ATOMIC WEAPONS:

THEIR DEVELOPMENT, THEIR CONSEQUENCES

L. M. Freer FIT/SUNY Fall 2013

Atomic Weapons Development

Originally a wild idea developed by research scientists, the Manhattan Project originated within the National Defense Research Committee.
I wish that the physicist who fished uranium in the first place had waited a few years before he sprung this particular thing on an unstable world. However, we have the matter in our laps and we have to do the best we can. Vannevar Bush

Funded by the government, most of the early atomic research continued to happen at universities. The first controlled atomic chain reaction was achieved at the University of Chicago in 1942, on the grounds of their football field.

Recent developments indicate, briefly, that the subject is more important than I believed when I last spoke to you about it. The stuff will apparently be more powerful than we then thought letter from Vannevar Bush to FDR, March 9 1942

An atomic chain reaction may be compared to the burning of a rubbish pile from spontaneous combustion. In such a fire, minute parts of the pile start to burn and in turn ignite other tiny fragments. When sufficient numbers of these fractional parts are heated to the kindling points, the entire heap bursts into flames. Enrico Fermi, Fermis Own Story

The Manhattan Project

In 1942, atomic research was officially transferred to Allied (American) military control. The scale of the operation increased dramatically.
After August 13, 1942, the whole plan became known under the code name of either the DSM (development of substitute materials) or the Manhattan Project. From then on the atomic experts were simply designated scientific personnel and obliged to submit to the strict rules of military secrecy. ...They accepted as obvious the rule that they were to publish no more of their discoveries until after the war. ... But the military authorities went much further than this prohibition. They erected invisible walls round every branch of research, so that no department ever knew what any other was doing.

To everyone who is given the opportunity to see for himself the refined laboratory equipment and the gigantic production machinery, it is an unforgettable experience... Today physicists and engineers are, on the basis of firmly established knowledge, controlling and directing violent reactions by which new materials far more precious than gold are built up, atom by atom. ... The whole undertaking constitutes, indeed, a far deeper interference with the natural course of events than anything ever before attempted., and it must be realized that the success of the endeavours has created a quite new situation as regards human resources. The revolution in industrial development which may result in the coming years cannot at present be surveyed, but the fact of immediate preponderance is, that a weapon of devastating power far beyond any previous possibilities and imagination will soon become available. letter from scientist Niels Bohr to British prime minister Winston Churchill, May 22, 1944

Ghost Cities
Nearly 150,000 people worked on the Manhattan Project. Only a handful knew the works true purpose. The vast majority of them did not know what they were working on until the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

The three principal Manhattan Project sites were secret cities where 125,000 people worked and lived and were not on any maps during World War II. Secrecy was paramount and the sites were referred to only by their code names, X, Y, and Z. Employees were issued badges and drivers licenses had numbers without any names.

The notion of disappearing into the New Mexico desert for an indeterminate period and under quasi-military auspices disturbed a good many scientists, and the families of many more. But there was another side to it. Almost everyone realized that this was a great undertaking. ... Almost everyone knew that it was an unparalleled opportunity to bring to bear the basic knowledge and art of science for the benefit of his country. Almost everyone knew that this job, if it were achieved, would be part of history. J. Robert Oppenheimer (scientist in charge at the Los Alamos site)

Life at Los Alamos

I was one of the women thus bound for an unknown and secret place. I can tell you nothing about it, my husband said. Were going away, thats all. ...It is never easy to say goodbye to beloved and familiar patterns of living. It is particularly difficult when you do not know what substitute for them will be offered you. Where was I going and why was I going there? I plied my husband with questions which he steadfastly refused to answer. ... I felt akin to the pioneer women accompanying their husbands across uncharted plains westward, alert to danger, resigned to the fact that they journeyed, for weal or for woe, into the Unknown. ... The world I had known of friends and family would no longer be real to me. Why, my parents were not even allowed to come to Santa Fe on a pleasure trip! The only bridge between us would be a shadowy one of censored letters. By a rapid transmutation, my husband and I had become different people. He could not even admit that he was a physicist; his profession was engineer.

The fence penning Los Alamos was erected and guarded to keep out the treasonable, the malicious, and the curious. This fence has a real effect on the psychology of the people behind it. It was a tangible barrier, a symbol of our isolated lives. Within it lay the most secret part of the atomic bomb project. Los Alamos was a world unto itself, an island in the sky. Ruth Marshak, wife of physicist Robert Marshak

The Trinity Test

On July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The Trinity test, as it was known, spread radioactive fallout over 1000 miles or as far away as Indiana.

Sand fused into glass by the Alamogordo test, 1945

With President Trumans warm support I struck off the list of suggested targets the city of Kyoto. Although it was a target of considerable military importance, it had been the ancient capital of Japan and was a shrine of Japanese art and culture. We determined that it should be spared. Henry L. Stimson, then Secretary of War

Hiroshima
The first atomic bomb used in wartime, Little Boy, was dropped on Hiroshima by the airplane Enola Gay on August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM local time. 140,000 people were immediately killed, and 79,000 injured. Over 50,000 buildings were completely destroyed.
It took forty-three seconds from the time the bomb left the airplane to the time it exploded. Everyone was counting to forty-three. One-thousand one, one-thousand two... I was fortunate, I had a watch. But I think we had all concluded that it was a dud. We were nervous, counting fast or something because all of a sudden we saw the bright flash inside the airplane and knew that the bomb had exploded. Theodore Van Kirk, navigator on the Enola Gay

The first to hear the news that distant Monday were those who happened to be near a radio at middayhousewives, children, the elderly, war workers enjoying a vacation day at home. ... the news spread by word of mouth. Many immediately perceived the nightmarish possibilities... The carefully orchestrated government press releases, illustrated with a set of officially approved photographs, only partially allayed the gathering fear and uncertainty. Paul Boyer, By the Bombs Early Light

The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles. President Truman, August 6 1945

Bombs and Consequences

The second atomic bomb used in wartime, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki by the airplane Bockscar on August 9, 1945, at 11:02 AM local time. 73,000 people were immediately killed, and 74,000 injured. Over 12,000 buildings were completely destroyed. Initially, the decision to drop the bombs was approved by 85% of Americans. This number waned in the years following the war, as the consequences of the bombings (radiation sickness, birth defects, etcetera) emerged.
Disease X: ...it is possible that the atomic bombs rare rays may cause deaths in the first class, as with delayed X-ray burns. But the second class has [Dr. Nakashima] totally baffled. These patients begin with slight burns which make normal progress for two weeks. They differ from simple burns, however, in that the patient has a high fever. ...where fever is present after two weeks, the healing of burns suddenly halts and they get worse. The burns come to resemble septic ulcers. .... Four to five days from this turn to the worse, they die. Their bloodstream has not thinned as in the first class, and their organs after death are found in a normal condition of health. But they are deaddead of the atomic bomband nobody knows why. George Weller, First Into Nagasaki, September 1945

This marble St. Agnes statue from Nagasaki fell facedown during the initial blast; its front was protected and its back scarred by radiation.

The Most Important Piece of Journalism of the Twentieth Century

When I was 12, I was so excited after hearing my friends dad tell heroic stories about his WWII adventures in Europe, I ran home to ask my dad what he did in the war. He simply replied, I was on the Manhattan Project. I wanted a heroic story so I prodded further: But what did you actually do? He quietly took John Herseys Hiroshima from the bookshelf and handed it to me. Read this. The story has haunted me ever since, and my dad has always refused to talk about the work he did as a young chemist on the Manhattan Project. John Martin Taylor, son of Thomas S. Taylor

May 1946: reporter John Hersey travels to Japan to research an article for the New Yorker. His story, Hiroshima, told the story of the bombing from the point of view of six survivors. It took up the entirety of the August 31, 1946 issue of the magazine, became a bestseller when published in book form, and was later judged the most important piece of journalism of the twentieth century.

Postwar Nuclear Concerns

The Germans never mastered nuclear fission during the war, but by 1949, the Soviets had atomic bombs of their own. One of the most pressing concerns of the United Nations during the immediate postwar period was the regulation of nuclear materials. After WWII, the United States continued to develop and test atomic weaponry. In 1963, the U.S. and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which banned the testing of nuclear devices on land, at sea, or in space.
The situation calls for the most unprejudiced attitude towards all questions of international relations. Indeed, proper appreciation of the duties and responsibilities implied in world citizenship is in our time more necessary than ever before. On the one hand, the progress of science and technology has tied the fate of all nations inseparably together, on the other hand, it is on a most different cultural background that vigorous endeavors for national selfassertion and social development are being made in the various parts of our globe. Niels Bohr, letter to the United Nations, June 9 1950