The Girls of Atomic City (35 page)

“ . . . by the dawn’s early light . . .”

Years of preparation. The money. The manpower.

“ . . . at the twilight’s last gleaming . . .”

Then at 5:29:45, Mountain War Time, it happened.

“ . . . And the rocket’s red glare . . . the bombs bursting in air . . .”

★ ★ ★

Up on the hill 25 miles away, Joan Hinton felt the heat first. She would later say that it “looked like a sea of light” that was “gradually sucked into an awful purple glow that went up and up into a mushroom cloud. It looked beautiful as it lit up the morning sun.” Then came the rumbling.

In Carrizozo, Cabin 4 shook. But it wasn’t until 3
PM
that afternoon that Diz noticed the Geiger counter revving up. That was when the wave of radiation—a swath approximately 100 by 30 miles—reached Carrizozo. By 4:20, one click was indecipherable from the other as the counter kicked into high gear. She and Al phoned the base camp. The General thought about evacuating the area, but the Geiger readings soon died down. The people of Carrizozo were none the wiser. Thanks to the Office of Censorship and a well-placed officer at the Associated Press office in Albuquerque, the average citizen heard a cover story:

“A remotely located ammunition magazine containing a considerable amount of high explosives and pyrotechnics exploded . . .”

More than 100 miles away, the
Socorro Chieftain
newspaper also reported of the “explosives magazine” mishap:

“The flash was intensely white and seemed to fill the entire world. It was followed by a large crimson glow . . .”

David Greenglass, the spy known to his handlers as Kalibr, was on his way to a bus stop in Albuquerque to head into work at the lab when he saw a flash over the horizon. He had been working at Site Y for almost a year now. He knew it must have been the test. He would now have more to report.

Trinity was a blinding success. The Test Gadget annihilated the steel tower and carved a crater six feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter. The temperature at the center of the mass of fire was four times the temperature at the center of the sun. The resulting
pressure, more than 100 billion atmospheres, was the greatest ever to exist on the surface of the earth. It knocked men down who were standing 10,000 yards away and the resulting flash was visible for more than 200 miles and audible for at least 40. And 150 miles away, a drowsy-eyed woman in Arizona told the local paper she wondered why she “saw the sun come up and go down again.” For days following, residents from miles around noticed an odd white powdery substance settling on surfaces, as if a mid-July frost had unexpectedly set in.

The General had instructed his personal secretary, Jean O’Leary, to be in his office back in Washington, DC, at 6:30
AM
the next day to receive any message he had to send. Her code sheet at the ready, O’Leary waited for the communiqué to come so that she could then interpret it and pass it along. O’Leary took the message then went, in person, to the Pentagon to speak to a Mr. George L. Harrison who, in turn, communicated the General’s information to the secretary of war, who was in Potsdam, Germany.

The message the Secretary received was brief and coded:

“The baby is born.”

★ ★ ★

Truman was in Potsdam, just outside the capital city of Berlin, for a two-week meeting with Stalin and Churchill and was about to be faced with the most monumental decision ever pondered by any American president in perhaps the nation’s history.

The three leaders were meeting in Potsdam to tackle questions including: What would the world look like after the war? Politically, geographically? How would Germany be divided once the war was finished? What of the creation of a council of foreign ministers to orchestrate and supervise the new occupied zones? Other matters were more contentious. How real was the growth of Communism? How would the victorious allies meld their respective political systems—democracy and Communism—as they moved forward?

The war in the Pacific was a priority, and crucial June victories in Okinawa and Iwo Jima meant that Japan was within striking distance of American troops.

The day before the conference began, the plainspoken Truman, still preoccupied with the Trinity test, wrote in his diary:

“I hope for some sort of peace—but I fear that machines are ahead of morals by some centuries and when morals catch up perhaps there’ll be no reason for any of it. I hope not. But we are only termites on a planet and maybe when we forge too deeply into the planet there will be a reckoning—who knows?”

As talks in Potsdam began, Truman kept his cards close, especially with Stalin, whose country planned to declare war on Japan in mid-August.

“I can deal with Stalin,” he wrote. “He is honest—but smart as hell.” When Stalin began talking during their meeting, he made it known that he had some questions that perhaps weren’t on the agenda. When Truman told him to “fire away,” the response, the president shared, was “dynamite.”

“But I have some dynamite too which I’m not exploding right now,” Truman wrote in his diary later that evening.

The day after Trinity was decidedly different. Even though he had not yet received the full report, the news out of New Mexico had inspired confidence in Truman. He would share news of Trinity’s success with Churchill first, but wanted to wait for the right time before informing Stalin. He knew Stalin believed that cooperation between their nations would be more difficult in peacetime than it had been during the war. Stalin shared information with Churchill and Truman about a telegram from the Japanese emperor “asking for peace.” Truman wrote of this on July 18. Each had their own ideas of how the war should end and what would happen afterward. For Truman, Japan’s unconditional surrender remained a key issue.

“Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in,” Truman wrote. “I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland. I shall inform Stalin about it at an opportune time.”

★ ★ ★

The Photographer looked up and finally saw the General emerge, appearing much neater and put together. The General said nothing of his recent trip. The two got down to business.

The government needed photos for an important upcoming press release which was already in the works—though the event it described had yet to take place.

Westcott was a pro and the Project was his reluctant muse. He had set foot on the disrupted East Tennessee soil earlier than most as the 29th employee of the Project. The Chattanooga-born, Nashville-raised man had documented the goings-on at Site X, from the building of the plants, right through the growth of the unexpected community.

He had been there, Speed Graphic or Deardorff View in hand, at the Castle on the Hill, the first building ever finished at Site X. He was there for the groundbreaking of Y-12, and K-25, and X-10 and S-50. He was there for comic-book sales and Girl Scout meetings, war bond drives, and VIP visits. The tired yet smiling faces of housewives at the grocer, kids at school, workers at dances, segregated privies—all passed before his lens. He’d been there for the town’s quotidian joys and hardships: the butcher shop, the commissary, dates at the movie theater, first loves, and jitterbugs, slogging through mud and smiles on fresh young faces as they strolled through security gates at the end of a long shift. He had taken countless pictures of men and women and children living a new life in a new place that hadn’t existed just three years prior, working on a Project that was unlike any other ever attempted. He took pictures for the general population that graced the scant pages of the
Oak Ridge Journal
and he took pictures for a select few blessed with the proper clearance that no one else would see for a very, very long time.

Today, he took a number of pictures of the freshly scrubbed General. He had learned over the years how to work with men of power, how to gently push them. You had to let them know you were the boss; they respected that, especially if it was going to result in a better image. He was particularly proud of the results of one snapshot in particular: The General stood in profile before a wall map of the world. The General looked and pointed to the map in front of him. The Photographer pointed his camera. It was a picture tailor-made for the press packets for the event that had not yet occurred.

July 31.

That would be the earliest date that the Gadget could be used
, the General thought. The Photographer’s camera clicked away as the General stood in his office, beside the map, his gaze and index finger fixed on the island in the Pacific that marked the war’s final showdown, the site of the event that had yet to occur: Japan.

★ ★ ★

As the General began work on his more detailed Trinity report, a group of project scientists drafted a letter of their own: a petition addressed to President Truman.

“Discoveries of which the people of the United States are not aware may affect the welfare of this nation in the near future,” the one-page missive began.

As the communiqué continued, it discussed the new discoveries revealed throughout the Project and unleashed at Site Y, the innovative technologies that would be developed from them, and the potential uses of this humbling new power. The commander in chief was facing what the group of men called “the fateful decision”: whether or not to use the Gadget, the result of the Project to which they had committed years of their lives, the test of which had proved startlingly successful.

Their original fear, the petition explained, was that the United States might be attacked by the very kind of Gadget they had just tested, and that a counterattack would be “her only defense.” But now, “with the defeat of Germany, this danger is averted, and we feel impelled to say what follows . . .”

The July 17 letter from scientists at the Met Lab pleaded with President Truman to use the Gadget only if “the terms which will be imposed upon Japan have been made public in detail and Japan, knowing these terms, has refused to surrender.” They urged him to consider the “moral responsibilities” involved in using the Gadget. This was but the beginning of a new age.

“[T]here is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available in the course of their future development,” the scientists wrote. “Thus a nation which sets the precedent of using these
newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.”

An initial, more direct version of the petition had been drafted July 3. Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard was the main force behind the letter, as he had, years before, been one of the main forces behind Einstein’s letter to Roosevelt and the creation of the Project. He knew that his views and the views of those who signed the petition—59 for the first version, 70 for the second—were “by no means shared by all scientists.”

More petitions and counterpetitions from Project scientists followed. One read in part:

“Are not they, who are risking their lives for the nation, entitled to the weapons which have been designed? In short, are we to go on shedding American blood when we have available a means to speedy victory?”

★ ★ ★

Even before the General sent his full Trinity report across the Atlantic on July 21, Prime Minister Churchill had already noticed a change in Truman’s demeanor during their meetings with Premier Stalin. Churchill had no idea what could have caused such an infusion of confidence in the Midwesterner, who was now palpably more direct with Stalin. However, once Truman informed Churchill about Trinity, Churchill better understood Truman’s more assured manner.

Meanwhile, on July 23 in Oak Ridge, Holly Compton met with the Engineer to discuss a recent poll of scientists at the Met Lab. The Engineer had approached Holly directly wanting to know who was in favor of using the Gadget and who wasn’t.

The 150 scientists polled were given five choices, ranging from not using the Gadget at all to using it in the manner “most effective in bringing about prompt Japanese surrender.” Small percentages of scientists voted at both ends of this spectrum. Twenty-six percent wanted a demonstration in the United States with Japanese representatives present. The majority, Holly told the Engineer, 46 percent, favored “giving a military demonstration against one of the Japanese cities to be followed by a renewed opportunity for surrender before full use of the weapon was employed.”

And what do you think?
the Engineer asked.

Holly paused. “What a question to answer!” he later wrote, thinking of his “pacifist Mennonite ancestors.”

“My vote is with the majority,” he told the Engineer. “It seems to me that as the war stands the bomb should be used, but no more drastically than needed to bring surrender.”

★ ★ ★

The same day the Engineer met with Holly, a young courier, Lt. Nick Del Genio, left CEW with briefcase in hand, and boarded a train. His coffee-cup cargo contained the last bit of Product the Gadget would need.

For the last year, roughly 22,000 people had been working at Y-12 day in and day out, 24 hours a day, as 1,152 calutrons managed to enrich 50 kilograms, or just over 100 pounds, of enriched Tubealloy.

The General prepared the orders for the operation and sent a memo to the Secretary in Potsdam that included a map of Japan he’d snipped from a recent issue of
National Geographic.
He included a description of the four potential targets.

The doubts of the scientists made little sense to the General. What was the point of all the security measures if the intent was not to strike targets with an element of surprise? He admired Truman for the decision he now faced, for undertaking it knowing full well that he would ultimately be viewed as responsible. No matter how many scientists or generals weighed in with their two cents, Truman would be viewed as the one who made the final call. It was on him and he knew it. The General respected him for that.

Truman finally informed Stalin about the United States’ “new weapon of unusual destructive force.” Stalin did not appear overly surprised at the revelation. Russian stoicism? A masterful poker face? Or did Stalin already know more than Truman and the Secretary realized, as if he had been briefed on the progress of the Project all along?