109 East Palace (53 page)

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 problems. 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.”

This same tendency particularly worked against him with Teller, who never had any appreciation for Oppie’s poetic license, particularly as he had often been the object of his slings and arrows, and grew increasingly impatient with what he saw as the director’s consuming need for redemption. In his memoir, Teller recalled that the day after peace was established, Oppenheimer came into his office at Los Alamos and told him that “with the war over, there is no reason to continue work on the hydrogen bomb.” Teller was stricken. Work on the hydrogen bomb had begun in earnest only two months earlier, following the Trinity test, when Oppenheimer had appointed Bethe and Fermi to head up the fusion bomb program. “His statement was unexpected,” wrote Teller. “It was also final. There was no way I could argue; no way I could change Oppenheimers mind.”

Beginning with his strange comment after the Trinity test (a quotation from Bhagavad Gita, “I am become the Destroyer of Worlds”), Oppenheimer had seemed to lose his sense of balance, his perspective. After seeing the pictures from Hiroshima, he appeared determined that Los Alamos, the unique and outstanding laboratory he had created, should vanish. When asked about the future, he responded, “Give it back to the Indians.”

Teller was greatly disturbed by the growing sentiment among Oppenheimers division leaders and senior staff to turn against military work. “The emotion,” Teller observed, “seemed especially strong among those who had been most enthusiastic about using the bomb before the actual bombing.” His bitter childhood memories of Hungary—and the violent antisemitism that led to the deaths of thousands of Jews—had made him less sanguine about the prospects for peace, and he wanted to see the atomic bomb program continue so that the United States could maintain its technological superiority in nuclear weaponry. After having been forced by Oppenheimer to take a backseat on the wartime project, he was more determined than ever to realize his ambition to develop the Super. But given the present mood at the laboratory, he knew there would be little support for a program to develop fission bombs, let alone a fusion weapon, which would be a hundred times as powerful. An interim successor for Oppenheimer as director had been named, but Teller had little faith in the mild-mannered Norris Bradbury, a Stanford University physicist who had joined the project midway. Bradbury wanted to turn Los Alamos into a peacetime research facility to study the military applications of nuclear energy and had asked Teller to remain on as head of the Theoretical Division. Teller chose to go to Chicago with his friends instead. “Bradbury,” he observed, “maintained a cautious approach, then and throughout his career as director.”

Teller’s ambition to do work on the hydrogen bomb was well known on the mesa, and he was regarded, as much by himself as by everyone else, as virtually the sole proponent and defender of this work. “They were all against it, everybody except Teller,” said Dorothy, recalling the strong feelings on the mesa at the time. “They thought it was shocking, excessive and unnecessary, and we could destroy the world easily enough with our little atomic bomb.” Dorothy knew that Oppenheimer thought it was an unconscionable weapon. They had all had enough death as it was. “But Teller just thought for the sake of science we ought to do it… he kept hammering, hammering, hammering until he finally got it,” she said. “We hated the idea of it.”

At the farewell party for Deke Parsons, who had just been promoted, Oppenheimer greeted Teller jovially and said, “Now that you’ve decided to go to Chicago, don’t you feel better?” Teller did not feel better, and he told Oppenheimer so, adding that he thought their “war time work was only a beginning.” Oppenheimer brushed off the statement. “We have done a wonderful job here,” he replied. “It will be many years before anyone can improve on our work in any way.” Years later, Teller remained bitter about Oppenheimer’s decision to send him packing. “He wanted to stop me,” Teller said in an interview “He was very kind about it, but he was giving me a command. He wanted me to go back to Chicago and do physics.” Teller went grudgingly, “but I was already wondering about his attitude.” No two men could have been more at odds about the future development of nuclear weapons and which path the country should follow. Given their past experience, Oppenheimer should have known that this would not be the end of it. Teller would not be so easily dismissed.

On October 16, on a flawless New Mexico afternoon, the laboratory was awarded the Army-Navy “E” (for excellence) Award. A grandstand had been erected in front of Fuller Lodge for the occasion, and draped in red, white, and blue bunting. Beyond, on the horizon, were the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, cloaked in fall shades of lavender and blue and as serenely beautiful as ever. There was no brass band, but a military guard marched in and put on a good show, making for quite a change from the laughable SED parades. An enormous crowd had gathered, including nearly all the remaining scientists, who now numbered about a thousand, as well as hundreds of WACs and GIs, clusters of Indian housemaids in their colorful shawls, and many of the Spanish laborers who had worked at the laboratory and had come out of respect to “Señor Oppenheimer.” They were an eclectic lot, as usual, and it was amazing to think that they had ever managed to come together and work effectively as a team. Dorothy, who had come up to the Hill for the ceremony, was amused by the improbable sight of a radio crew struggling to set up their equipment to broadcast the speeches to the world at large. Much had changed in their secret city in the two months since the war ended.

As she joined the milling throng, shaking the hands of people she had hired over the past two years and hugging departing friends, Dorothy glimpsed Oppenheimer, a lean figure off by himself in the distance, dressed in an ill-fitting suit, his porkpie hat hiding the crew cut which had begun to show the first hint of gray. “Robert was pacing along,” she recalled, “he was within himself, and I knew that because when he’s within himself he’s not conscious of anyone else.” She went over to him and said, “Hello.” When he looked up, there was “a rather glazed look in his eyes,” and she realized he was still composing the speech he was due to give in a few moments’ time. For some reason, that image of him became fixed in her mind. It was the way she always liked to remember him—wandering the mesa, lost in thought. That was “the best portrait of him,” she said years later, “and it was one of the best speeches that has ever been done.”

Dorothy sat in one of the rows of folding chairs in the dusty field and watched Oppenheimer on the stage, shaking Groves’ hand and accepting the Certificate of Appreciation from the secretary of war. Next to the squat figure of the general, stuffed into his dress uniform, and the row of well-fed dignitaries, Oppie stood apart, looking strikingly tall and thin, like the member of a separate, attenuated race. He had kept his hat on, and the wide brim cast a shadow across his face as he stood to speak. He was the one they had all come to see, and a hush fell over the crowd as he briefly and very eloquently summed up what they all felt in their hearts, but had not been able to express, After thanking the men and women of Los Alamos for their work, Oppenheimer told them, “It is our hope that in years to come we may look at this scroll, and all that it signifies, with pride.”

Today that pride must be tempered with concern. If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of the warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.

The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish. This war that has ravaged so much of the earth has written these words. The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand. Other men have spoken them, in other times, of other wars, of other weapons. They have not prevailed. They are misled by a false sense of human history who hold that they will not prevail today. It is not for us to believe that. By our works we are committed to a world united, before this common peril, in law, and in humanity.