving American lives while defeating Japan quickly and limiting Soviet influence preoccupied Truman, Stimson, and Byrnes as they crossed the Atlantic in the cruiser USS Augusta to the Potsdam Conference. So convinced were they of the value of a successful atomic bomb test to the strength of their negotiating position with Russia, that Truman had delayed the conference from the originally proposed date of mid-June until mid-July—the scientists’ estimate of the earliest they would be ready to conduct the Trinity test. Churchill had been concerned that this delay might allow the Russian hold on eastern Europe to consolidate, so Truman had sent one of his advisers, Joseph Davies, to London to tell him that Truman “didn’t want to go to Potsdam to meet Stalin until he knew the outcome of the test.”