Pandora's Keepers (30 page)

Groves demanded an explanation from Szilard’s Met Lab boss—a military officer who had taken Szilard’s approach of going through
outside channels might well find himself court-martialed or transferred to some snowy base in Greenland. The usually even-tempered
Compton exploded in an answering letter to Groves. “I believe the reason for their action is that with regard to the Project
their responsibility to the nation is prior to and broader than their responsibility to the Army, and they felt that a situation
had developed in which they could not perform their duty to the nation working through me or through the Army.” Compton made
it clear to Groves that he shared their uneasy feelings:

The scientists who were responsible for initiating and developing this project have felt that its control has been taken from
them, that they are uninformed with regard to plans for its use and its development, and that they have had little assurance
that serious consideration of its broader implications is being given by those in a position to guide national policy. The
scientists will be held responsible, both by the public and by their own consciences, for having faced the world with the
existence of the new powers. The fact that the control has been taken out of their hands makes it necessary for them to plead
the need for careful consideration and wise action to someone with authority to act. There is no other way in which they can
meet their responsibility to society.

After pointing out that time and again their efforts to get their concerns to those with authority to act had been bottled
up in channels, Compton asked, “To whom then were the scientists to go in order to obtain an effective consideration of their
views on the use and further development of the Project?” He pointedly added that the Jeffries Report, which he had passed
to Groves, had not reached policy makers. The gentle Compton even permitted himself an attack on outgoing Secretary of State
Edward Stettinius for failing to explain the atomic dilemma to the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco
on April twenty-fifth. “His appreciation was so limited as possibly to serve as a hazard to the country’s welfare,” Compton
charged. He placed the blame for this squarely on Groves, who had briefed Stettinius about the bomb before the UN conference.
³⁸

To meet both Groves’s demand that scientists adhere to the chain of command and the Met Lab scientists’ concern that policy
makers consider their opinions about the use of the bomb, Compton organized a committee to study and report on the bomb’s
implications. Compton promised to deliver their findings personally in Washington.
³⁹
Chaired by Nobel laureate and Nazi refugee James Franck, the committee produced a perceptive study. Franck was a highly principled
physicist who had openly criticized the Nazis—a rare and courageous gesture—before being driven out of Germany. In 1934 he
went to Copenhagen to join his friend Bohr; later, he moved on to America—first to Johns Hopkins University and then to the
University of Chicago, which became his home. Other physicists considered Franck a saint and a martyr. Mournful looking, retiring,
and unpretentious, Franck fretted about the consequences of weapons work and had taken charge of the Met Lab’s chemistry section
in 1942 only after securing a promise from Compton that he would be heard at a high level when the time came to decide how
the bomb would be used.

The Franck Report took as its fundamental premise the fact that “the manner in which this new weapon is introduced to the
world will determine in large part the future course of events.” It warned that the bomb opened the way to “total mutual destruction”
of all nations. It predicted the almost limitless destructive power of nuclear weapons and the elusive security that any attempt
at monopoly would bring.
⁴⁰
And it stressed the widening gap between technological progress and traditional conceptions of war:

Nuclear bombs cannot possibly remain a “secret weapon” at the exclusive disposal of this country for more than a few years.
The scientific facts on which their construction is based are well known to scientists of other countries. Unless an effective
international control of nuclear explosives is instituted, a race for nuclear armaments is certain to ensue following the
first revelation of our possession of nuclear weapons to the world….

We believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for an early unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable.
If the United States were to be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would
sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race for armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching
an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.

The Franck Report argued against using the bomb, even “if one takes the pessimistic point of view and discounts the possibility
of an effective international control over nuclear weapons at the present time.” In this case, the report concluded, “the
advisability of an early use of nuclear bombs against Japan becomes even more doubtful—quite independently of any humanitarian
considerations. If an international agreement is not concluded immediately after the first demonstration, this will mean a
flying start toward an unlimited armaments race.” The report rested its argument against dropping the bomb on Japan on the
ground that announcing its existence to the world in this way would make international control virtually impossible. The report
urged instead a demonstration of the bomb over an uninhabited area before a group of international observers. “A demonstration
of the new weapon might best be made before the eyes of representatives of all the United Nations on the desert or a barren
island. This may sound fantastic, but in nuclear weapons we have something entirely new in order of magnitude of destructive
power, and if we want to capitalize fully on the advantage their possession gives us, we must use new and imaginative methods.”
The scientists hoped to shock the world into international cooperation.
⁴¹

Compton kept his word by accompanying Franck to Washington to discuss a preliminary draft of the report with Vice President
Wallace at a breakfast meeting arranged by Compton on April twenty-first.
⁴²
They also tried to see Secretary of War Stimson at the Pentagon on June twelfth, but the secretary did not make himself available.
Compton left the Franck Report for Stimson with a covering note that faulted it for failing to consider what Compton thought
was the most important issue at hand. “While it calls attention to difficulties that might result from the use of the bomb,”
wrote Compton, it “does not mention the probable net saving of many lives,
^*
nor that if the bomb were not used in the present war the world would have no adequate warning as to what was to be expected
if war should break out again.”
⁴³

Unlike Franck, who hoped to avert an atomic attack, Compton hoped such an attack would be the last terrible act of World War
II and serve notice that there must be no World War III. This grandson of pacifist Mennonites knew all too well the destruction
and human agony the bomb would cause; he had been living with this realization for four years. “But I wanted the war to end,”
Compton later wrote. “I wanted life to become normal again. I saw a chance for an enduring peace that would be demanded by
the very destructiveness of these weapons. I hoped that by use of the bombs many fine young men I knew might be released at
once from the demands of war and thus be given a chance to live and not to die.”
⁴⁴
Compton was especially haunted by the semester he had spent at the University of Cambridge in the fall of 1919. Among his
students that fall were many who had been crippled and blinded during the Great War. He often saw crutches leaning against
chairs in the lecture halls. It was a sadly poignant sight—they were so young. What had sunk most deeply into Compton’s soul
was not the sight of legless young men but the awareness that so many others who should have been there lay buried in the
mud of Flanders’ fields.

Compton took the Franck Report along with him to a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Panel in Los Alamos on June sixteenth.
The panel was meeting in Oppenheimer’s office that day when Stimson’s assistant George Harrison phoned and said they, not
the Interim Committee, should consider the Franck Report and examine the possibility of devising a nonmilitary demonstration
that would be sufficiently convincing to effect Japan’s surrender. Harrison’s call charging the panel to reconsider use of
the bomb against Japan in the light of the Franck Report created a tense and soul-searching atmosphere. Compton later described
the harsh dilemma that he and his three colleagues felt at that moment:

We were keenly aware of our responsibility as the scientific advisers to the Interim Committee. Among our colleagues were
the scientists who supported Franck in suggesting a nonmilitary demonstration only. We thought of the fighting men who were
set for an invasion which would be so very costly in both American and Japanese lives. We were determined to find, if we could,
some effective way of demonstrating the power of an atomic bomb without loss of life that would impress Japan’s warlords.
If only this could be done!

The difficulties of making a purely technical demonstration that would carry its impact effectively into Japan’s controlling
councils were indeed great. We had to count on every possible effort to distort even obvious facts. Experience with the determination
of Japan’s fighting men made it evident that the war would not be stopped unless these men themselves were convinced of its
futility.
⁴⁵

The possible failure of a demonstration bomb also worried them, as did the specter of a bloody invasion of Japan if the bomb
failed to end the war. But, of course, they had more than just the war in mind. In their opinion, the weapon’s postwar influence
depended on a widespread recognition of new realities—the new weapon required a new attitude toward war. If Japan did not
accept this view, the war might continue; if the Soviet Union ignored it, the peace would be lost. They concluded that combat
use of the bomb would make a deep impression on both countries, convincing those who needed to be convinced to end the war,
and persuading those who needed to be persuaded that postwar cooperation was imperative. Compelled initially by fear of German
progress, and now terrified by the consequences of their own success, these men of sensibility, culture, and peace were driven
to recommend policies that they would have found abhorrent in other circumstances.

There was not unanimous agreement, however. Lawrence again pressed for a demonstration, or at least an explicit warning, before
the bomb was dropped on Japan. Fermi also resisted. This was highly unusual. Fermi disliked expressing political opinions.
Now, he boldly argued not for a demonstration, but for no drop at all. Nations will always fight wars, he said, therefore
scientists could not responsibly place atomic bombs in national arsenals. It took Compton and Oppenheimer until 5:00 the following
morning to “talk him down,” Oppenheimer later noted.
⁴⁶
In the end, Fermi gave in, Compton and Oppenheimer’s logic prevailing: it was better to have the bomb used
once
so that people everywhere learned just how awful it was.
^*

Oppenheimer reported to Washington the panel’s conclusion that it could “propose no technical demonstration likely to bring
an end to the war” and that there was “no acceptable alternative to direct military use.” “Our hearts were heavy as we turned
in this report to the Interim Committee,” Compton later wrote. “We were glad and proud to have had a part in making the power
of the atom available for the use of man. What a tragedy it was that this power should become available first in time of war
and that it must first be used for human destruction.”
⁴⁷

Oppenheimer would later regret publicly the lack of farsightedness and political courage that the Scientific Advisory Panel
demonstrated at this crucial weekend meeting in June. His feeling of failure may have been compounded by the realization that
if he, Compton, Lawrence, and Fermi had endorsed the recommendation of the Franck Report that weekend, their endorsement might
have forced a high-level reconsideration of use-without-warning. But then no one in Washington, either, spent a fraction of
the time and thought reviewing the arguments of the Franck Report that its drafters put into formulating them. The remarkably
prescient report made little impression on policy makers who saw their first responsibility as ending the war victoriously.

Compton, Lawrence, Oppenheimer, and Fermi also had made ending the war, rather than the bomb’s impact after the war, their
controlling consideration. This was not surprising. To have acted otherwise, at the time and under the circumstances, would
have required political vision and courage that the atomic scientists, at this juncture, did not possess. This was clear when,
having made their recommendation to Stimson, they added: “With regard to these general aspects of the use of atomic energy,
it is clear that we, as scientific men, have no proprietary rights. It is true that we are among the few citizens who have
had occasion to give thoughtful consideration to these problems during the past few years. We have, however, no claim to special
competence in solving political, social, and military problems which are presented by the advent of atomic power.”
⁴⁸
To some extent, they were just being polite. But to another, their recusal was evidence that despite increasing awareness,
they subscribed to the axiom—common in their day—that scientists should not offer political judgments. Their attitude would
change dramatically in subsequent years.

Bohr, however, felt no reluctance about speaking out. After the May thirty-first Interim Committee meeting, Oppenheimer went
over to the British Embassy, where Bohr was staying. “I met Bohr and tried to comfort him,” Oppenheimer remembered later,
“but he was too wise and too worldly to be comforted…. He [was] quite uncertain about what, if anything, would happen.”
⁴⁹
Tellingly, Oppenheimer added this about Bohr (and himself) years later: “He was for statesmen; he used the word over and
over again. He was not for committees and the Interim Committee was a committee.”
⁵⁰