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<v Narrator 1>In August of 1945, the city of Hiroshima was destroyed in about nine <v Narrator 1>seconds by a single atomic bomb. <v Narrator 1>The man responsible for building the bomb was a gentle and eloquent physicist <v Narrator 1>named Jay Robert Oppenheimer. <v Narrator 1>This is the story of Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb. <v Haakon Chevalier>Stinson Beach, California, August 7th, 1945. <v Haakon Chevalier>Dear Oppy, you're probably the most famous man in the world today. <v Haakon Chevalier>And yet I am not sure that this letter will reach you. <v Haakon Chevalier>But if it does, I want you to know that we are very proud of you. <v Haakon Chevalier>And if it doesn't, you will know it anyway. <v Haakon Chevalier>[music plays] We have been irritated by your reticence these past few years. <v Haakon Chevalier>But under the itchy surface, we knew that it was all right. <v Haakon Chevalier>That the ?work? was progressing, that the heart was still there, and the warm being we <v Haakon Chevalier>have known and cherished. <v Haakon Chevalier>I can understand now, as I could guess then, the somber note <v Haakon Chevalier>in you during our last meetings.
<v Haakon Chevalier>There is a weight in such a venture which few men in history have had to bear. <v Haakon Chevalier>I know that with your love of men, it is no light thing to have had a part <v Haakon Chevalier>and a great part in a diabolical contrivance for destroying them. <v Haakon Chevalier>But in the possibilities of death are also the possibilities of life. <v Haakon Chevalier>You have made history. <v Haakon Chevalier>We are happy for you. <v Hans Bethe>You may well ask why uh uh people <v Hans Bethe>with a kind heart and human- <v Hans Bethe>humanist feelings. <v Hans Bethe>Why they would uh go and work on weapons of mass destruction. <v Hans Bethe>[music plays]
<v Narrator 1>When J. Robert Oppenheimer was born in 1984, the atomic bomb was <v Narrator 1>not yet even science fiction. <v Narrator 1>He was educated at the Ethical Culture School in New York. <v Narrator 1>And mastered Harvard's curriculum in three years, summa cum laudi. <v Narrator 1>He spoke six languages and seriously considered becoming an architect, a poet or <v Narrator 1>a scientist. <v Narrator 1>But it was his love of physics that led him to England and Germany in the 1920s, <v Narrator 1>where the atom was beginning to yield its secrets to Einstein, Rutherford, and Borne. <v Narrator 1>European scientists would later remember him as the quick and eccentric <v Narrator 1>young American who devoured both theoretical physics and 16th century <v Narrator 1>French poetry. One of his best friends was the young American writer, Frances <v Narrator 1>Ferguson.
<v Frances Ferguson>Well, when I first knew him he knew nothing about politics. <v Frances Ferguson>He never read the newspaper. <v Frances Ferguson>Uh he was extremely ignorant about practical matters and he didn't care about <v Frances Ferguson>them. Uh and uh [stuttering] his whole <v Frances Ferguson>life was in the intellect. [music plays] <v Narrator 1>At the age of 25, he accepted an unusual dual professorship at the University <v Narrator 1>of California at Berkeley and at Cal Tech in Pasadena. <v Narrator 1>He brought with them the radically new understanding of the atom and the principles of <v Narrator 1>quantum mechanics. <v Robert Server>Quantum mechanics was comparatively new ?inaudible?. <v Robert Server>And it was, oh, he was opening a new world ?inaudible? <v Robert Server>he made it tremendous, tremendously exciting <v Robert Server>and fascinating, too. <v Robert Server>And in fact, very few of them didn't take- didn't come back and take it a second <v Robert Server>year [laughing]. <v Narrator 1>One of his graduate students was Robert Server. <v Robert Server>I think there was- remember one Russian lady, Miss ?inaudible?, her <v Robert Server>name was, who had taken it three times and the fourth year [chuckling] she
<v Robert Server>wanted to come back and and Robert to- refused to allow her into the course. <v Robert Server>She went on a hunger strike [laughed] and forced her way in. <v Robert Wilson>Something that might have taken me months to have learned before he <v Robert Wilson>would go over in minutes. <v Narrator 1>Robert Wilson, physicist. <v Robert Wilson>Very fast ?inaudible? in a very elegant manner. <v Robert Server>He was extremely quick and very impatient, had a very sharp tongue. <v Robert Server>Which he used on people. <v Robert Server>He actually terrorized the students when he first began to teach, <v Robert Server>[laughing] we were afraid to come into the same room for fear of a nasty <v Robert Server>remark. <v Narrator 1>[music plays] Robert Oppenheimer and his younger brother, Frank, were born into a wealthy <v Narrator 1>family and raised in New York City. <v Narrator 1>Throughout the 1930s, they spent their summers with friends at a small ranch leased by <v Narrator 1>the Oppenheimer family high in the Pecos wilderness of northern New Mexico. <v Frances Ferguson>When we first went there, uh we slept on the floor.
<v Frances Ferguson>A board floor. <v Frances Ferguson>We didn't have enough covers and we were pretty frozen by morning. <v Frances Ferguson>But [laughs] that didn't bother Robert much. <v Frances Ferguson>He was a fairly hardy fellow, although he didn't look that way. <v Frances Ferguson>He looked terribly frail, but he was pretty tough. <v Frances Ferguson>He eventually explored a large part of those mountains, probably knew more about <v Frances Ferguson>than almost anybody else. <v Frances Ferguson>And he would just get on his horse and put a chocolate bar in his <v Frances Ferguson>pocket and be gone for a day or two, at least. <v Frances Ferguson>Sleeping out, probably would see nobody else during the whole trip. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Everything my brother did would sort of be special. <v Frank Oppenheimer>If he went off in the woods to take a leak, he'd come back with a flower and not <v Frank Oppenheimer>to disguise the fact that he ?made? leak, but just to make it an occasion, I guess. <v Frank Oppenheimer>It was a wonderful time for all of us. <v Frank Oppenheimer>All the different guests, most of them physicists, um um brought some some
<v Frank Oppenheimer>ideas and new ideas with them. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Also, we- the meals were str- sort of strange. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Sort of peanut butter and Vienna sausages and whiskey, and we'd <v Frank Oppenheimer>get sort of drunk when we were high up and we'd all act kind of silly. <v Robert Server>[laughed] I've never been on a horse in my life. <v Robert Server>?inaudible? They gave us maps and they sent us off on this uh three day <v Robert Server>trip over the mountain mountain passes around 12,500 <v Robert Server>feet. You went out an absolute minimum <v Robert Server>of uh of equipment. Ya know, a bottle of whiskey and some graham crackers <v Robert Server>[laughs] and food and oats for the horses. <v Frank Oppenheimer>?inaudible? The rainy season, finally and we noticed it didn't rain quite as much at <v Frank Oppenheimer>night. So we started to ride at night. <v Frank Oppenheimer>And I don't know uh what we gained riding at night because it also rained <v Frank Oppenheimer>at night.
<v Robert Server>Imagine this, you're- you're riding <v Robert Server>on a mountain ridge at midnight in the middle of a thunderstorm, <v Robert Server>lightning hitting all around you. <v Robert Server>You come to a fork in the road, in the trail. <v Robert Server>And Robert said, look this way, it's only seven miles home. <v Robert Server>This way, it's a little longer, but it's much more beautiful [laughs]. <v Narrator 1>[marching]But far from the Pecos wilderness, far from Berkeley was Adolf Hitler. <v Narrator 1>And Robert Oppenheimer was a Jew with friends and relatives in Germany. <v Haakon Chevalier>He did not keep up with current events. <v Haakon Chevalier>He read novels or even philosophy books or serious books. <v Haakon Chevalier>But uh all of a sudden, and I think it was due in large part to Hitler <v Haakon Chevalier>and to the Nazi persecution of the Jew of the Jews that he suddenly uh- <v Haakon Chevalier>I think it must have been fairly suddenly he suddenly realized that things were
<v Haakon Chevalier>getting out of hand and that something had to be done about it by serious people. <v Haakon Chevalier>So he began reading- <v Narrator 1>Haakon Chevalier was a professor of French literature at Berkeley, <v Narrator 1>active in left-wing causes. <v Narrator 1>He and Oppenheimer grew to be close friends. <v Haakon Chevalier>On one of his many trips to the east, on the train, he had taken to the three volumes <v Haakon Chevalier>das Kapital and he had read them all in the original on his way to New York. <v Narrator 1>In German? <v Haakon Chevalier>In German, yes. And uh then shortly after, apparently he <v Haakon Chevalier>bought the complete works of Lenin and read those. <v Hans Bethe>He was a tremendous intellect. <v Hans Bethe>I don't believe I have known another person who was quite <v Hans Bethe>so quick in comprehending. <v Narrator 1>Hans Bethe. Nobel laureate. <v Hans Bethe>In comprehending both scientific and general <v Hans Bethe>knowledge.
<v Frank Oppenheimer>At uh Berkeley he'd read the Bhagavad Gita and learned Sanskrit and was really taken <v Frank Oppenheimer>by the charm and the kind of general wisdom <v Frank Oppenheimer>of the Bhagavad Gita. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Some people seem to think he was uh got very religiously involved <v Frank Oppenheimer>in it. But that ?inaudible? <v Frank Oppenheimer>true at true at all. <v Narrator 1>The late 1930s, while America enjoyed a Great Depression. <v Narrator 1>Fascism seized in Germany, a civil war raged in Spain and Oppenheimer <v Narrator 1>moved further to the left. <v Narrator 1>Kitty Harrison was a communist and had lost her first husband in the Spanish Civil <v Narrator 1>War. In 1940, she and Robert Oppenheimer were married. <v Narrator 1>Shortly before then, Robert's brother Frank and his wife, Jackie, had joined the <v Narrator 1>Communist Party in California. <v Narrator 1>Robert, not a joiner, stayed aloof from formal association, but his left wing <v Narrator 1>activities did attract official attention. <v Narrator 1>As war clouds gathered in Europe, the FBI added Oppenheimer's name to a list
<v Narrator 1>of people to be imprisoned in the event of national emergency. <v Hans Bethe>Back in 1938, uh Hahn and Strassmann <v Hans Bethe>in Germany discovered fission and many people realized <v Hans Bethe>very quickly that it might <v Hans Bethe>be possible to make atomic bombs. <v Hans Bethe>To use fission uh as an explosive. <v Hans Bethe>To use uranium as an explosive. <v Man 1>I first heard about- but I think Niels Bohr told me. <v Man 1>I think it was in Princeton and when I came back to Columbia and I told Enrico <v Man 1>Fermi about it, by uh the end of the day, he had calculated the, <v Man 1>uh, the depth of a crater, the size of a crater which one pound <v Man 1>would uh would give exploding. <v Robert Server>The first I heard about fission was uh a letter from Oppenheimer.
<v Robert Server>And the news had just gotten to Berkeley and he he wr- wrote to me, I gave <v Robert Server>a seminar on it that same day, and <v Robert Server>uh at uh ?inaudible?. I mean once it was one of these ideas. <v Robert Server>You know, uh once somebody told he said, how can I be <v Robert Server>so stupid not to have seen that before? <v Robert Server>[coughs] And I think even in the first letter, he mentioned the possibility of making a <v Robert Server>bomb. <v Freeman Dyson>So I suppose that [Narrator 1: Freeman Dyson, physicist] he was at that time <v Freeman Dyson>profoundly impressed with the precariousness of the allied situation. <v Freeman Dyson>That, after all, most of his friends were Europeans, many of them in countries which had <v Freeman Dyson>been occupied by the Germans. <v Freeman Dyson>The Germans looked as though they were the wave of the future at that time. <v Frank Oppenheimer>He said there's the danger that this <v Frank Oppenheimer>may mean the end of Western civilization.
<v Frank Oppenheimer>My brother viewed it as not just something persecuting <v Frank Oppenheimer>uh our own uh relatives, but as a kind of thing that could be a wave <v Frank Oppenheimer>that would walk over the United States as well. <v Hans Bethe>He wanted to help. <v Hans Bethe>He thought probably the best way to do this, where he had most <v Hans Bethe>competence would be in uh <v Hans Bethe>the atomic bomb work. <v Hans Bethe>And therefore, it was natural that for him, almost <v Hans Bethe>necessary for him that this is where he would put his effort. <v Hans Bethe>He built the atomic bomb or he didn't build it, <v Hans Bethe>but he led the effort to build the atomic bomb <v Hans Bethe>because he thought this was necessary to save <v Hans Bethe>Western civilization.
<v Narrator 1>It was feared that Nazi scientists were already building an atomic bomb in 1939 <v Narrator 1>when Albert Einstein informed President Roosevelt that such a thing was even possible. <v Narrator 1>The program Roosevelt initiated was small and had little momentum until December 7th, <v Narrator 1>1941. [explosion] The <v Narrator 1>day after Pearl Harbor, America declared war on Japan and Germany. <v Man 1>We had on the one side, this crazy nation and this demon in <v Man 1>Germany [Narrator 1: ?inaudible?] and uh these <v Man 1>funny people who didn't know what the Western world was about to tackle the United <v Man 1>States. <v Man 1>I mean, there was no question in my mind that uh something had to be done. <v Man 1>And furthermore, we weren't winning at all.
<v Robert Wilson>I was caught up in the war effort and ended with a patriotic <v Robert Wilson>fever that is hard to imagine nowadays. <v Robert Wilson>It's been so long since uh anything of that kind has motivated uh <v Robert Wilson>Amer- seems to have motivated Americans. <v Robert Wilson>And one would have done anything it was necessary to get on with the war. <v Narrator 1>The bomb project had a sudden urgency. <v Narrator 1>The U.S. Army was given charge and code named at the Manhattan district, with General <v Narrator 1>Leslie Groves in command and secret laboratories scattered across the country. <v Narrator 1>Groves put Oppenheimer in charge of a group at Berkeley to explore the basic scientific <v Narrator 1>requirements of an atomic bomb. <v Narrator 1>Oppenheimer, who had taken to wearing a rakish pork pie hat, took pleasure in his new <v Narrator 1>official title: Coordinator of Rapid Rupture. <v Freeman Dyson>That was the time when the the big change in his life occurred. <v Freeman Dyson>And it must have been during that time that the
<v Freeman Dyson>dream somehow got hold of him of- really <v Freeman Dyson>producing a nuclear weapon, which other people had been talking about, but he was the <v Freeman Dyson>fellow who really did it. <v Hans Bethe>It is a very different <v Hans Bethe>uh attitude if you want to find out the deep secrets <v Hans Bethe>of nature, which is what ?you? <v Hans Bethe>had wanted to do before. <v Hans Bethe>And on the other hand, if you want to to produce something, to <v Hans Bethe>produce a mechanism that works. <v Hans Bethe>It was a different problem, different attitude. <v Hans Bethe>And he completely changed to fit the new role. <v Hans Bethe>[music plays] <v Narrator 1>The Los Alamos Boys School high on a mesa 50 miles north of Santa <v Narrator 1>Fe, New Mexico, not far from the Oppenheimer Ranch.
<v Narrator 1>In the summer of 1942, students began to notice low flying military <v Narrator 1>aircraft overhead. One student was Sterling Colgate. <v Sterling Colgate>It was in the fall of 42 when uh this place was invaded <v Sterling Colgate>by uh an armada of uh <v Sterling Colgate>bulldozers and construction crew. <v Sterling Colgate>Uh suddenly, we uh knew that the war had arrived here and these two <v Sterling Colgate>uh characters showed up. Uh Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, <v Sterling Colgate>uh one wearing a pork pie hat and the other uh a suit and a normal hat. <v Sterling Colgate>And these two guys went around as if uh, well, one, they owned the place, <v Sterling Colgate>which evidently they did. But more than that, as if their pseudonyms was <v Sterling Colgate>a normal sort of thing to do. <v Sterling Colgate>My God. I mean, there their pictures were in our in our physics book, and we all had <v Sterling Colgate>physics. One is the lead theoretical physicist of his age <v Sterling Colgate>and the other uh uh head of a major laboratory who'd done a cyclotron <v Sterling Colgate>and things like that. So we immediately knew that one, uh uh they
<v Sterling Colgate>felt that it was so important to be Oppenheimer and Laurence that they had to <v Sterling Colgate>have a pseudonym, uh two that they were putting megabucks, uh <v Sterling Colgate>multi megabucks into what seemed to us the worst place in the world to have a laboratory. <v Narrator 1>Granting Oppenheimer's request for a single isolated lab where the bomb could be designed <v Narrator 1>and built, General Groves appropriated the remote school and officially named Oppenheimer <v Narrator 1>scientific director. Oppenheimer's first job was to convince scientists <v Narrator 1>and their families to join him for the duration of the war in a place he was not allowed <v Narrator 1>to identify to work on a project he was not always allowed to describe. <v Stan Ulam>Oh I was a young assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin [Narrator 1: Stan <v Stan Ulam>Ulam, mathematician and his wife, Françoise]. <v Stan Ulam>The war was on. <v Stan Ulam>I noticed that some other younger colleagues especially was disappearing <v Stan Ulam>from town. <v Stan Ulam>They couldn't tell where they were going.
<v Stan Ulam>Very secret. <v Stan Ulam>But when I learned ?that I am? <v Stan Ulam>supposed to go somewhere to New Mexico. <v Stan Ulam>uh Françoise wanted to know about the state of New Mexico. <v Stan Ulam>So I went to the library and borrowed one of these <v Stan Ulam>?WPA? books on various states and there was one volume in New Mexico. <v Stan Ulam>Then looking at this, I noticed that the back of the book, there was a list of <v Stan Ulam>previous borrowers, to my amazement, <v Stan Ulam>several names of people who ?just? disappeared a week or two before were <v Stan Ulam>put down [laughing] as borrowers. <v Narrator 1>[speaking] Robert Porten was a private in the army. <v Robert Porten>And I don't know how many people um viewing this program ever <v Robert Porten>had the pleasure of getting off a train at Lamy, New Mexico but uh <v Robert Porten>we've looked at it as if it were out of Siberia. <v Robert Porten>It was very strange. It was nothing but a lot of sand and sagebrush.
<v Robert Porten>And but there was a G.I. vehicle and uh and we got in still wondering where we <v Robert Porten>were and why we were there. <v Narrator 1>[music plays] Scientific and military personnel arrived from all over America, many <v Narrator 1>traveling under assumed names. <v Narrator 1>A station master in Princeton, New Jersey was baffled at the sudden demand for one <v Narrator 1>way tickets to the tiny station outside Santa Fe. <v Woman 1>It was a little bit awe inspiring to being in the middle of nowhere <v Woman 1>like this and not knowing what we were getting into. <v Woman 1>Uh not the slightest idea. <v Narrator 1>Next stop for newly arrived personnel was an inconspicuous building in Santa Fe. <v Narrator 1>Dorothy McKibbon was in charge of the tiny office. <v Dorothy McKibbon>Santa Fe was full of young FBI agents, middle <v Dorothy McKibbon>age agents and to some of us, they were quite discernable <v Dorothy McKibbon>because they were so well-dressed.
<v Narrator 1>What did they do? <v Dorothy McKibbon>They uh wore gray slacks and tweed jackets and shirt with <v Dorothy McKibbon>necktie. And they leaned against the walls of buildings and they hung around La Fonda <v Dorothy McKibbon>in the Capitol pharmacy and all restaurants. <v Robert Porten>We drove through Santa Fe and then a place called Espanola and then <v Robert Porten>hit some dips in the road and then started to climb. <v Robert Porten>And I had never been in mountainous country. It was very interesting. <v Man 2>I just finished reading the mount- Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann and of course <v Man 2>uh, to go to this mysterious mountain on the top of which there would be <v Man 2>a secret laboratory, uh which we would go into the doors would slam. <v Man 2>And the two years later, where we would come out bearing an atomic bomb. <v Stan Ulam>Very impressive, strange scenery, mountains, rocks, <v Stan Ulam>the desert. <v Stan Ulam>We crossed the Rio Grande. And arrived in a place full of little
<v Stan Ulam>well, how to call it? Almost huts. <v Narrator 1>Oppenheimer had brought scientists and their families fresh from distinguished campuses <v Narrator 1>all over the country. Ivied halls, soaring ?inaudible?, vaulted chapels. <v Narrator 1>Los Alamos was a boomtown, hastily constructed wooden buildings, dirt <v Narrator 1>streets, coal stoves and only five bathtubs. <v Robert Crohn>There were no sidewalks, the streets were all dirt. <v Robert Crohn>The water situation was always bad. <v Narrator 1>One young physicist was Robert Crohn. <v Robert Crohn>Was not at all unusual to open your faucet and <v Robert Crohn>have worms come out. <v Woman 1>Everybody was wearing Western clothes, jeans, boots, parkas. <v Woman 1>There was a feeling of mountain resort. <v Woman 1>In addition to army camp. <v Woman 1>The mixture was unbelievable. <v Woman 1>Then there was the awful mud. <v Narrator 1>The physicist Edward Teller had brought a piano and played Beethoven late into the
<v Narrator 1>night.Ffrom his cramped quarters in a four family dwelling, he could disturb more <v Narrator 1>Nobel laureates at once than he could have anywhere else in the world. <v Narrator 1>Oppenheimer had gathered the elite in physics, mathematics and chemistry to build <v Narrator 1>the atomic bomb. <v Hans Bethe>I don't believe there was ever before an assembly <v Hans Bethe>of so many first rate people for one task. <v Narrator 1>They, in turn recruited their best students, promising kids working side by side <v Narrator 1>with Nobel laureates. <v Woman 1>There was no class distinction between the small fry and the <v Woman 1>big shots. <v Freeman Dyson>When I first came to the United States, I got to know a lot of the young people who had <v Freeman Dyson>been at Los Alamos, most of them were very young. <v Freeman Dyson>They'd just gone right into it without even finishing their scientific training. <v Freeman Dyson>And for them, it was just the most marvelous time of their lives. <v Freeman Dyson>[music plays] <v Man 3>People worked hard. Scientists worked around the clock and people made up for the lack
<v Man 3>of big city life. And it was a lot of partying. <v Woman 1>We were very young and it was just like a camp out. <v Robert Crohn>Liquor was short in the area. So in order to spice up the parties, <v Robert Crohn>we used lab alcohol. <v Robert Crohn>Lab alcohol is 200 proof, basically. <v Robert Crohn>This is just exactly what you're looking for, for punch. <v Dorothy McKibbon>If you were in a large hall and you saw several groups of people, the largest groups <v Dorothy McKibbon>would be hovering around Oppenheimer. <v Dorothy McKibbon>He was great at a party and women simply loved him and still do. <v Woman 3>I found it e- extremely dashing in the sort of uh <v Woman 3>elegant way. <v Man 4>It was for these young people, not only a great experience, it was also fun, <v Man 4>it was it was a lot.
<v Robert Wilson>Yes, it was a good time. It was a good time in America. <v Robert Wilson>It was a good time to be American. It was uh a time when the whole country was pulling <v Robert Wilson>together uh and a uh and a cause, <v Robert Wilson>which even now, I think was just. <v Robert Wilson>That is the idea that the Nazis would uh uh Nazi Germany would win that <v Robert Wilson>war could've uh led to me it seemed to me a thousand years of dark <v Robert Wilson>ages and everything that we meant by civilization could have come to an end. <v Robert Wilson>That's what it seemed to me was what the fight was about. <v Robert Wilson>It was something pretty close to that. And most Americans felt that most Americans were <v Robert Wilson>in it just as uh as uh hard as they could be. <v Narrator 1>Their average age was 29 and their job was to construct a mechanism which would trigger <v Narrator 1>in a millionth of a second, a violent chain reaction. <v Narrator 1>They had two dance bands, a soda fountain, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, a radio <v Narrator 1>station with no call letters, a cyclotron and 7000 fire extinguishers.
<v Freeman Dyson>Somehow, Oppenheimer put this thing together. <v Freeman Dyson>He was the conductor of the orchestra or whatever it was. <v Freeman Dyson>Somehow he created this fantastic esprit. <v Freeman Dyson>No matter who you talk to, they all lived it. <v Freeman Dyson>And and they all, I think, almost without exception, felt it most strongly that <v Freeman Dyson>without him this wouldn't have happened. It couldn't have happened. <v Narrator 1>Oppenheimer had envisioned a small community of 30 scientists and their families. <v Narrator 1>But by 1944, he was in charge of a walled city of 6000. <v Narrator 1>The cost escalated to 56 million dollars. <v Narrator 1>Seven divisions: theoretical physics, experimental physics, ordinance, <v Narrator 1>explosives, bomb physics, chemistry and metallurgy. <v Hans Bethe>He knew and understood everything that went on in the laboratory <v Hans Bethe>whether it was chemistry or theoretical physics or machine shop. <v Hans Bethe>He could keep it all in his head and coordinated.
<v Hans Bethe>It was clear. I saw it ?inaudible? <v Hans Bethe>that he was intellectually superior to us. <v Freeman Dyson>The most striking contradiction is the fact that this man who was so <v Freeman Dyson>unworldly, so unpolitical in his youth, such a great scholar, <v Freeman Dyson>so fond of metaphysical poetry, should suddenly emerge as the great administrator <v Freeman Dyson>who put Los Alamos together and produced the atomic bomb. <v Robert Wilson>I saw him change from that almost irresponsible intellectual, <v Robert Wilson>bohemian- <v Woman 4>And radical. <v Robert Wilson>Radical person that he was that uh and that I had known at uh <v Robert Wilson>Berkeley uh to someone who was just completely <v Robert Wilson>dedicated to getting on with the war. <v Man 5>Well, I think it was a real stroke of genius. <v Man 5>And part of General Groves was not generally considered to be a genius, <v Man 5>uh to have appointed him, which was the most improbable appointment. <v Man 5>I was astonished.
<v Narrator 1>The professor and the general made an unlikely team. <v Narrator 1>When Groves took charge of the Manhattan Project in 1942, there was barely enough <v Narrator 1>plutonium in the world to cover the head of a pin and very little uranium 235. <v Narrator 1>These were the only elements that could fuel the Los Alamos bomb. <v Narrator 1>To produce U 235, Groves built a secret 44 acre building in Oak <v Narrator 1>Ridge, Tennessee. In Hanford, Washington giant reactors labored to produce <v Narrator 1>a few pounds of plutonium. <v Narrator 1>It was the most expensive scientific project in the history of the world. <v Narrator 1>General Groves distrusted liberals. <v Narrator 1>And yet, in spite of Oppenheimer's well-documented leftist background, Groves overruled <v Narrator 1>the astonished security officers who tried to block Oppenheimer's clearance. <v Frank Oppenheimer>He had arguments with Gen- General Groves, but I think they were mostly about sort of <v Frank Oppenheimer>trivial things like that, the fact that people were having too many babies and uh he <v Frank Oppenheimer>couldn't do anything about that. And when things came up um
<v Frank Oppenheimer>that were really important, I think General Groves usually supported him. <v Robert Server>He had the support Robert himself, against the intelligence <v Robert Server>people who, of course well, in fact, I'm not only- wouldn't have cleared Robert. <v Robert Server>They obviously wouldn't have cleared three quarters of the people on the uh [stuttering] <v Robert Server>place so- <v Narrator 1>Why not? <v Robert Server>Hmm? I mean, they were all moderately liberal, [laughs] <v Robert Server>moderately left-wing people. <v Narrator 1>[music plays] It was a new and strange world. <v Narrator 1>Barbed wire. Body guards, censored letters, secrets <v Narrator 1>from their wives and children. <v Robert Porten>Well, I'd written try to be so newsy when I was in Fort Leonard Wood and when I came <v Robert Porten>here I would write and say, I'm out here in the West and the scenery is beautiful <v Robert Porten>and the weather is just gorgeous.
<v Robert Porten>And my mother would write back and say, well, where are you really? <v Robert Porten>And what are you doing? And I would write back and say, I'm out here in the West and the <v Robert Porten>weather is gorgeous and the scenery is beautiful. <v Robert Porten>[laughing] And she never understood that until the war was over. <v Robert Porten>And I could explain it to her. <v Dorothy McKibbon>And you heard throughout the town that they were joking and saying it's a submarine <v Dorothy McKibbon>base to make windshield wipers for submarines. <v Dorothy McKibbon>Or it was a Navy installation or or something like that. <v Dorothy McKibbon>And they saw it as a great joke. <v Robert Server>G2 wanted a rumor spread in Santa Fe with er all kinds of speculation <v Robert Server>about what was going on at Los Alamos. <v Robert Server>They went in to get out a rumor that we were busy making electric rockets. <v Robert Server>And we we tried it. We went down <v Robert Server>and we tried to find the bar which is usually crowded. <v Robert Server>And of course, that night it was practic- ya know [chuckling] half deserted. <v Robert Server>And we talked as loudly as we could about electric rockets, but nobody seemed <v Robert Server>to pay any attention.
<v Robert Server>So then we went out to a workman's bar [laughs], much rougher <v Robert Server>and ?inaudible? than some some uh <v Robert Server>Spanish American came along and asked ?inaudible? <v Robert Server>she was trying to tell him about Los Alamos and he was trying to tell her that he what he <v Robert Server>wanted was a ranch to raise horses [laughs]. <v Robert Server>He couldn't have been less interested. <v Robert Server>And finally, I grabbed the guy at the g- bar and I took him by <v Robert Server>lapels and shook him and said, you know what we're doing here right now [laughs]? <v Robert Server>And he was so drunk. I'm sure he didn't remember a word of [laughs] the complete flop. <v Robert Server>It's not as easy as it sounds to be a spy. <v Narrator 1>Back in Berkeley, an industrial scientist named George Eltenton had approached <v Narrator 1>Oppenheimer's old friend Haakon Chevalier in 1943 with a request <v Narrator 1>that Chevalier convince Oppenheimer to share secrets with Russian scientists. <v Narrator 1>Chevalier refused. And when Oppenheimer passed through Berkeley on secret business, <v Narrator 1>Chevalier told him about the incident.
<v Haakon Chevalier>And I told Oppenheimer that this uh was not something that <v Haakon Chevalier>uh he could do anything about and that uh if there were to be such exchanges, they <v Haakon Chevalier>would have to be proposed on the highest levels of government and would have to be <v Haakon Chevalier>worked out in that way. And then he agreed that uh this would not <v Haakon Chevalier>be any- there was no possibility of doing anything. <v Haakon Chevalier>And that is all. And uh I forgot about it. <v Haakon Chevalier>And I think that he forgot about it for a long time too. <v Narrator 1>This seemingly insignificant conversation would later have enormous impact on the lives <v Narrator 1>of both men. <v Narrator 1>[explosion] In late 1944, American intelligence learned that the German atomic bomb <v Narrator 1>effort had failed. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, Los Alamos scientists <v Narrator 1>picked up the pace and began working six day weeks- <v Robert Wilson>Where everything was coming together. <v Robert Wilson>Everything was going at a very rapid rate. <v Robert Wilson>We were building up to the trinity test. <v Robert Wilson>At that time, we were a great deal of production of uh uh
<v Robert Wilson>devices to be used in the atomic bomb were being made. <v Robert Wilson>Everybody was working day and night. <v Robert Wilson>It was very hard in the in the push to make that <v Robert Wilson>uh test to stop and think. <v Dorothy McKibbon>I said, what do you young men do in the evening for pleasure? <v Dorothy McKibbon>And they said, we go back to the lab and stay to midnight [laughs]. <v Robert Wilson>As one would remember, I would walk oh- work almost every <v Robert Wilson>every night ?'til? I'd nearly drop, then go home, sleep a bit, and then come back uh <v Robert Wilson>Saturdays and Sundays, just constantly working. <v Robert Wilson>[airplanes flying] [explosions] <v Narrator 1>Across the Pacific, the war raged on against Japan. <v Narrator 1>But in the spring of '45, there was victory in Europe. <v Narrator 1>The Nazis had never come close to building an atomic bomb.
<v Narrator 1>Germany surrendered. <v Narrator 1>VE Day. <v Narrator 1>Eisenhower returned triumphant. <v Robert Wilson>I would like to have to think now that uh that I <v Robert Wilson>had the time of the German defeat, that uh I would have stopped taking <v Robert Wilson>stock, thought it all over very carefully, and that I would have walked away from <v Robert Wilson>uh Los Alamos at that time. And I in terms of all of my <v Robert Wilson>everything that I believe in before and during and <v Robert Wilson>after the war, I cannot understand why I did not take that and make <v Robert Wilson>that act. On the other hand, it simply was not in the air. <v Robert Wilson>I do not know of a single instance of anyone who had uh made that suggestion <v Robert Wilson>or who did leave the time. <v Robert Wilson>There might have been someone that I didn't know. <v Robert Wilson>But uh at the time, it just was not uh something that uh was part <v Robert Wilson>of our lives where our life was directed to do one thing.
<v Robert Wilson>It's as though we had been programmed to do that and we as automatons were doing it. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Amazing how the technology tools trap one. <v Frank Oppenheimer>And uh they're so powerful that when I <v Frank Oppenheimer>wa- I was impressed because most of the sort of fervor for developing the bomb came <v Frank Oppenheimer>in a kind of antifascist fervor against Germany. <v Frank Oppenheimer>But when VE Day came along, nobody slowed up one little bit. <v Frank Oppenheimer>No one said, I want the main thing. It doesn't matter now. <v Frank Oppenheimer>We all kept working. And it wasn't because we understood the significance against Japan. <v Frank Oppenheimer>It was because the the machinery had caught us in its trap and we were anxious <v Frank Oppenheimer>to get this thing to go. <v Robert Wilson>I organized a uh a a small meeting at our <v Robert Wilson>building. I think the title was The Impact of the Gadget <v Robert Wilson>on Civilization. <v Robert Wilson>Oppy oh tried to persuade me not to have it. <v Robert Wilson>I don't know quite why, but he certainly did try to dissuade me.
<v Robert Wilson>On the other hand, I went ahead and did hold the meeting. <v Robert Wilson>Perhaps between 30 and 50 people came. <v Robert Wilson>Oppy came too, which I had a uh certain uh, always added a tone <v Robert Wilson>to any meeting. <v Robert Wilson>Uh we did discuss whether we should go on or not. <v Robert Wilson>And in the context of what was happening in the world, of course, it was <v Robert Wilson>called in the context, perhaps what we were we were doing was morally <v Robert Wilson>wrong, particularly Oppy pointed out that uh but <v Robert Wilson>it would be well that the world knew about the possibility of an atomic <v Robert Wilson>bomb. Rather than it be something that would be kept secret while the <v Robert Wilson>uh uh United Nations was being formed. On that basis, on a logical <v Robert Wilson>basis, we all decided that that was right and that we ought to go back <v Robert Wilson>in the laboratory and work as hard as we could to demonstrate a nuclear <v Robert Wilson>uh weapon uh before the uh uh and so that the United Nations
<v Robert Wilson>would be set up in the awareness of this horrible thing to come. <v Freeman Dyson>Faustian bargain is when you sell your soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and <v Freeman Dyson>power. And that, of course, in a way, is what Oppenheimer did. <v Freeman Dyson>There's no doubt he made this alliance with <v Freeman Dyson>the United States Army in the person of General Groves who <v Freeman Dyson>gave him undreamed of resources. <v Freeman Dyson>Huge armies of people and as much money as he could possibly spend <v Freeman Dyson>in order to do physics on the grand scale, in order to create this marvelous <v Freeman Dyson>weapon. And it was a Faustian bargain, if ever there was one. <v Freeman Dyson>And of course, we are still living with it ever since. <v Freeman Dyson>When once you sell your soul to the devil, then there's no going back on it. <v Holm Bursom>Well, I can't tell you exactly, but right over there between here <v Holm Bursom>and the ?inaudible? in the high part of the ?inaudible? <v Holm Bursom>mountains where that little peak is on the McDonel ranch is where they detonated
<v Holm Bursom>the first atomic bomb. <v Holm Bursom>[clears throat] <v Narrator 1>What was this country like then? <v Holm Bursom>Not like it is now. [music plays] <v Narrator 1>Two hundred miles south of Los Alamos, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, <v Narrator 1>a vast, unbroken stretch of prairie. Here Robert Oppenheimer chose <v Narrator 1>to test the first atomic bomb. <v Narrator 1>He named the place Trinity site. <v Narrator 1>It had been Apache Country. But in late '44, it was populated only by a handful <v Narrator 1>of cattle ranchers and homesteaders. <v Narrator 1>They called it by the Spanish name: Hornado del Muerto. <v Narrator 1>The journey of death. <v Narrator 1>Dave MacDonald. <v Dave MacDonald>Uh I've put out of here in '42. <v Narrator 1>Who put ya out here? <v Dave MacDonald>Uh the Corps of Engineers in federal judge and so <v Dave MacDonald>forth.
<v Dave MacDonald>And they said they had to have it for their gunnery range and so forth you see. <v Dave MacDonald>And later on it wound up being this, you see, when you got the atomic bomb to work and <v Dave MacDonald>?inaudible?. They come in for a place and then they selected ?this? <v Dave MacDonald>right here. That time they were living, that is the people that was <v Dave MacDonald>assembling this bomb and preparing to shoot it was there at my place. <v Dave MacDonald>Somewhere around 5 to 700 people ?listed? <v Dave MacDonald>there and living in my house and around it and so forth, you see with <v Dave MacDonald>other buildings and so forth. <v Narrator 1>It began with 15 men in December. <v Narrator 1>By May, there were several hundred civilians and GIs working in secret. <v Narrator 1>At night, nearby ranchers heard gunfire. <v Narrator 1>GIs hunting antelope with submachine guns. <v Holm Bursom>About 1939, I think it was on the front piece of Time magazine, they <v Holm Bursom>had a picture of an atom buster at the University of California. <v Holm Bursom>And when they shipped the shell in for this experimental detonation
<v Holm Bursom>down here, why I thought I says if I didn't think <v Holm Bursom>I was crazy as something I'd think maybe they're uh fooling around with <v Holm Bursom>uh busting in atoms or doing something with atomic power, but it- and <v Holm Bursom>I was just talking because I certainly didn't know anything about it. <v Holm Bursom>I had no conception of what an atomic bomb was or the violence of it and <v Holm Bursom>the strength of it. <v Frank Oppenheimer>When I arrived there, they um, they were being- in the process of an <v Frank Oppenheimer>end of May of constructing a 100 foot tall tower in this desert. <v Frank Oppenheimer>It was really a very empty, very wasn't sandy, but it was typical <v Frank Oppenheimer>dry sagebrushy desert with one wall off to the east of rock. <v Frank Oppenheimer>And a base camp, which had a couple of extra buildings, but which really <v Frank Oppenheimer>was just uh some old ranch houses. <v Frank Oppenheimer>People were feverishly setting up wires all over the desert. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Building the tower, building little huts in which to put cameras and house
<v Frank Oppenheimer>people at the time of explosion. <v Frank Oppenheimer>The- the Army had just accidentally bombed the place a little bit before I got there, <v Frank Oppenheimer>but nobody was hurt. <v Françoise Ulam>The work had been so frantic that it was a relief to know that it was coming to <v Françoise Ulam>a conclusion. And we knew that they were preparing the big experiment to see <v Françoise Ulam>if the gadget, as it was called, would work. <v Narrator 1>What did you expect? <v Françoise Ulam>I hope I- um what did I expect? <v Françoise Ulam>[Narrator 1: Françoise Ulam] I was had mixed feelings. <v Françoise Ulam>I expected- wanted it to succeed because it would help to <v Françoise Ulam>end the war. I didn't want it to be dangerous. <v Françoise Ulam>Eh was it? Of course it was. <v Françoise Ulam>There was a chance that it would be very danger- could be very dangerous. <v Narrator 1>The 11th of July 1945, an unmarked Pontiac sedan arrives <v Narrator 1>at the MacDonald Ranch carrying the world's entire supply of plutonium, about 10
<v Narrator 1>pounds. The courier demands a receipt. <v Narrator 1>Approximate value one billion dollars. <v Narrator 1>At Oppenheimer's request, General Groves has made a secret arrangement with the governor <v Narrator 1>of New Mexico to evacuate the state in case of catastrophe. <v Robert Crohn>Now prior to the shot back in the lab, there had been some speculation <v Robert Crohn>that it might be possible to explode the atmosphere, in which <v Robert Crohn>case the world disappears. <v Narrator 1>Did you sense uh a lot of anxiety in your brother? <v Frank Oppenheimer>A lot lot of anxiety in everybody, including my brother. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Both whether it would work or not work. <v Frank Oppenheimer>[Narrator 1: Frank Oppenheimer, physicist] I think mostly uh bad, but also <v Frank Oppenheimer>it was you see it was a time in which um I think <v Frank Oppenheimer>it his interest in us- in using the bomb to b- help produce <v Frank Oppenheimer>a better world- peace was was what didn't happen just <v Frank Oppenheimer>after the war. But he really had hope that Truman would tell Stalin
<v Frank Oppenheimer>about it fairly forthrightly. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Of course, that didn't happen and set the stage almost at that instant to the Cold War, <v Frank Oppenheimer>rather than to a a warmer humanity. <v Frank Oppenheimer>And so I think both of those things seem everything that was wearing him back then. <v Robert Wilson>There was this it was building up tremendous, uh almost hysterical <v Robert Wilson>uh anxiety. Many people feeling that we couldn't possibly hold the test <v Robert Wilson>because every time we tested some component that had to do with the test, it would <v Robert Wilson>fail. Everybody was rushing around. <v Robert Wilson>Things did not appear to be ready. <v Robert Wilson>Yet uh there did seem to be a certain uh momentum to <v Robert Wilson>the work that was going on that we wouldn't make a test. <v Robert Wilson>I think it had been put back several times, but uh on July 16th, <v Robert Wilson>there would be a test come hell or high water. <v Narrator 1>[music plays] Memo, 11 July. 1700 hours.
<v Narrator 1>Both charges completely papered. <v Narrator 1>Work another night shift if necessary, to complete this job. <v Narrator 1>Request personnel as necessary. <v Narrator 1>Memo 12 July. 1600 hours. <v Narrator 1>Seal all holds in case. Wrap with scotch. <v Narrator 1>Wrap box charges inner and outer with two spares for each. <v Narrator 1>Memo 13 July. 1300 hours. <v Narrator 1>Assembly starts, remove polar cap and dummy plug. <v Narrator 1>Gadget now belongs to tamper people. <v Narrator 1>G engineers work until 1600 with active material insertion. <v Narrator 1>Dummy plug hole is covered with a clean cloth and explosives people take over. <v Narrator 1>Insert H-E. This is to be done as slowly as the G engineers wish. <v Narrator 1>Remove all chains. Clear the deck. <v Woman 5>Well, I expected that what they were working on, they were going to
<v Woman 5>try. <v Narrator 1>14 July 0800 hours. <v Narrator 1>Rig guidelines lift to tower top. <v Narrator 1>Ready for X unit at 0900. <v Narrator 1>Bring up G engineers footstool. <v Narrator 1>14 July 0900 hours. <v Narrator 1>Wiring of the X unit proceeds under the direction of the explosives people. <v Narrator 1>Tower platform should be tested with concrete weight as per Oppenheimer. <v Narrator 1>Detonators placed to conform with requirements of informer switches. <v Narrator 1>H.E. people stand by to criticize potential rough handling. <v Narrator 1>Note that once detonators are on sphere, no live electrical connection can be brought to <v Narrator 1>the X unit, informer unit or anywhere else on the sphere. <v Narrator 1>All testing must be done before a sphere is lifted to tower. <v Narrator 1>After that, it is too late. <v Narrator 1>14 July, 1700 hours.
<v Narrator 1>Gadget complete. <v Narrator 1>Should we have the chaplain here? <v Narrator 1>[wind blowing] The betting pool cost a dollar. <v Narrator 1>Edward Teller bet on a blast equal to 45,000 tons of TNT. <v Narrator 1>Oppenheimer bet low. 3000 tons. <v Narrator 1>And ?inaudible?, he put his money on 20 kilotons. <v Narrator 1>Young technicians were horrified to overhear Enrico Fermi taking side bets on the <v Narrator 1>possibility of incinerating the state of New Mexico. <v Man 5>The test was set at midnight. <v Man 5>The prediction was there'd be 60 mile visibility and a certain wind <v Man 5>pattern. Well, it ?went? midnight. <v Man 5>It was raining cats and dogs, lightning and thunder, really <v Man 5>scared about this object there in the tower [pause] would be set off <v Man 5>accidentally. <v Man 5>So th- you can imagine the strain on Oppenheimer [inaudible muttering]. <v Robert Wilson>I remember it was one of my uh
<v Robert Wilson>uh memories of that time having to go up to the tower to turn <v Robert Wilson>on a piece of equipment. So I was one of the last not the last person by any means, but <v Robert Wilson>one of the last people to get our equipment that was right next to the bomb <v Robert Wilson>uh have it to have it all turned on and tested before uh before starting <v Robert Wilson>the test. And uh it was quite dramatic because, lightning was striking all around, <v Robert Wilson>it was quite a fierce storm going on. <v Robert Wilson>And particular one had a certain amount of respect uh for that atomic bomb <v Robert Wilson>being right next as sparks seemed to be flying. <v Robert Wilson>Uh did give me a little bit of a sense of apprehension [laughs]. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Um uh he and I were lying down right next to each other, flat in the desert, right <v Frank Oppenheimer>outside the the um control roo- hut- ?inaudible? <v Frank Oppenheimer>at the time the bomb went off. <v Robert Wilson>And we ever had prepared ourselves with glass. <v Robert Wilson>And uh when we we could hear the countdown when it went off. <v Robert Wilson>We all are looking through the glass.
<v Robert Wilson>And then we saw what was just a tremendous <v Robert Wilson>uh uh ?leave?, overpowering <v Robert Wilson>uh vision of this thing happening, seeing the mountains small beside it, seeing <v Robert Wilson>perhaps with some kind of beauty, but awesome was what I would call it as it slowly <v Robert Wilson>developed, went up in the air and uh made those <v Robert Wilson>the whole desert light up as it noon. <v Robert Wilson>And a pure small of a large desert ringed by mountains <v Robert Wilson>appeared to be a small place. And that was just something that uh once that had happened, <v Robert Wilson>uh I was a different person from then on. [explosion] <v Frank Oppenheimer>[sighs] D- at the time it went off, it was, I think, absolutely what I knew sort of what
<v Frank Oppenheimer>would happen. I didn't expect the heat from the flash at five miles away to be <v Frank Oppenheimer>uh nearly that intense. <v Frank Oppenheimer>And then there was a cloud sort of the radioactive cloud went sort of hovered <v Frank Oppenheimer>there. And I ?inaudible? <v Frank Oppenheimer>been working on developing escape routes because of that <v Frank Oppenheimer>thing and gone a little bit uh south of the fall and then fall <v Frank Oppenheimer>out on the camp and I had to get out of there to the south rather than where <v Frank Oppenheimer>the north was road was to the north. <v Frank Oppenheimer>And um so there was this sense of this ominous cloud uh <v Frank Oppenheimer>hanging over us. It was so brilliant purple with all the radioactive blowing, <v Frank Oppenheimer>and it just seemed to hang there forever. Of course it didn't. <v Frank Oppenheimer>It m- it must have been just a very short time for it until it went up, but it was very <v Frank Oppenheimer>terrifying. And the thunder from the blast, <v Frank Oppenheimer>um it bounced on the rocks and then went I don't know where else it bounced, but it never <v Frank Oppenheimer>seemed to stop. And not like an ordinary echo of the thunder. <v Frank Oppenheimer>It just kept echoing back and forth.
<v Frank Oppenheimer>And that, ?inaudible?. It was a very scary time when it <v Frank Oppenheimer>when it went off. <v Frank Oppenheimer>God I wish I could remember when my brother said but um I can't. <v Frank Oppenheimer>But I think we just said it worked. <v Frank Oppenheimer>I think that's what we said. Both of us. It worked and nobody knew it was gonna work. <v Man 5>He was in the uh in the forward bunker. <v Man 5>And then when he came back, there he was, you know, his hat. <v Man 5>You've seen pictures that Robert's hat and so on. <v Man 5>And uh he came to where we were in this in the headquarters, <v Man 5>so to speak. And um- the way <v Man 5>his walk was like high noon. <v Man 5>I think it's the best I could describe it, this kind of struck. <v Man 5>He'd done it. <v Woman 6>It felt like an earthquake. We lived in a good adobe house
<v Woman 6>and it just did [whooshing sound]. And he said, my goodness, that's an earthquake and <v Woman 6>wonder if it hurt the house. <v Woman 6>And he got out of bed and he got up and he says, I want you to come look. <v Woman 6>The sun's rising in the wrong direction. <v Robert Server>Must've been nearly 20 miles away. <v Robert Server>Where this is if somebody had set off a flashbulb right in your face. <v Robert Server>Completely blinded for about 30 seconds. <v Robert Server>Then gradually your vision cleared and you saw this huge [pause] orange <v Robert Server>and purple and green, violently colored ?balls? <v Robert Server>rolling up towards the sky. <v Dave MacDonald>So we knew something had happened over here, and we had a car ?along? <v Dave MacDonald>had a radio in it. <v Dave MacDonald>So we kept that radio on and long ?inaudible? <v Dave MacDonald>and told us that there's a ammunition that went off. <v Elizabeth Ingram>We were headed up to Albuquerque to take her back to school and <v Elizabeth Ingram>we were between ?Paladara? <v Elizabeth Ingram>and ?Limitar? when we saw this great big flash of light and my
<v Elizabeth Ingram>sister, she said what happened and that was she got to see the light. <v Elizabeth Ingram>And it just seemed like it lit up the whole b- prairie all around us. <v Narrator 1>Was anything odd about your sister asking about the light? <v Elizabeth Ingram>Yes, because she was blind. <v Man 5>It didn't take very long. I was ?inaudible? just after the first few minutes <v Man 5>that I realized sort of viscerally what had happened <v Man 5>and uh had gooseflesh, a little <v Man 5>of the consequences. What what would happen to the world? <v Narrator 1>When did you find out what happened? <v Dave MacDonald>Well, it's quite a while you know and ?inaudible? tell them begin to talk about the <v Dave MacDonald>cattle, you know, that the hair was turnin' white on 'em like frost you know, looked like <v Dave MacDonald>they had frost on their backs or so forth. <v Holm Bursom>Way we noticed them was the uh where that <v Holm Bursom>fall out fell on a cow. She's lying on her left side while her right side was get burned <v Holm Bursom>and the particles of dust that were radioactive would fall on her. <v Holm Bursom>And then they've caused a burn like a scald.
<v Holm Bursom>And the hair, instead of coming back red, like on a Hereford cow, would come back <v Holm Bursom>white just like a saddleburn on a black horse <v Holm Bursom>and old man Max Smith that had the white store up there had a black cat, just as black as <v Holm Bursom>the ace of spades. That thing had white spots all over it. <v Holm Bursom>After the atomic blast, he sold it to some tourists <v Holm Bursom>for 5 dollars, I think curiosity. <v Holm Bursom>[smokes] [explosion] <v Narrator 1>Iwo Jima, Lady Gulf, Mindanao, the Marshall Islands. <v Narrator 1>At Okinawa alone, 50,000 American casualties. <v Narrator 1>[explosion] 110,000 Japanese casualties. <v Narrator 1>The beginning of the end for Japan. <v Narrator 1>[bombs dropping] Saturation bombing. Thousands of B29s raining incendiary <v Narrator 1>bombs on all but a few cities.
<v Narrator 1>Harry Truman, who has assumed the presidency after Roosevelt's death in early '45 <v Narrator 1>calls for total surrender. <v Harry Truman>Our demand has been and it remains unconditional <v Harry Truman>surrender [applause]. <v Narrator 1>Japan was in ruins, most of her major cities destroyed. <v Narrator 1>Tokyo reduced to rubble. <v Narrator 1>More than a million civilians dead. <v Narrator 1>The Japanese fought on. <v Robert Wilson>Now, when the question of use came up, then I did have <v Robert Wilson>quite long discussions with Oppy uh about how it might be <v Robert Wilson>used. And he did bring up to me one day that he would serve on a panel <v Robert Wilson>uh to make a recommendation about the use of the bomb. <v Robert Wilson>So then uh uh I suggested to him that it would be a good
<v Robert Wilson>idea if it would be used in a demonstration. <v Robert Wilson>Uh for example, as the uh as the demonstration to Trinity, <v Robert Wilson>where Japanese observers might have been invited to attend. <v Robert Wilson>And I can remember very specifically when Oppenheimer brought up a counter argument <v Robert Wilson>to that, that, well, supposing it didn't go off. <v Robert Wilson>And I turned to him coldly and said, well, we could kill 'em all [laughs]. <v Robert Wilson>And of course, I was not uh I didn't say that for real. <v Robert Wilson>But even so, I was aghast at having even uh to make a point <v Robert Wilson>that I had said such a bloodthirsty thing. <v Freeman Dyson>Why did the bomb get dropped on people at Hiroshima? <v Freeman Dyson>I would say it's almost inevitable that it would have happened <v Freeman Dyson>simply because all the bureaucratic apparatus existed by that time <v Freeman Dyson>to do it. The Air Force was ready and waiting. They had been prepared big airfields <v Freeman Dyson>in the island of Tinian in the Pacific from which you could operate. <v Freeman Dyson>The whole machinery was ready. <v Freeman Dyson>The president would have had to be a man of iron will in order to put a stop to it.
<v Harry Truman>The question was whether we want to save our people <v Harry Truman>and Japanese as well and win the war or whether we want to <v Harry Truman>take a chance on being able to win the war by killing all our <v Harry Truman>young men. <v Dorothy McKibbon>I don't think they would have developed that to show at a garden party. <v Dorothy McKibbon>I think they had to do it. And we felt this was our own defense. <v Dorothy McKibbon>And also, there was a hurricane that would have wiped out a lot of our troops out there. <v Dorothy McKibbon>And the Pearl Japanese hadn't been very nice to us, John. <v Dorothy McKibbon>They kind of demolished our Navy without any warning. <v General Leslie Groves>It would have come out sooner or later in a congressional hearing, if nowhere <v General Leslie Groves>else, just when we could have dropped the bomb if we didn't use it. <v General Leslie Groves>And then uh knowing American politics, you know as well as <v General Leslie Groves>I do that uh there'd been election ?spot? <v General Leslie Groves>on the basis that every mother whose son was killed after
<v General Leslie Groves>such and such a date, uh the blood is on the head of the president. <v Narrator 1>Americans braced themselves for a bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland. <v Stan Ulam>And uh in those days, most people did not realize the qualitative <v Stan Ulam>difference between the atomic bomb and the number of ordinary bombs. <v Stan Ulam>There was really no uh immediate <v Stan Ulam>feeling that the world is changing as it is now, <v Stan Ulam>but rather that it would be a good way to win the war more quickly. <v Freeman Dyson>So I would say it was nobody's fault that the bomb was dropped. <v Freeman Dyson>As usual, the reason it was dropped was just that nobody had the courage or the foresight <v Freeman Dyson>to say no. <v Freeman Dyson>Certainly not Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer gave <v Freeman Dyson>his consent in a certain sense.
<v Freeman Dyson>He was on a committee which advised the secretary of war and that <v Freeman Dyson>committee did not take any kind of a stand against dropping the bomb. <v Jane Wilson>Of course, we never expected, I don't think even the people who were doing the testing <v Jane Wilson>expected, uh the the bomb to be thrown on Japan so fast. <v Narrator 1>Hiroshima, a city the size of Houston, one of the few cities spared <v Narrator 1>the firebombing. <v Narrator 1>Months earlier, orders had been given to leave several Japanese cities untouched to <v Narrator 1>provide virgin targets where the effects of the new bomb could be clearly seen. <v Frank Oppenheimer>The um it- then the announcement <v Frank Oppenheimer>that of Hiroshima. I think I was in the hall right outside my brother's <v Frank Oppenheimer>office and it came over the sort of loudspeaker that went through <v Frank Oppenheimer>was just ?delivered? throughout and that the bomb had been dropped
<v Frank Oppenheimer>and that it had devastated. <v Frank Oppenheimer>That uh. <v Frank Oppenheimer>So the first reaction was, thank God it wasn't a dud. <v Frank Oppenheimer>But before that whole sentence <v Frank Oppenheimer>of the broadcast was finished when ?inaudible? <v Frank Oppenheimer>got this horror of all the people that had been killed. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Uh and I don't know why up to then, I don't think we'd really I'd really thought of all <v Frank Oppenheimer>those flattened people. <v Frank Oppenheimer>Um we had talked often about having a demonstration where they weren't people <v Frank Oppenheimer>maybe on the mainland so that the military would see it that way there weren't <v Frank Oppenheimer>people. And then the thought that uh that they'd <v Frank Oppenheimer>actually dropped in on a place where all those people were in the image of those people, <v Frank Oppenheimer>which came before any pictures of it uh really was pretty awful. <v Frank Oppenheimer>But the first thing was, I'm sure it was, thank God it worked. <v Frank Oppenheimer>[music plays]
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Program
Day After Trinity
Producing Organization
KQED-TV (Television station : San Francisco, Calif.)
KTEH-TV (Television station : San Jose, Calif.)
Contributing Organization
KQED (San Francisco, California)
The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/55-h12v40k94r
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Description
Program Description
"THE DAY AFTER TRINITY: J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER AND THE ATOMIC BOMB -"Unnoticed by anyone beyond a remote corner of New Mexico, there was a brief, irrevocable moment in the early morning of July 16, 1945, when mankind lost its nuclear innocence. THE DAY AFTER TRINITY tells the story of the man who brought us to that awesome microsecond in history. J. Robert Oppenheimer was a student of poetry, a linguist of six tongues, searcher for spiritual ideals, and father of the atomic bomb. He lived the life of a gentle and eloquent humanist and, perhaps to his own surprise, became the practical architect of the most savage weapon in history. This contradiction lies at the heart of his public and personal drama and is the central theme of THE DAY AFTER TRINITY. "The film contains extraordinary new archive footage, much of it de-classified for the first time, woven together with the candid recollections of Oppenheimer's close friends, revealing a moving drama of moral and historical forces at work."--1981 Peabody Awards entry form.
Broadcast Date
1981-00-00
Asset type
Program
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
01:31:14
Credits
Director: Else, Jon
Producing Organization: KQED-TV (Television station : San Francisco, Calif.)
Producing Organization: KTEH-TV (Television station : San Jose, Calif.)
AAPB Contributor Holdings
KQED
Identifier: 666H;7471 (KQED)
Format: application/mxf
Duration: 1:31:14
KQED
Identifier: cpb-aacip-55-31qfvjcc (GUID)
Format: 1 inch videotape
Generation: Master
Duration: 1:31:14
The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia
Identifier: 81045pst-1-arch (Peabody Object Identifier)
Format: U-matic
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Citations
Chicago: “Day After Trinity,” 1981-00-00, KQED, The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-55-h12v40k94r.
MLA: “Day After Trinity.” 1981-00-00. KQED, The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-55-h12v40k94r>.
APA: Day After Trinity. Boston, MA: KQED, The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-55-h12v40k94r