The Girls of Atomic City (37 page)

No test of this, the gun model of the Gadget, using Product from CEW, had ever been conducted. The enriched Tubealloy was too scarce. The scientists were fairly confident that this model would work, however. Isometric drawings of the gun model were sketched by Miriam White Campbell, an architecture student who had joined the Army in 1943 and was eventually sent to Los Alamos, where her skills were put to use creating intricate drawings of the internal workings of the bomb.

The first few days of August featured uncooperative weather. Hiroshima, with its 25,000 or so troops and a castle housing an army headquarters, was the primary target. There would be other “non-Gadget” attacks coming from the air the same day. The B-29
Enola Gay
, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets and named for his mother, would carry the atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy. There were two observation planes for the
Enola Gay
and a spare plane headed to Iwo Jima as a backup in case the
Enola Gay
suffered mechanical difficulties. Additionally, planes flew to Kokura Arsenal and Kokura, the secondary targets, and Nagasaki, a tertiary one, to provide eyewitness reports on weather in those locations.

Atmospheric reports on August 5 looked more favorable. A midnight briefing led to a pre-flight breakfast and religious services before the
Enola Gay
and its payload took to the air on August 6, 2:45
AM
Tinian time. The bomb dropped at 9:15
AM
. The weaponeer of the
Enola Gay
, Captain Parsons, reported two “slaps” hitting the plane after the flash. At 10:00
AM
he could still see the cloud, which he estimated to be 40,000 feet high. He and the others who observed the blast thought the Japanese might believe they were struck by a meteor.

The General had initially believed another Gadget like the implosion model tested at Alamogordo in New Mexico would arrive at Tinian on August 6:

Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1’s and the V-2’s late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.

The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles.

Beginning in 1940, before Pearl Harbor, scientific knowledge useful in war was pooled between the United States and Great Britain, and many priceless helps to our victories have come from that arrangement. Under that general policy the research on the atomic bomb was begun. With American and British scientists working together we entered the race of discovery against the Germans.

A cloud hung over Hiroshima. The estimated damaged area was 1.7 square miles, with initial calculations indicating approximately 70,000 people were killed instantly—nearly the population of Oak Ridge—with roughly the same number of people injured. Those reports would soon be revised up, with closer to 140,000 people dead, though precise numbers are impossible to know. News about the bombing began to spread quickly across the world as well as the Reservation. Wives with access to radios and phones called husbands at work. Whispers became shouts; gossip morphed into fact. At K-25, Colleen Rowan heard the news after a coworker’s wife had called. She went out to buy a copy of the Knoxville newspaper. It usually sold for a nickel, but today “extras” were going for $1—and everyone had sold out.

The United States had available the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project and they could be devoted to it without undue impairment of other vital war work. In the United States the laboratory work and the production plants, on which a substantial start had already been made, would be out of reach of enemy bombing, while at that time Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was still threatened with the possibility of invasion. For these reasons Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt agreed that it was wise to carry on the project here. We now have two great plants and many lesser works devoted to the production of atomic power. Employment during peak construction numbered 125,000 and over 65,000 individuals are even now engaged in operating the plants. Many have worked there for two and a half years. Few know what they have been producing. They see great quantities of material going in and they see nothing coming out of those plants, for the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small. We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history—and won.

But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has been the capacity of industry to design, and of labor to operate, the machines and methods to do things never done before so that the brain child of many minds came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do. Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under high pressure and without failure.

Jane Greer stood up, walked away from the numbers she had been crunching, and strolled to the window, unable to ignore the growing ruckus. Nothing had changed since Germany’s surrender. But now shouts and cheers rose up to her second-story window in building 9731. She looked down and saw something unexpected, especially during a workday.

A large crowd was gathered on an expanse of muddy ground outside the building. People were ecstatic. They hugged each other and yelled excitedly to any other curious passersby.

Whatever’s going on must be big,
Jane thought. As she opened the window, the volume of the throng increased. She leaned out over the mayhem, trying to get someone’s attention so that she could find out what had happened. Surely, it had something to do with the war.

Or did it have something to do with them?

We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war.

It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware.

Leaflets to this very effect were dropped on Japanese cities following the bombing, stating that this bomb had been used because of the rejection of the declaration to surrender issued from Potsdam.

ATTENTION JAPANESE PEOPLE. EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.

Because your military leaders have rejected the thirteen part surrender declaration, two momentous events have occurred in the last few days.

The Soviet Union, because of this rejection on the part of the military has notified your Ambassador Sato that it has declared war on your nation. Thus, all powerful countries of the world are now at war with you.

Also, because of your leaders’ refusal to accept the surrender declaration that would enable Japan to honorably end this useless war, we have employed our atomic bomb.

A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s could have carried on a single mission. Radio Tokyo has told you that with the first use of this weapon of total destruction, Hiroshima was virtually destroyed.

Before we use this bomb again and again to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, petition the emperor now to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better, and peace-loving Japan.

Act at once or we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war.

EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.

Pamphlets floated down from a troubled sky, as the Japanese season of the Obon was about to begin, a time of communing with the spirits of one’s ancestors, a time when the living honor their dead. The papers landed on grass and rubble, warning of distant fires, smoky remains, and more destruction to come.

In the United States, the president’s statement continued:

The Secretary of War, who has kept in personal touch with all phases of the project, will immediately make public a statement giving further details. His statement will give facts concerning the sites at Oak Ridge near Knoxville, Tennessee, and at Richland near Pasco, Washington, and an installation near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Although the workers at the sites have been making materials to be used in producing the greatest destructive force in history they have not themselves been in danger beyond that of many other occupations, for the utmost care has been taken of their safety.

Oak Ridge?

Ears in Dr. Rea’s office and across the Reservation perked up.

OAK RIDGE!
Those with access to phones yanked receivers from cradles and began dialing furiously. Others found themselves rooted to their spots in front of the radio, lest any more information about Oak Ridge be divulged.

This was different.

This announcement wasn’t just about a bomb.

It was about what had been going on here the whole time.

Oak Ridge’s secret was out.

The fact that we can release atomic energy ushers in a new era in man’s understanding of nature’s forces. Atomic energy may in the future supplement the power that now comes from coal, oil, and falling water, but at present it cannot be produced on a basis to compete with them commercially. Before that comes there must be a long period of intensive research.

It has never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy of this Government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge. Normally, therefore, everything about the work with atomic energy would be made public.

But under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the technical processes of production or all the military applications, pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction.

I shall recommend that the Congress of the United States consider promptly the establishment of an appropriate commission to control the production and use of atomic power within the United States. I shall give further consideration and make further recommendations to the Congress as to how atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace.

★ ★ ★

“Now you know what we’ve been doing all this time.”

Rosemary looked at Dr. Rea as he spoke to the small crowd still gathered in his office. The address was finished, but for Oak Ridgers, the news was just beginning to sink in.

Bombing Hiroshima with this new and powerful weapon was enough of a development to digest. But Oak Ridgers now scrambled to learn more about their roles in what had happened.

It all made sense now: the gates and the guards and the plants and the schedule and the secrecy. Of all the words the president had uttered, that single mention of “Oak Ridge” had caused perhaps the greatest shock of all.

Rosemary found the entire experience—finally learning what had been going on around her for the past two years—unnerving, exciting, a bit skin-crawling. Definitely shocking.

And now there was an ultimatum for Japan to surrender.

But would they?
If they did, it would mean the end of the war. This was the conversation on the lips of many Americans, but at CEW, Oak Ridgers struggled to process not only the event itself, but the fact that they had all, in some way, played a part.

★ ★ ★

“It was evident when the war began that the development of atomic energy for war purposes would occur in the near future and it was a question of which nations would control the discovery . . .”

So stated Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson in his own “Statement on the Bombing of Japan” released August 6. He went into limited detail about the atomic bomb, describing the new weapon as perhaps the “greatest achievement of the combined efforts of science industry, labor, and the military in all history.”