Birth of an Era

A new era was born--the age of atomic force. Like many an epoch in man's progress toward civilization, it was wombed in war's destruction. The birth was announced one day this week by the President of the United States. His words:

"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. ... It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. . . . What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. . . ."

Thus to the U.S., already great in military and scientific prowess, had come man's most destructive weapon. To the U.S. Army Air Forces had been given the means for complete destruction of Japan. General "Tooey" Spaatz and his Pacific flyers could now blow the enemy into the sea, for one atomic bomb dropped from one plane can wreak the same destruction as 2,000 B-29s (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS).

Once again President Truman applied the psychological squeeze on Japan: "We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above the ground. ... 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. . . ."

The Challenge. But the atomic bomb was something more than an instrument to shape 1945's history. It represented a brutal challenge to the world to keep the peace. The scientists had created, and had successfully applied, a weapon which might wipe out with a few strokes any nation's power to resist an enemy.

The appalling implications of the explosive power now unlocked from the atom were not overlooked by the nation's leaders in war. President Truman voiced the danger: the processes of production and all the military applications thus far devised would not be divulged, "pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction."

The President pledged himself to two prompt steps: 1) he would ask Congress to set up government control over the production and use of atomic power within the U.S.; 2) he would study and recommend to Congress means to make atomic force "a powerful . . . influence towards the maintenance of world peace."

To the U.S. and the world, the harnessing of atomic power carried the explosive implications of an industrial revolution, perhaps more significant for the future than the harnessing of steam or electricity, or the invention of the internal-combustion engine had been in the past. But that future might be many years distant. Atomic energy, President Truman said, cannot now be produced on a basis to compete with coal, oil and falling water. Said the President: "There must be a long period of intensive research."

The History. The story of the atomic bomb had been the greatest and the best-kept secret of the war. It began in 1941 when the British, certain that an atomic bomb could be produced, set a board of experts to work. It had its drama: one winter day in 1942, British and Norwegian volunteer commandos raided a point in Norway, found a heavy-water plant where the Germans were working on the process.

U.S. scientists, too, had been at work smashing the atom (see SCIENCE). But, thanks to the commandos, they now found the Germans had been ahead of them. The race of the laboratories began.

The fact that the U.S. now has the bomb (and presumably the only facilities for producing it) was in part a result of Britain's trust of this nation.

As they did with radar, Britain, Canada and the U.S. pooled their knowledge of splitting the atom, pooled their atomic scientists. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had made the arrangement. The factors were: 1) the U.S. had the facilities and the scientific know-how; 2) the U.S. was presumably safe from enemy action.

The U.S. set to work. Three vast plants were built: at Oak Ridge, Tenn., 19 miles west of Knoxville; at Pasco, in the sagebrush country of northwest Washington, 150 miles southwest of Seattle; and at Los Alamos, N.M., 30 miles northwest of Santa Fe.

"Manhattan Project." In the War Department, the super-secret program was "Manhattan Project." It had top priority on materiel and Army specialists. But few, if any, of the 65,000 who at one time worked on materials, handled blueprints, and expedited the job, ever knew what "Manhattan Project" was. Not until this week did they know the end results of their labors. The cost was tremendous, but it was worth it. Said Harry Truman: "We have spent $2 billion on the greatest scientific gamble in history--and won."

To every U.S. citizen, as well as to every statesman, the victory of peace had a solemn urgency it had never had before. In London, Winston Churchill said: "We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to conduce to peace among nations and that, instead of wreaking measureless havoc upon the entire globe, they may become the perennial fountain of world prosperity."

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