In 1939 a physicist warned a president about a new kind of bomb. Six years later it fell on two cities.
Nearly every line here comes from U.S. government histories, the writings of those who decided, and the museums of the two cities. Death tolls differ by who counted, so the story says who. The case for the bomb and the case against each get their full say, and the story does not pick one.
2 Aug 1939
In August 1939 Albert Einstein, with help from Leo Szilard, wrote to President Roosevelt. Uranium could make a new kind of bomb, and he believed the German government was backing the research. Roosevelt took over two months to meet the man carrying the letter.
A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.
2 Dec 1942
In a squash court at the University of Chicago, Enrico Fermi’s team built a pile of black bricks. At 3:25 p.m. on 2 December 1942, Fermi smiled and said “the reaction is self-sustaining.” The news went out by phone, in a code made up on the spot: “the Italian navigator has landed in the New World.”
black day in the history of mankind
1943
In September 1942 the Army put Leslie Groves in command. The bomb was designed at Los Alamos, New Mexico, under J. Robert Oppenheimer. Uranium went to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where 1,000 families were removed from their homes. Plutonium went to Hanford, Washington, on 400,000 acres.
130,000People on the project at its peak, by the U.S. Department of Energy’s count
Approximately 130,000 people were employed by the project at its peak, from laborers to Nobel Prize winners.
1944
Copper was short, so the electromagnets at Oak Ridge took 14,700 tons of silver borrowed from the U.S. Treasury. Young women ran the machines, many just out of high school. Of the 75,000 people there, the vast majority did not know what the plants were for.
I didn’t have any idea what we were doing. We weren’t allowed to even talk to anybody about what we were doing. All I know is they told us we were doing something to help win the war.
31 May 1945
Harry Truman had been President for weeks, and was briefed on the bomb on 25 April 1945. Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s committee met on 31 May. Ernest Lawrence suggested showing Japan a demonstration first. The others feared it might be a dud, or that prisoners of war would be put in the area.
These reasons and others convinced the group that the bomb should be dropped without warning on a "dual target" -- a war plant surrounded by workers' homes.
11 Jun 1945
Scientists at the University of Chicago wrote against an “early, unannounced attack.” Show the bomb first, they said, in “an appropriately selected uninhabited area.” Otherwise, they saw what would come next.
Unless an effective international control of nuclear explosives is instituted, a race of nuclear armaments is certain to ensue following the first revelation of our possession of nuclear weapons to the world.
16 Jun 1945
Five days later the committee’s own scientists answered: Arthur Compton, Lawrence, Oppenheimer and Fermi. They told the committee that their colleagues did not agree with one another. Their own answer was short.
we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.
16 Jul 1945
Rain pushed the test back to 5:30 a.m. on 16 July 1945. Over the New Mexico desert, Ernest Lawrence saw everything go “from darkness to brilliant sunshine in an instant.” The blast came to 21 kilotons, more than twice what Fermi worked out on the spot from scraps of paper.
Now we are all sons of bitches.
17 Jul 1945
The next day, Leo Szilard’s petition went to the President, signed by seventy other scientists in Chicago. If Japan refused the terms, it allowed, the nation might have to use the bomb. Neither the President nor the Secretary of War saw it before Hiroshima.
We feel, however, that such attacks on Japan could not be justified, at least not until the terms which will be imposed after the war on Japan were made public in detail and Japan were given an opportunity to surrender.
25 Jul 1945
A coded telegram told Stimson the results “already exceed expectations.” Truman told Stalin of a new weapon, and Stalin hoped for “good use of it against the Japanese.” In his diary Truman wrote that the target would be “military objectives and soldiers and sailors,” not “women and children.”
We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.
Jul 1945
On 25 July Truman gave the order. On 26 July the Allies called on Japan to surrender, in terms that left the emperor’s place unclear. On 29 July Japan rejected them. U.S. intercepts showed Japan seeking a conditional surrender, but American leaders were not inclined to accept one that left its military dictatorship in place.
Stimson vetoed Kyoto, Japan's most cherished cultural center, and Nagasaki replaced Kyoto on the target list.
6 Aug 1945
At about 8:15 a.m. on 6 August 1945 the Enola Gay released the bomb. It went off 1,900 feet above the city. At 8:16, radio and telegraph contact with Hiroshima ended. Roughly half of those within 1.2 kilometers are estimated to have died that day.
There was a sea of fire in all directions, hot as hell.
Dec 1945
“No one will ever know for certain,” says the U.S. Department of Energy. For Hiroshima alone: 60,000 to 70,000 by the U.S. Bombing Survey in 1946. 78,000 by Allied headquarters. Over 100,000 by the Department of Energy. About 125,000 by the city’s Red Cross Hospital. 140,000, within 10,000, by the city’s museum.
110,000 to 210,000Deaths in the two cities: the range of the most credible estimates
The most credible estimates cluster around a “low” of 110,000 mortalities and a “high” of 210,000, an enormous gap.
9 Aug 1945
On 8 August the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. On 9 August, at 11:02 a.m., a second bomb exploded over Nagasaki. The counts differ here too: 39,000 dead by a 1946 U.S. estimate, near 70,000 by the Department of Energy, 73,884 by a city committee in 1949.
The actual explosion, however, occurred some five or six hundred meters to the north over a tennis court in Matsuyama-machi.
15 Aug 1945
On the night of 9 August Japan’s leaders split, 3 to 3. The emperor broke the tie: “I cannot endure the thought of letting my people suffer any longer.” Truman halted atomic attacks. He did not like the idea of killing “all those kids,” a member of his cabinet wrote.
Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives.
1947
Stimson was told an invasion might cost “over a million casualties, to American forces alone.” At Okinawa, over 12,000 Americans, 100,000 Japanese and perhaps 100,000 Okinawans had died. Many historians argue the bomb ended the war and saved lives on both sides.
no man in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hand a weapon of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and afterward looked his countrymen in the face
1946
Dwight Eisenhower recalled telling Stimson “that Japan was already defeated.” Admiral William Leahy called it a “barbarous weapon” of “no material assistance.” Other historians argue that Japan would have surrendered anyway, and that the bomb was used to intimidate the Soviet Union.
it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped
1997
Asked if the bomb was necessary, the historian J. Samuel Walker answered yes and no. This story does not settle it either. Each side’s records are one click away, on every line above.
Yes, the bomb was necessary to end the war at the earliest possible moment. And yes, the bomb was necessary to save the lives of American troops, perhaps numbering in the several thousands. But no, the bomb was probably not necessary to end the war within a fairly short time without an invasion of Japan
Jan 1950
The Soviet Union tested its first bomb in August 1949. That December, British intelligence confronted Klaus Fuchs, who had worked at Los Alamos and passed along a sketch of the bomb. He confessed, was convicted of espionage and got 14 years. Four days after his confession, Truman ordered work on the hydrogen bomb.
We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R.
1954
In 1954 the Atomic Energy Commission took away Oppenheimer’s clearance, though its board found “no evidence of disloyalty.” In 2022 the U.S. Department of Energy vacated that decision, calling it a “flawed process.” And Einstein, as Linus Pauling told it, called signing the letter his “one great mistake,” with “some justification.”
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds