WEBVTT

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[music]

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I only get frightened and it happens
very rarely. I… I think I have an idea

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uh… that is what people find is
attractive, but the understanding of it,

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sometimes as this quality.

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I remember a man who was my teacher in
(inaudible). He is in Chicago now, James Funk.

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He said the only way I can
tell whether my thoughts are

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really have some weight to them is the sense
of terror, when I think of something new.

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There is no mystery,

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there is no mystery.

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There is no mystery.

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There is no mystery.

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[music]

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Fat Man, okay read it. Fat
Man was a bomb dropped on

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Nagasaki, Japan, August 9th, 1945.
The Trinity site device

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was this type, but minus the thin.
About how many people they killed?

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Something like 70,000, Hiroshima.
40 or 50,000 in Nagasaki.

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That’s a big bomb. That was the
direct effect. Oh, that’s like huge…

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that’s huger than that one, they dropped that
bomb out of the sky? That one… that was the one

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that was dropped on Nagasaki.
That one was dropped on what?

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That one over there hasn’t been dropped, it’s still
here. If it was dropped, it wouldn’t be here.

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Okay. What… what I can say, they gonna drop
that one on? They aren’t. They aren’t. Why?

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Because they don’t have a
desire to kill 40,000 people.

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They don’t? How come? Hopefully not. How
come? That’s a really good question.

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A good question.

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Enrico Fermi was my grandfather and he was one
of the scientists involved in making the…

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the atomic bomb, then he won
the Nobel prize in 1938

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for his… for his work with umm… neutrons. And because
of the sort of political situation at the time

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and the fact that my grandmother,
her family was Jewish,

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they decided that they would when
they went to pick up the Nobel prize,

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they would carry on to the United States.
So they arrived in the US in 1938.

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When the sort of remote possibility of an atomic
bomb, people were talking about it, uh…, you know,

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we can make maybe this immensely destructive
bomb and the story goes that umm…

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Enrico was looking out his office window
at Colombia, the streets of New York,

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and he cupped his hands together and he said to
the guy, I think it’s a little bomb like this

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and it could all disappear.

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[music]

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1933 after Hitler seizes power in Germany

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and enters his fleet
through the doors of hell.

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One by one Europe’s greatest scientist immigrate,
behind them they leave family and friends

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who died for being Jewish.
This nuclear physicist however

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will have another destiny, The United States in a mysterious
program that will be called “The Manhattan Project.”

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For they carry a certain knowledge
that cannot be ignored,

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the smallest of things, the nucleus of the atom
contains the greatest of energies such as the universe.

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Is that way and no other way.

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From one of my very good friends,

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a very ingenious Hungarian, Leo Szilard,

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ten years older than I. I have heard

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for a long time for years, the possibility

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of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.
I was interested,

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but I was a theorist, I
love to be a theorist,

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I did not particularly like
to do practical things,

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least of all weapons,

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but then in the spring of 1940,

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when Hitler invaded Belgium and Holland,

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there was a big conference in
Washington there I was professor.

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Pan-American conference and
Roosevelt was to speak.

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I didn’t want to go to political
speeches, but the invasion came

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two days before the speech
and what Roosevelt said was

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\"So many hours to cross the Atlantic,

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I prayed,

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what is happening there affects all of us.

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You scientist are blamed

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for the instruments of
destruction, you are Pacifist,

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I’m a Pacifist, but I tell you,

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if you now do not work on weapons,

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the freedom will be lost everywhere.\"

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You know, I looked at my watch when
he was through, it was 20 minutes.

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I have a peculiar feeling he talked to me

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because I was there and Einstein sent
a letter to Roosevelt telling him,

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look into atomic weapons,

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of the 2000 people
attending that conference.

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Perhaps only Roosevelt and
I knew that he may have,

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that he did have at that
time atomic weapons.

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I made up my mind, I have to work
on it, I never regretted it.

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Szilard discussed with Dr.
Einstein in the summer of 1939,

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the results of their finding and
stressed the urgent need for action

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by the US government.
Conscious of the disaster

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which would inevitably follow if Nazi Germany should
be the first to succeed in releasing atomic energy,

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Dr. Einstein decided to write a
personal letter to the president.

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[music]

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The letter was immediately brought
to the attention of the president.

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[music]

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I was

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the acting assistant professor at Tübingen

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and uh… I lost the post because
the Nazis came to power,

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this was war and so as I had

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promised when I became
an American physicist

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that uh… uh… I would

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from then on stop all my allegiance
to previous important dates

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that literally that worth.

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And so I… it was war, it
was a very bitter war

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and I did not mind the possibility

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that the bomb would be
used against Germany.

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Thank you all.

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Well, here we are again.

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[sil.]

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Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.

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Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.

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The family had a background
of being Quakers,

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and the Pacifist,

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and uh… it was difficult for me

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to become involved uh… with the project
and it’s easy to be a Pacifist

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when its only talk, but when
it came down to action,

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would I see France go down,

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would I see England go down,
uh… could I assume that

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and… and watch uh…

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Germany and Hitlerism rise?
Well, I felt that I could not

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and so I joined the… the Radar Project,

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but then uh… some other
physicist came to me and said,

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\"If I worked on the radar, I would not
be using my education as a physicist,

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that was an engineering
project and they suggested

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would I… would be much better
and more useful to work on the…

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uh… on a project to… develop
fission and reactors

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as a source of power.

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And well, strangely enough because
radar involve people that,

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you know, killing other people,
shooting down an airplanes

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whereas the other was only have
to do with sources of power

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because it seemed bombs
were out of the question.

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Then uh… the most Pacifist thing I
could do would be to work on the…

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on the Uranium project showing
you how wrong a person can be.

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But that’s how I got involved.

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[music]

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Yesterday, December 7, 1941,

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a date which will live

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in infamy.

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Calling Pearl Harbor, American to its World War 11 and with interventions
President Roosevelt orders a crash program to build an atomic bomb,

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it is code named the Manhattan Project.

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In September 1942 overall leadership of the
project is given to General Lesley Groves,

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the army’s master builder.
Groves is given unlimited means

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and has only to answer to the president. One of his
first decisions is to choose a Scientific Director,

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Robert Oppenheimer.

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Oppenheimer, a professor from Berkley was an
intellectual with interest far beyond Science,

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but he had a major handicap, close
associations with Communist.

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Virtually no one in the military wanted him in
such a sensitive job, no one except General Groves

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will alone imposed to Robert Oppenheimer.

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Everybody was surprised that Oppy
is being picked as Director.

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First of all, he was a
theoretical physicist

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and directors are usually

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uh… more practical people,

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experimental because he had a pure Ivory Tower background,
he had no administrative experience of any kind.

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It was not

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an obvious choice

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and I think a real tribute to
Groves that he had the imagination

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and the ability to see Oppy potential

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as a leader of the laboratory.
And Groves was

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his only aim was to get the
job done successfully,

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and if he had to override his security
people and question of left wing,

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they were perfectly ready
to do it and he knew

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what it took to make a
bomb project a success.

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It was at Berkley

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that I first met Oppenheimer. He
was one of my professors there,

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but I knew him by his reputation. I
would see him under circumstances,

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for example, at seminars,
meetings and I did not

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particularly like him in
that role because I thought

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he was arrogant and he was a
master of what we call a putdown

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and uh… I thought he was
a little bit uh… cruel

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in his relationship with other people.

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General Groves appeared to be

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such a totally opposite type
of person to Oppenheimer.

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Uh… General Groves was
rather broad in the beam

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and uh… authoritarian,

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whereas Robert Oppenheimer was slender

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and persuasive. So they
didn’t seem at all similar.

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In fact, I think Robert Oppenheimer
from what I’ve heard had troubles

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with General Groves. In spite of that,

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I have come to feel that both
of them did a superb job

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and that it took someone probably with
General Groves’ general disagreeableness

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to… to run approach active that
size and make things happen

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and it took someone of Oppenheimer’s persuasiveness
to get the scientist to work together

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and uh… and produce something for
that we all wanted to try to do.

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[music]

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At the middle of 1943

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General Groves had constructed in Anchorage,
Tennessee and in Hanford, Washington,

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two of the largest industrial complexes the world had
ever seen. It was like building the pyramids overnight,

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the Manhattan Project was to
cost more than $2 billion

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and employ over a 100,000 people, only a
handful knew what the project was about,

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to produce atom by atom, gram by
gram, Plutonium and enriched Uranium

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to different fuels for two different type
of bombs that no one was sure would work.

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In early 1944, tiny amounts of nuclear fuel

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was sent to a place that did not
exist, Los Alamos, New Mexico.

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[music]

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We arrived in Los Alamos in January 1944.

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On a beautiful winter day
in the middle of nowhere.

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Stan was not connected with the
immediate technical operations.

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He was a field electrician, he was a
mathematician, he wasn’t supposed to,

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but he did, he did tell me that
they were working on a new weapon

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which was built on the splitting
of the atom and that it was

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an entirely new concept and it
was at the frontiers of Science.

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Well Oppy of course had come by Chicago
quite often, and my wife had been

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the secretary to the director of
the man… of the project at Chicago

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who was a man named Don who
came from Philip Petroleum.

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And so, he uh… not so Nobel but
lean, anyway when I showed up in

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Los Alamos, it was on a Sunday afternoon and I
was walking to where we were being quartered

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and I ran into Oppy, and Oppy sort
of looked at me and I sort of

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jumped up like a little puppy dog, hello, Oppy and all and
everything and all he said was, he looked at me and said,

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\"Well, where is Beverley?\" And then I had the
distinct feeling that the reason I was there

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was because he wanted her to be there.
Ravages of time.

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[sil.]

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See what time does, that’s what time does,

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just wait and it’ll happen to you young
people, that’s all. If you are lucky.

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If you are lucky you will turn 75 and you are
still alive. Right, that’s a big deal, whoops.

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Okay, all done.

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Disgusting.

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I was the secretary. I worked
in Oppy’s office for a while.

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He was very good

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at handling people, he could be

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so sweet to all the foreign
dignitaries and army people

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who came into the office,
it was almost unbelievable,

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he… he was an ace diplomat as well as being

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a good physicist. General
Groves was there quite often

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and him and Oppy got a long fun.

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I don’t know what they might have thought
of each other when they were apart,

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but they seemed to understand each other.

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I knew more

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of (inaudible), he was
a complicated person.

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He was… had just about

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the quickest mind that I have ever seen.

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He uh… he was told

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about a problem and he understood
immediately and had immediately

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some precedent about on it and
that’s what qualified him

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to be… to be the director

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of Los Alamos laboratory,

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uh… he kept informed on all the parts
of the laboratory whether it’s was

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about Theoretical Physics,
Experimental Physics, Chemistry,

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Engineering, uh… testing of guns,

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of fire explosives, he was
informed about everything

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and had his opinion about everything.

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So, he was a wonderful Director.

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The work was extremely interesting, completely
new field and we had to do it fast,

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and we had to be right the first time

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because we wanted to have it
available during the war.

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Oppenheimer was… I don’t hesitate to say,

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the best director I have ever seen.

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Los Alamos was that were trying to make an A
bomb and Edward was more interested in the super

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which was his idea of a
thermonuclear weapon.

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Finally, Oppy solved it by

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letting Edward go his own way, I mean,
we have a small, theoretical group

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to work on the super. It
was then that Oppenheimer

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and after that, I think it was

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a matter of jealousy,

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
of personal ambition.

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We lived very hard, people worked very hard and then we
had to let off steam. So it was such a beautiful country

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
that where you could do, I mean, you
could explore everything you wanted,

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go up in the mountains
on Sundays or go skiing,

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umm… take horses and go

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searching for Indian artifacts in the caves

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and it was a very exciting
life, never a dull moment.

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Dorothy McKibbin’s house was a site where

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some of the young people who met and wanted
to be married, got married and of course,

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people entertained each other a fair amount,
they had dinner parties from house to house,

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liquor flowed, people flirted,

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not just only among single
people, when people got drunk,

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there was a fair amount of hanky panky.
And then people talked

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
about playing games or musical bids.

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
Of course the group that was very eclectic, uh… all
types of people, what Oppy had arranged it so that

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
everybody was pretty equal and uh… there
were parties and we would get invited,

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
we enjoyed it all very much. There was no

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
class distinction so to speak
between the Nobel Laureates

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
and uh… and graduate students and grunts
such as I considered myself at the time.

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
Everybody was terribly young.

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
Of course, all the families were increasing
rapidly and lots of babies were born,

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
but it was such a secret place
that the birth certificate

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
didn’t say we were born in Los Alamos, Los
Alamos was not on the map. We were born in

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
the post office box 1663 in Santa Fe.

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
So, my daughter was born in P. O Box 1663,

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
the date is Henry was born there and so on.

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
And the General resented that very much. He
thought that doctors ought to be doing something

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
else besides delivering babies.

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
By the middle of July 1945,

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
the scientist at Los Alamos
after barely two years of work

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
had succeeded in designing and
assembling two atomic bombs,

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
Fat Man, the Plutonium bomb and
Little Boy, the Uranium Bomb.

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
If one did not worked maybe the other would. Fat
Man was to be tested in the desert of New Mexico,

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
Little Boy would be tried out elsewhere.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
Robert Oppenheimer baptized
the first test Trinity.

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:43.000
[music]

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
And they always had a nightmare

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
that as I was going up the slippery ladder,
steel ladder up a 100 feet to the top,

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
I’d always fall off and in my
dream I would wake up screaming

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
and uh… so that night then I,

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
when I went out it was even worst because it was
raining, lightening was going off everywhere

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
and the idea of going up in the
top of this bom… of this tower

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
and looking at the bomb, well,
uh… all sorts of horrible things

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
could have happened that we were the
last people up. Those people were

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
arming the bomb as they were putting in
the devices that would make it go off

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
in a uniform manner. And… but

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
I turned… we had a conversation

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
and we all talked about well,
with the was there any chance

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
that the… that the lightning
going bang, bang all around us

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:58.000
would set off the bomb by mistake and we all agreed. No, it
would not set off the bomb under… under any circumstances.

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
On the other hand, we were not terribly
convincing to one another. Two minutes to go.

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
Stretched out on the sand, tensely
expectant were General Groves,

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
Dr. Bush and Dr. Conan and the control
shack was Dr. J. R Oppenheimer,

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
all assisted by Robby and others

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
and directed the making of the bomb itself.
The automatic controls got it now.

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
Rob, this time the stakes are really high.
It’s going to work alright Robert

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
and I’m sure, we’ll never be sorry for it.
In 40 seconds, we’ll know.

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:43.000
[music]

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:28.000
[music]

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:40.000
Say cheese.

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
Okie-dokie, he’s not going to tell
me April Fool. Hope not. Okie-dokie.

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
Oh, my gosh,

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
look one blew up down there.

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
Exchange history, we are
into the atomic age now.

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
Oh, Lord yes. Changed it for
better or worse, do you think?

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
[sil.]

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
The sky just… it was just like daylight
like bright, like middle of the day

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
and yet it was in the night, early in the morning and nobody
knew what happen, everybody was talking about it the next day

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
because nobody had the slightest inkling of
what was going on. And here I was in El Pasa

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
and we lived next door to us lived an
FBI agent who worked at Los Alamos

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
and he was up there and later we found
out that he was up there just to

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
uh… find out if anybody was
letting, you know, any secrets out.

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
But he knew… but of course,
we didn’t tell anybody.

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
I didn’t hear any sound at all.

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
Just the sky was just bright and it just, you’d
almost think the world was coming to the end,

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
that’s the way it was. This was postponed

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
on the account of local thunderstorms
for a while and finally,

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
we saw a rocket go up
which meant five minutes,

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
everybody laid down facing the explosion

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
and we’d all been issued

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
a piece through welder of the of
the glass about three inches wide

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
and 2 inches high which we’d been
told to hold in front of our eyes.

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
So we wouldn’t be blinded by the explosion.

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
Well, knowing about after
about five minutes,

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
my arm was getting tired and I just
put the glass down for a second

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
and then of course, in that
second was when the bomb went off

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
and I was completely blinded.

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
The first thing I noticed was the
mountains around began to look small,

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
here was this phenomena going on, here were the
mountains, they are so small in comparison

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
with this marvelous uh…
phenomena natural phenomena,

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
not natural, unnatural phenomena

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
going on with all kinds of colors,
all kinds of screwing around,

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
but a general rising and well,

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
then I realized what it… what
a great strength it was,

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
I realized that at least, I had
been working on for five years,

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
four years I guess,

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
uh… really did work. It scared
me, I think it scared everybody.

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
It was at such a grand scale

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
with what was expected by other,
still the same was frightening

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
and of course, everybody

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
knows Ken Bainbridge who was

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
in charge of the… in charge
of the Trinity test,

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
his remark that’s famous, he said, \"Now we
are all sons of the bitches.” Until one saw,

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
when it was abstract, it was
something you believed,

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
but it was like believing
in… in some religion

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
that you really won’t know about till
you are dead. I mean, the consequences

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
and this was a little
bit, and I thought well,

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
I became a believer very… like that.

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
And my job as a physicist was over,

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
uh… that no longer made any
difference and the next thing

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
was to were the consequences
of this… of this tremendous

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
force of nature.

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
When Trinity occurred,

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
the war had already been won in Europe by the allies.
Tens up on tens of millions of people had been killed,

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
but in China, Southeast Asia and the
Pacific, the Japanese fought on.

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
There the Americans discovered an enemy
who often preferred death to surrender.

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
The United States military planned an
invasion of Japan for October 1945,

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
estimated American casualties 500,000 men.

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
Oppy and I discussed the question

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
of whether the bomb should be used in Japan

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
and our opinion was that definitely should.

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
Oppy and I had discussions, termed the bomb

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
a psychological weapon.

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
We were I don’t know why we were so
sure, we were sure it went in the war,

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
mainly the team that asked
the psychological effects

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
of demonstration when they
not nearly as effective

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
as the actual use.

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
When Hitler was defeated,
some people in Chicago

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
put together a petition including Szilard,

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
let’s not start the atomic age

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
with a cruel exposure, let’s demonstrate,

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
perhaps that will suffice

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
to persuade the Japanese to
surrender, enact the idea.

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
I went to Oppenheimer,

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
he was completely opposite.

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
What? That I now think about
it, I don’t know. I think

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
we should have tried the demonstration.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
We knew that if you dropped
an atomic bomb, 10 kilometers

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
above Tokyo bay, it would
have lit up the evening sky,

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
a thunder never heard before
and not a single person died,

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
that probably you have seen it.

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
It was he who in the end after Hiroshima
really stood up for ending the war.

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
Actually, we only had two bombs and if
you were going to do a demonstration,

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
I don’t know how you would arrange it,
put up bleachers, invite people to come,

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
black tie affair or what? I just thought the
whole thing was nonsense. The whole effort,

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
the whole number of those years was
to end the war as quickly as possible

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
and save as many American,
Chinese allied lives as possible

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
and quite frankly, I don’t think we cared about
anything about else other than ending the war

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
as quickly as possible. Now, these…
I’m told that these discussions

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
went on about not using the
bomb, uh… but I wasn’t privy

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
to any of that because we were overseas
and our objective was to use the bomb

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
whenever it was available, Colonel Tibbets
outfit was prepared to use it either in Europe

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
or in Japan whenever it became available
and as soon as it became available,

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
I’m very thankful that Harry
Truman made the right decision.

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
There’ve been arguments of
people today historians,

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
revisionist who are saying, oh, well, the invasion
wouldn’t have been so bad, you only lost 63,000 Americans.

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
Well, I didn’t want to lose one American
and the Chinese were losing 25,000 a week.

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
Uh… So, I just don’t understand
these people at all, never did.

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
I just think they were off base completely.

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
August 1945, Tinian Island,

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
Harold Agnew holds the Plutonium
core Fat Man, the Nagasaki bomb.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:38.000
[music]

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
Tinian Island, the size and shape of Manhattan
located some 2000 kilometers from Japan

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
was the point of departure for the bomb.

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:58.000
[music]

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
Colonel Paul Tibbet considered America’s best
pilot was chosen to carry out the nuclear attack.

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
The weapon is Little Boy armed
with a Uranium core, Japan will

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
be its first test.

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
[music]

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
Tibbet’s named his B29 Enola Gay

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
in memory of his mother,
her destination Hiroshima.

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
[music]

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
Well, in Tinian, we had a small group
whose job was to try to measure the yield

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
of the detonation over
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
And when the bomb airplane dropped
the bomb, we then dropped our gauges

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
and then we had to tune in our signal from our
gauges. When the blast wave hit our gauges,

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
then we recorded that impulse,
the duration of the blast

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
and the amplitude of the blast, we recorded
that on film. I just uh… thought, wow,

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
it really went off, I didn’t know. In my notebook it
just says, wow, it really went off, it really did,

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
it really did, but then my concern was getting
back safely. I had no great thoughts,

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
people say, you know, did you realize the
implication of this and did you worry

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
about the future of the world? At that time, no,
all I worried about was getting home safely.

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
[music]

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
At 8:15 AM,

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
August 6, 1945, Harold
Agnew filmed these images.

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
Hiroshima 200,000 deaths.

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:53.000
[music]

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
When I had flown this
airplane away from the

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
point of explosion of that weapon and we got
the shockwave, turned around and came back.

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
As I looked at the frontier, I
could hardly believe what I saw.

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
What had been the city
down there was nothing,

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
but a black boiling pallor of I called
it “tar,” but it was smoke, debris,

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
dust and everything, it was bubbling up, it
was just boiling. At that particular time,

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
I was a young man, I was embroiled
in this thing, I was brought into it

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
not by my will, I didn’t… I keep telling, but
I didn’t start that war and I must I have

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
to add this, I have no regrets

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
of doing what I did at that particular time
and I’ve never lost a night’s sleep over

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
and I’ve talked to men in my outfit
and everyone of them reiterate

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
that same feeling.

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:33.000
[music]

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
11:02 AM, August 9th 1945

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
Nagasaki, 140,000 deaths.

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
Five days later, Japan surrenders.

00:40:55.000 --> 00:41:03.000
[sil.]

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
Oppy asked me, what did it…

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
\"Did I have any thoughts about it?” I
told him that,\" Well, I didn’t think

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
it should be used over Japan and I thought

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
we should not use it in anger.\" I was
quite ill, I had when I first heard

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
of the… of the… of the bomb over Hiroshima

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
then I had a very large
visceral uh… reaction to it

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
and whether I threw up or not, I can’t
really remember. I think I did,

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
but I was sick. You were sick.
Well, I had to go off and sit down

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
and uh… everybody was celebrating

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
and I was ashamed of myself for
not being one of the celebrants.

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
They threw atomic bombs followed

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
three years of the most intensive war

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
in which both sides tried

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
to hurt each other as much as possible,

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
that was done first by the
Japanese and then by us.

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
The… the fact is that,

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
one atomic bombing raid

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
uh… was really no worse
than the higher bomb

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
conventional raids on Tokyo.

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
And I have come to the conclusion

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
that it was terrible for
Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
but for the Japan as a
whole, I think it was

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
very good luck that these bombs came

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
because if they hadn’t come,

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
we would have continued higher
bombing cities with casualties

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
50,000 maybe a 100,000 each time.

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:29.999
The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.
The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.

00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
We invite any of you who are baptized
and would like to participate

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
in the sacrament.

00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
He was up there, wherever this happened that we wasn’t told anything
about this at all and then whenever they bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima,

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
where they called us all
out, all the workers,

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
they just stopped the project, they called
us out on what they called the grinder

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
and then they told us what it was.
They told us that they had bombed

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
two cities in Japan, Nagasaki and Hiroshima

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
and they had very good results,

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
the only thing that I talked to Oppenheimer,
he said the only thing he was afraid

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
of was that they couldn’t stop it.
Oppenheimer is a swell guy,

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
he’s a really, really a good guy.
I never was sorry,

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
I had too many of my buddies killed, I wasn’t the
least bit sorry, I was glad that we got it done

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
and that it stopped. We
saved a million lives

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:45.000
by using the atom bomb. No,
I’m not the least bit sorry.

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.999
Nuclear bomb against Japan can
be justified at this time?

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
Who can answer that?

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
Like I said it was a tragedy

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
and… and whether lives were lost, whether
lives were saved, some lives were saved,

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
others were lost. But, yes, it was
wrong, but maybe it was right too,

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
there was a sense in which
it was right to end the war.

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
You can’t take out an event like
that that is so catastrophic,

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
I don’t think it was right or wrong.

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
Yeah, thank you very much. I’m glad to have
met you. How long will you be in Albuquerque?

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.999
Oh, just one more week. You’ll find to see
something else other than Trinity site,

00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.999
there’s a lot around here. We love it around
here. At the end of the war, we were heroes

00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:54.999
and now we are villain.

00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:59.999
And perhaps just… perhaps it’s

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.999
just as well,

00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.999
but a matter of fact we the…

00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:14.999
we had bomb did a… did a valuable
thing, a very valuable thing,

00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
it made war impossible between

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
great powers

00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
and it ended World War,
let’s say (inaudible)

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
where just suicide became suicidal.
It could destroy the world, yes.

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
It still can. Be polite to have enemies

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
and… uh… and start rearming
in… in some peculiar way.

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
It’s still a possibility and one
has to fight justice hard now

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
as the day after Trinity.

00:46:55.000 --> 00:47:03.000
[music]

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
1949, The Soviet Union tests
its first atomic bomb.

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
By 1952, The Soviets and the
Americans each develop a super,

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
the hydrogen bomb, the weapon capable
of destroying 500 Hiroshima’s.

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:28.000
[music]

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
In 1954, United States is in the midst of the
cold war in the paranoia of the McCarthy period.

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
Entire city carry out drills to prepare
against a possible Soviet Nuclear attack.

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
And the siren wails and
New York’s inhabitants,

00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
all of them reach shelter, the hour is a
surprise but New Yorkers know what to do..

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
[music]

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
After the war, Robert Oppenheimer had become a national hero and
one of the government’s most influential military advisors.

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
He favored international
control of nuclear arms,

00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
he favored talks with the Soviets. He opposed
the hydrogen bomb developed by Edward Teller,

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
an arm of no military value he said.
There were no targets big enough.

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
It was simply an instrument of genocide
and Oppenheimer made powerful enemies.

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
Affidavit to the fact that

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
he had been a member of the party
but he had recommended communist

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
or work in the (inaudible) plants. Uh…
Lot of close relatives are of course,

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
communists but doesn’t mean, it doesn’t
make him a communist but his wife

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
admittedly was the wife of a
official communist party,

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
brother, a very active communist military…

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
In the spring of 1954,

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
President Eisenhower ordered secret hearings to
determine whether Oppenheimer could keep his job

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
as a government advisor. The hero
was now being treated as a traitor,

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
the KGB spy. Robert
Oppenheimer would never again

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
be allowed to work for his country.

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
[music]

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
Edward Teller, the father
of the hydrogen bomb

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
and a very determined anti-communist was the
only scientist to testify against Oppenheimer.

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
Subsequently, he would become the
preferred advisor of several presidents

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
and the nuclear race that the
Soviets began in earnest

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
which started at Trinity
apparently could not be stopped.

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:53.000
[music]

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
I was explicitly asked

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
should he be cleared

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
and I said, from the point
of view of loyalty,

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
he should be. From the point of view

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
of with I dare say nothing.

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
A sad story,

00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
a terrible story. Oppenheimer
did good work during the war.

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
No question, he had been a communist.

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
To my mind, in all probability,

00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
no question that he was not a traitor,

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
that he deserved to be tested. I disagreed.

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
I believe he gave wrong advice,
but that should not have been

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
a security question.

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
We exaggerated secrecy.

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
I believe that Oppenheimer’s position

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
on the one hand to use the
bomb, on the other hand,

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
at that point to stop all further work

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
connected this nuclear energy.
Stop the hydrogen bomb,

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
I think that was a mistake.

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
I was very much upset as were my friends
when Edward Teller chose to testify

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
in a rather equivocal way suggesting
that he wasn’t sure about Oppenheimer

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
and this felt… it seemed to me was…

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
was essentially stabbing
someone in the back

00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.999
and when he’s down as a matter of fact. He
was asked if Robert was a security risk

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:04.999
and he replied that he would feel more
secure the fact that he wasn’t a insult

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
and of course…

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.999
you know, was a play on words.

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:19.999
His answer was this that he
disagreed with him on policy

00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.999
had nothing to do with the question
of whether he was a security risk,

00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
but it gave but it really, you know,
that man stating the impression

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
and we didn’t forgive him for that.

00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:39.999
I mean, you know, the
story of Christy refusing

00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.999
to shake hands with him

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.999
and that was the reaction of most
physicist. I felt that it was a disgrace.

00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:54.999
I felt personally disgraced,
uh… I felt the country

00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:59.999
had been disgraced in treating Oppenheimer,

00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.999
a real hero, normally heroes are celebrated

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:09.999
and here he was… he was disgraced.

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.999
It was really the crucifixion
of someone who had been very,

00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:19.999
very instrumental because we
thought Oppenheimer who knows

00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.999
whether his… his leadership
of the lab during the war was

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.999
so extraordinary that it was obvious
that he coordinated everything.

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
And it was not a very pleasant
feeling that the country

00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
and some of the administrators
and bureaucrats

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.999
were turning against him and it was suspected
that Teller had something to do with this

00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.999
because he was so angry at Oppenheimer.
They jumped on his past,

00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.999
his left wing past and were afraid

00:53:55.000 --> 00:53:59.999
that started saying that he
was a Russian spy and so on.

00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.999
So, they destroyed him.

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.999
I feel the world would not be the same,

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.999
few people left,

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:19.999
a few people cried, most
people were silent.

00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:24.999
I remembered the line from Hindu scripture

00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:29.999
the Bhagavad Gita.

00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:34.999
Vishnu is trying to persuade

00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:39.999
the prince that he should do his duty

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.999
and to impress him, takes
on his multi-armed form

00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:49.999
and says, \"Now, I’m become death,

00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:54.999
the destroyer of worlds.\"

00:54:55.000 --> 00:55:03.000
[music]

00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:08.000
[sil.]