Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days That Changed the World

“’Roosevelt was a great architect,’ Oppenheimer said. ‘Perhaps Truman will be a good carpenter.’”

The first major obstacle the Manhattan Project had to overcome upon Truman coming to office was, actually, Truman coming into office—there was no guarantee that Truman would even allow the project to continue. Oppenheimer had been overseeing the development of the atom bomb since the inception of the project, and he was anxious about the future of the work once he heard that FDR had died and Truman had been installed in his place. The only thing Oppenheimer could do was hope that Truman would be able to continue to support them in the same way that FDR had in getting the project up and running.

“’Dammit, you’ve got us moving,’ he said. ‘Now they can’t stop us.’”

Colonel Tibbets had grown exhausted with the anxiety of waiting in Utah for deployment orders and he knew that his crew needed to feel they were working towards something to continue functioning at a high level. He was given clearance at the outset that he simply needed to invoke the name of his mission—“Silverplate”—and he would be able to get anything he needed. When he demanded a transfer to the island of Tinian to begin the final stages of preparation, his commanding officer was pleased that now they would finally be able to move on without any interference.

“Covered in dense foliage, hills, and trees and honeycombed with caves and bunkers, Okinawa bristled with tens of thousands of Japanese determined to fight to the death. The enemy, even raw conscripts, did not believe in surrender.”

One of the most difficult realizations of the war was the reality of how the Japanese military forces saw their own mission: they were completely dedicated to the cause to the point of death. The loyalty Japanese soldiers held for their nation’s military cause, and their complete unwillingness to surrender, was something that the Allied forces had not always encountered while fighting in Europe. The Japanese military ethos made it all the more difficult to consider a land invasion of Japan as a real possibility that would not result in an unprecedented amount of carnage.

“In 1933, when Hitler came to power in Germany, Nazi persecution of the Jews prompted hundreds of the world’s top scientists, professors, and researchers to flee the country.”

Nazi discrimination and abuse caused many Jewish intellectuals to emigrate to the United States before the outbreak of the war. This fact made it possible for these great minds to contribute to the war effort in any way that they could, and many of these scientists and researchers were able to accelerate the research and development that would contribute to the Allied victory.

“The report concluded: ‘Atomic energy if controlled by the major peace-loving nations, should ensure the peace of the world for decades to come. If misused it can lead our civilization to annihilation.’”

The Groves Report—named after General Groves—was a lengthy and detailed report of the scope and aims of the Manhattan Project that was presented to President Truman. The Groves Report explained the nature of nuclear fission and the expected/hypothesized result of such a reaction when harnessed for the sake of weaponization. It was the single most detailed report on the matter that would precede the eventual completion and use of the bomb, and it provided most of the details with which Truman would come to make his final decision about if, and when, to use the bomb.

“Truman understood how the bomb could shorten the war dramatically. But he was also concerned with its short-term implications for international relations, especially with the Russians, and long-term consequences for the planet.”

The question of whether the bomb would be used—or if it was ethical to use the weapon in the first place—would continue to plague Truman for months. Quite apart from that initial concern, however, were the additional secondary concerns about how the use of the weapon would affect international relations, especially relations with the Soviet Union. There were also questions as to how the weapon would affect the future of the planet, both ecologically and politically. Truman realized that this choice would likely be the single most important decision he would ever have to make.

“Truman reminded Americans the war in Europe might be over, but the Far East was ‘still in bondage to the treacherous tyranny of the Japanese.’”

One of the many problems that surfaced in the decision of whether or not to employ the atom bomb was the continued impatience and struggle of the American people as a whole. Morale was beginning to wane ever since German surrender had not brought about a total end to the war. Everyone thought that once the Nazis had surrendered, the war was all but over; Japanese obstinance had squashed those dreams, however, and Truman realized that he had a duty to end the war as quickly as possible if he could.

“Ruth monitored an essential step for building atomic bombs, but no one told her that. The cubicle operators never knew the science behind their machines.”

Many civilian workers were brought into the war effort during America’s fight against the Axis forces. Many civilians were also unaware of the precise nature of what they were actually doing; they had a vague idea that they were working on something with a military application, but the exact nature of the project was top-secret and therefore, never revealed.

“Everyone agreed the first atomic explosion should be sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be fully recognized internationally.”

The team knew that the use of the bomb could not simply be an exercise of power and destruction for the target they had chosen—it also had to be an act that would be internationally recognized as a warning to all of America’s enemies as well. If the goal were purely about causing damage and destroying a particular military target, then it would be a practical concern, and nobody need think of the aftermath. This, however, was just as much a political statement as it was a military endeavor, and so the target and eventual attack had to be such that a very loud and clear statement was made.

“But by early 1945, Hiroshima was a different city. Bomb shelters were dug everywhere. Cisterns went up between houses throughout the neighborhood, for emergency water storage. Family life and school classes were interrupted for safety drills on how to extinguish fires started by incendiary bombs.”

Contrary to what some may think, the attack on Hiroshima was not a complete surprise. The exact timing of the attack, as well as the nature of it being a nuclear attack, was of course unexpected. However, it is very clear that Japan expected Hiroshima to be a target at some point during the war because of how developed its defensive preparations had become. Since the country as a whole, and the residents of the city also, expected Hiroshima to eventually become a target, they were more than prepared in building defensive infrastructure, and even evacuated their children for months at a time.

“The country was tired of war. More than three years after the Pearl Harbor attack, every aspect of American life continued to revolve around the conflict.”

Once the attack on Pearl Harbor had happened, the American war effort on the home front was a unified and optimistic affair. However, as the war dragged on and the years went by with no immediate end in sight, the American public began to flag in their enthusiasm for making the same sacrifices and work with the same effort. The entire country was caught up in existing in a state of war, and the country as a whole had begun to wear down.

“Stimson abhorred this war of massive destruction. He was a soldier, yes, but also a humanist, a diplomat, a champion of international law and morality. He believed that war ‘must be restrained within the bounds of humanity.’ Airpower should be limited to ‘legitimate military targets.’ But World War II had upended noble rules of engagement. Germany and Japan had ruthlessly targeted civilians in cities and towns and herded ‘undesirables’ into death camps.”

Harry Stimson, the war secretary, considered himself to be a man of honor. The problem with this is the fact that Germany and Japan had turned the war into a parade of horrors, intentionally causing as much death, destruction, and suffering to the civilian population as had ever been seen in the history of warfare. The only response to this seemed to be an equally severe and unmitigated act of retaliation that under other circumstances would be considered unthinkable—the intentional targeting of a civilian population—but that the war had seemed to make the only possible choice.

“For weeks, Truman had listened to different opinions about the atomic bomb. The Interim Committee recommended using it as soon as possible against Japan—and without warning—'to make a profound psychological impression on as many inhabitants as possible.’”

Between the two extremes of using the atom bomb to end the war and risking what would come with a full-scale invasion of the Japanese mainland lay the choice to use the bomb, but not on an actual populated target. It was possible, suggested some of Truman’s advisors, that merely demonstrating the bomb’s destructive capabilities would be enough to scare Japan into surrendering in an attempt to avoid a nuclear attack on their own people.

“General Marshall’s staff believed that the full ground campaign to defeat Japan—code name ‘Downfall’—would cost 500,000 to a million lives. The invasion of the main island of Honshu would not begin until March 1946. In other words, the war would drag on for months, perhaps years.”

Looming in the back of Truman’s mind as he continued to mull over the possibilities of launching a nuclear attack was the fact that the only other option would likely double or triple the American death toll of those lost in combat. The idea that it would likely cost as many (or more) lives just to invade Japan as had been lost in the entire war up to that point was an unthinkably horrible thing to contemplate.

“Leo Szilard’s petition demanding limits on the use of atomic weapons made the rounds at Los Alamos, and many scientists agreed the military should demonstrate the bomb’s destructive possibilities in a test explosion, rather than dropping it on a city filled with innocent civilians.”

A significant number of the scientists who were working on developing the atom bomb were worried about what their work could accomplish when released into the world without regulations and strict guidelines for its use. Szilard started a petition demanding that the weapon’s use be highly regulated, and he and many others were part of the growing coalition that thought the best course of action would be to simply test the bomb—demonstrating its power—rather than to actually deploy it against a civilian target.

“They said girls always had trouble with physical chemistry. So, before she could move on, she’d have to take a Harvard undergraduate physical chemistry class.”

Lilli Hornig was a brilliant chemist, as was her husband, but the academic standards at the time were generally biased against the participation of women in academia and higher education. While at Harvard, she was forced to undergo the indignity of taking a lower-level class on the basis of her gender alone. Hornig conformed to the system only in order to complete her degree. She was eventually hired to work on the Manhattan Project as a core member of the development team.

“Groves abhorred communism, but he knew many of the scientists in the Manhattan Project had dabbled in the ideology. Europe between the wars was full of anarchists, socialists, and freethinkers of every stripe—and many of them were university professors and scientists.”

One of the paradoxes of the Manhattan Project was the fact that the country was about to go into a state of high alert in regard to communism and those sympathetic to the communist ideology, and yet the means to end the war against the fascist regime of the Nazis was headed by those with ties to communist regimes and thinkers. Many of the scientists were the children of immigrants who had fled brutal regimes in the previous decades, and so the security threat to a secret as big as the atom bomb was massive due to the personal ties many of those on the project still maintained.

“When Oppenheimer came to shake Bainbridge’s hand, the soldier did not take hold. He looked Oppenheimer in the eye and said, ‘Now we’re all sons of bitches.’”

Once the bomb was actually dropped, the scientists felt that they were now just as complicit in the violence that had been raging for the better part of a decade. While they were not combatants or soldiers, those responsible for the creation of the weapon were now just as involved in the war as those who had personally marched on enemy territory.

“Almost three months after the Nazis surrendered, most American soldiers and sailors who’d fought in Europe were still there.”

When Nazi Germany surrendered, many American citizens simply assumed that the war was over. As the months went by without an end to the war, people began to realize that it was only half-finished thanks to the continuing involvement of Japan, and the fathers, husbands, and brothers so many families had expected to be on their way home had remained overseas, either in combat or in waiting to be deployed in the push to invade and conquer Japanese resistance.

“’Honor and existence’ meant allowing the emperor to remain in some position of power. That would bring ‘the war to an end.’ But if the United States continued to insist on ‘unconditional surrender’ and the emperor’s removal from the Chrysanthemum Throne, the Japanese would continue ‘to wage a thorough-going war.’”

History may have turned out differently if the Allied forces had not demanded an unconditional Japanese surrender from the very start. If the demand to the Japanese had been something short of unconditional surrender, then it is possible that Japan would have capitulated before the use of the atom bomb became a genuine possibility, and the nuclear strike may never have happened. As it was, however, the terms for surrender were that it be unconditional, forcing the Japanese to resist submission out of principle and pride.

“Despite all his misgivings, Truman knew he had to drop the bomb. The Manhattan Project had given him a weapon to potentially end the war. And no matter how devastating their losses, the Japanese refused to surrender. They left him no choice.”

The refusal to surrender by the Japanese was unexpected but not surprising. Germany had been able to see its forces dwindling and realized that the war had slipped from their fingers. Japan, on the other hand, took the opposite view and bunkered down with even more determination to fight to the bitter end. The battle for Okinawa in the previous months had demonstrated their resilience, and had proved that something out of the ordinary would have to be done if they were to end the war any time soon.

“Potsdam had brought into sharp world focus the struggle of two great ideas—the Anglo-Saxon democratic principles of government and the aggressive and expansionist police-state tactics of Stalinist Russia. It was the beginning of the ‘cold war.’”

The Potsdam Conference had not accomplished very much regarding the present situation of the war and what was to be done, beyond a flimsy reassurance by Stalin that he would soon join the war effort against Japan. What Potsdam had demonstrated at a more global level, however, was the fact that there was a deepening tension between the Soviet Union and America that would come to a head in the Cold War.

“Tibbets knew better than anyone. In his pocket was a cardboard pill box that contained twelve cyanide capsules. Flight surgeon Don Young had passed it across the colonel’s desk earlier in the day. ‘I hope you don’t have to use these,’ he said.”

One of the things that American soldiers sometimes carried with them into enemy territory were cyanide pills in case of capture. They were issued to the flight crew of the Enola Gay owing to the small possibility of being shot down over Japan and ending up as prisoners of war. Not only would taking the lethal pills prevent them from needing to undergo torture, but would also prevent any possibility of giving up the secrets of the Manhattan Project and America’s nuclear capabilities.