The Age of Radiance (40 page)

Survivor Kiyoshi Tanimoto, however, had a revolutionary idea for him and his fellow A-bomb victims to consider. Tanimoto traveled across the United States giving a lecture, “The Faith That Grew out of the Ashes,” to American church groups:
“The people of Hiroshima, aroused from the daze that followed the atomic bombing of their city on August 6, 1945, know themselves to have been part of a laboratory experiment which proved the longtime thesis of peacemakers. Almost to a man, they have accepted as a compelling responsibility their mission to help in preventing further similar destruction anywhere in the world. . . . The people of Hiroshima . . . earnestly desire that out of their experience there may develop some permanent contribution to the cause of world peace. Towards this end, we propose the establishment of a World Peace Center, international and nonsectarian, which will serve as a laboratory of research and planning for peace education throughout the world.” In 1949, the Japanese legislature passed a law calling Hiroshima a Peace Memorial City, leaving the ruins of the Hiroshima Industrial Promotion Hall as they were—it is now called the A-Bomb Dome—and set aside funds for a park designed by Kenzo Tange, with its signature sculpture a
haniwa
cenotaph—a house of the dead.

W
hen after Hiroshima, the Japanese did not unconditionally surrender, Truman approved the dropping of Fat Man on the city of Kokura. The date was set for August 11, but weather predictions made that a problem, so it was moved up to the ninth. That switch meant the plane set for the drop, the
Great Artiste
, couldn’t be converted from its role as instrument plane at Hiroshima in time, so instead its crew and pilot, Chuck Sweeney, had to fly
Bockscar
instead.

On August 9, 1945, William Laurence, the writer Leslie Groves had hired from the
New York Times
to explain the Manhattan Project to the general public, joined the squadron, again on the
Great Artiste
:

As I peered through the dark all around us, I saw a startling phenomenon. The whirling giant propellers had somehow become great luminous discs of blue flame. The same luminous blue flame appeared on the Plexiglas windows in the nose of the ship, and on the tips of the giant wings it looked as though we were riding the whirlwind through space on a chariot of blue fire. . . . I express my fears to Captain Bock, who seems nonchalant and imperturbed at the controls. He quickly reassures me: “It is a familiar phenomenon seen often on ships. I have seen it many times on bombing missions. It is known as St. Elmo’s Fire.” . . .

Based on earlier weather reports, the crew of Bockscar flew to Kokura fully expecting to drop its bomb on the city and return quickly to Okinawa. Upon arrival, however, the military arsenal at Kokura was obscured by industrial haze and smoke from a nearby fire. The bombardier had specific orders not to drop the bomb unless he could see the target. Three times Sweeney passed overhead, but without success. With the fuel supply now an even greater concern and enemy flak becoming a problem, Sweeney took Bockscar on the most direct route to Nagasaki.

Conditions at Nagasaki were even worse than they had been at Kokura, with cloud cover now as great as nine-tenths. With no possibility of reaching Okinawa with its heavy bomb aboard, a decision had to be made. Ashworth decided that rather than “waste” the multi-million dollar bomb by dumping it into the ocean, the “Fat Man” should be dropped by radar over the Nagasaki target. Less than thirty seconds before the bomb was due to be dropped by radar, an opening appeared in the clouds and Beahan shouted that he could make a visual drop. . . .

Despite the fact that it was broad daylight in our cabin, all of us became aware of a giant flash that broke through the dark barrier of our ARC welder’s lenses and flooded our cabin with an intense light.

We removed our glasses after the first flash but the light still lingered on, a bluish-green light that illuminated the entire sky all around. A tremendous blast wave struck our ship and made it tremble
from nose to tail. This was followed by four more blasts in rapid succession, each resounding like the boom of cannon fire hitting our plane from all directions.

Observers in the tail of our ship saw a giant ball of fire rise as though from the bowels of the earth, belching forth enormous white smoke rings. Next they saw a giant pillar of purple fire, 10,000 feet high, shooting skyward with enormous speed.

By the time our ship had made another turn in the direction of the atomic explosion the pillar of purple fire had reached the level of our altitude. Only about 45 seconds had passed. Awestruck, we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. It was no longer smoke, or dust, or even a cloud of fire. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes.

At one stage of its evolution, covering millions of years in terms of seconds, the entity assumed the form of a giant square totem pole, with its base about three miles long, tapering off to about a mile at the top. Its bottom was brown, its center was amber, its top white. But it was a living totem pole, carved with many grotesque masks grimacing at the earth.

Then, just when it appeared as though the thing had settled down into a state of permanence, there came shooting out of the top a giant mushroom that increased the height of the pillar to a total of 45,000 feet. The mushroom top was even more alive than the pillar, seething and boiling in a white fury of creamy foam, sizzling upwards and then descending earthward, a thousand old faithful geysers rolled into one.

It kept struggling in an elemental fury, like a creature in the act of breaking the bonds that held it down. In a few seconds it had freed itself from its gigantic stem and floated upward with tremendous speed, its momentum carrying into the stratosphere to a height of about 60,000 feet.

But no sooner did this happen when another mushroom, smaller in size than the first one, began emerging out of the pillar. It was as though the decapitated monster was growing a new head.

As the first mushroom floated off into the blue it changed its shape into a flower-like form, its giant petal curving downward, creamy white outside, rose-colored inside. It still retained that shape when we last gazed at it from a distance of about 200 miles.

Nagasaki resident Sumiteru Taniguchi:

At night, the town, the mountain, and the factories were all on fire, and it was as light as day. Amidst it all, people still searched for families and relatives. I saw an American plane coming down low to shoot these people. When that plane went up again, one stray bullet hit a rock, making a sharp sound. That rock was next to where I was lying.

In the early hours, it started to rain, so I could swallow some water from the leaves. When the morning came, no one lying with me was still alive. And when the rescue team arrived, they thought I was dead like the others. I tried asking for help, but I couldn’t muster the strength, so I was left there for two more nights. . . .

Most victims of the A-bomb said that they became infested with maggots, but it took me over a year to have flies lay eggs on me. Even a small fly could not dare to come near my body. A professor of biochemistry said that maybe my body exerted a kind of smell that repelled the flies.

The Japanese would come up with a special term to describe those who survived the American attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—
hibakusha
—“explosion-affected persons.” Shunned as filthy and contagious by the cleanliness-is-godliness culture of Japan, for over a decade the government did nothing to help these people.

T
he actual use of their creation would now split the paradise of Los Alamos into battling camps for the whole of the Cold War. Physicist Robert Wilson:
“The day after Trinity. We had done our job, and now the questions had become ‘What had we done, and what did it mean?’ Most of us stopped the physics that we were doing and began to think hard about that meaning. Three weeks later, the bomb was used at Hiroshima, then we knew, existentially, I suppose, what we had done, and we knew that it should not happen again. We knew that we, also, had not done our job, as perhaps we had thought before. We knew that we, not the army, not the government, should do our best to bring about a general understanding of the mysteries and implications of nuclear energy. We began thinking anew, as social beings and as citizens. We had many arguments. The arguments became furious at times on the hill. Some were agonizing, some were furious, and the wives joined in, all the people on the hill joined in. Five hundred people were involved, and in another
three weeks, we had organized the Association of Los Alamos Scientists to help us with what we had appointed ourselves to do: to tell other people about what we would do to have it not happen again.”

A few months later, Robert Oppenheimer remarked that the physicists involved in the Manhattan Project had
“known sin.” Johnny von Neumann’s response: “Sometimes, someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it.” Oppie then began his acceptance speech of the army-navy’s Excellence Award on November 16, 1945, with “It is with appreciation and gratefulness that I accept from you this scroll for the Los Alamos Laboratory, and for the men and women whose work and whose hearts have made it. It is our hope that in years to come we may look at the scroll and all that it signifies, with pride. Today that pride must be tempered by a profound concern. If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of the nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.”

Ed Teller:
“Oppenheimer seemed to lose his sense of balance, his perspective. After seeing the pictures from Hiroshima, he determined that Los Alamos, the unique and outstanding laboratory he’d created, should vanish. When asked about its future, he responded, ‘Give it back to the Indians.’ ” Robert Wilson:
“I have to explain about Oppie: About every five years, he would have a personality crisis. He would change his personality. I mean, when I knew him at Berkeley, he was the romantic, radical-bohemian sort of person, a thorough scholar. Then at Los Alamos, he was the responsible, passionate person that we all knew so well there and who was so effective. Later on then, he had another metamorphosis, becoming the high-level statesman who could call [Secretary of State Dean] Acheson by his first name (and such other high-level people), but as a result of that was able to put forward the international plan for controlling atomic energy through the United Nations that we had all agreed was the necessary ingredient for continued survival.”

Ernest Lawrence, meanwhile, hosted a V-J day celebration for Rad Labbers at Trader Vic’s, where the bartender created an A-Bomb cocktail—rum, blue curaçao, and dry ice to make it bubble and smoke. Lawrence’s wife, Molly, remembered it well:
ghastly
.

In the autumn of 1946, Leo Szilard visited Albert Einstein, and they reminisced over the correspondence with Roosevelt that had started it all. Einstein insisted that this was a lesson to be learned:
“You see now that the ancient Chinese were right. It is not possible to foresee the results of what you do. The only wise thing to do is to take no action—to take absolutely no
action.” He later declared,
“Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would not have lifted a finger.”

In the ensuing decades, Americans would ask themselves: Was the Bomb necessary? After Nagasaki and Japan’s surrender, 85 percent of the American public supported Truman’s decision for a simple reason: it had ended the war. In April 1945, the US Joint Chiefs had approved Operation Downfall, a November 1 invasion of Japan, beginning with 700,000 Americans landing on Kyushu and eventually an invasion force of 1,532,000 Allied soldiers—bigger than D-day. George Marshall estimated that forty thousand would die; Secretary of War Stimson thought the mortality would fall between half a million and a million. So in this telling, dropping two atomic bombs saved the lives of hundreds of thousands, and many believe to this day that a scientific breakthrough closed that chapter of human suffering. Luis Alvarez:
“What would Harry Truman have told the nation in 1946 if we had invaded the Japanese home islands and defeated their tenacious, dedicated people and sustained most probably some hundreds of thousands of casualties and if the
New York Times
had broken the story of a stockpile of powerful secret weapons that cost $2,000,000,000 to build but was not used, for whatever reasons of strategy or morality?”