I wrote the following letter in the week after Trinity:
Dear Anabelle,
Even as I am writing this letter, I know I cannot send it to you. Our mail here is censored, and everything I am about to write is confidential. I am not even supposed to mention censorship in my letters, much less the work we are doing here. Three days ago, I witnessed the first ever explosion of an atomic bomb. That's the "stuff" I've been working on all these years- ever since I met Enrico Fermi at the University of Columbia.
Anabelle, I hardly know how to describe it. It was unlike anything I have ever seen or felt. I watched the blast from a bomb shelter six miles away. I actually am not sure how I got assigned to that shelter. It was the control center, and the room was full of a lot of our top scientists. Anyway, waiting for the blast was excruciating. The countdown started at zero minus twenty minutes, and time seemed to slow indefinitely. In the last few minutes of the countdown, I tried to distract myself from my nerves by looking at my fellow scientists. I saw worry, fear, and an intense curiosity plastered onto quite a few of their faces. Oppenheimer (we call him Oppie) scarcely breathed- he held on to a post to steady himself.
Sam Allison, the scientist doing the countdown, finally shouted "Now!" I saw a yellow glow, which grew instantly to a blinding white flash with an intensity even brighter than that of the sun at noon-day. It lit up the entire countryside- every peak, every crevasse, and every ridge of the nearby mountain range was completely visible. The clarity with which I saw everything around me cannot be described, only imagined. Looking into the blast was like opening a hot oven. I could feel the searing heat of the explosion warming my face. The light turned to yellow and then to orange. It became a stupendous ball of fire about a mile in diameter. The fireball began to rise, its color changing from deep purple to blue, from grey to gold, and then back to orange. It expanded as it rose, billowing and rolling up toward the heavens until it looked like one giant, magnificent, beautiful, terrifying mushroom. Mankind has never before made anything so powerful. I heard General Farrell, General Groves's second-in-command, say of it afterward, "It was the beauty the great poets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately." About thirty seconds after the explosion came the sound. It was a tremendous roar, swallowing up all other sounds in existence. It was a thunderclap, bouncing off the mountains and echoing back to pound into our ears so that we would realize the significance of what we had just done. I thought, "No one has ever before rendered such a perfect depiction of doomsday."
The tension in the room lifted immediately. Oppie wore the same expression of relief that he had had on since the explosion lit the horizon. Everyone started congratulating each other. All of our pent-up emotions were released in those first few minutes. Then a chill came over the room. It was extremely solemn. A few people laughed, and some cried, but most were silent. We had done the impossible, but we had also created an entirely new force- one to be used for good or evil. We had paved two roads- one leading to unprecedented scientific discovery and efficiency, and one leading to mass destruction and possibly our downfall. For all our sakes, I desperately hope to follow the former. In this war, the technology we've created will save thousands of American lives, but the world will never be the same. We've made the greatest discovery to ever affect human existence. There will be no going back.
I do not do the event justice with these words, Anabelle. To truly understand everything we were feeling, you would have had to be there since the beginning. You may never fully understand what I have written, Anabelle, but I will try to briefly describe some of the history leading up to this momentous occasion.
There had been no project like this ever before. We are a gathering of great minds from all over the world and young scientists willing to learn (that's me!), all working toward a common goal. There was a tremendous feeling of purpose. In 1939 when Lise Meitner discovered nuclear fission, most of us had possessed no knowledge whatsoever on the subject. Then we had all been asked to leave our homes and jobs for a dusty town in rural New Mexico to work on a secret project for the government. Under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer, we were united. When we came close to achieving our goal in early 1944, our confidence was crushed. Our design for one of two bombs was completely flawed. The entire project appeared in jeopardy. We scrambled for a new design, and we were back on track by early 1945. It was a miracle.
That June and July, every waking moment was spent working on the bomb. It seemed like there was a new mini-disaster every day. On July 2, George Kistiakowsky (Kisty for short) x-rayed the explosives he had custom-made to start the nuclear chain-reaction in the bomb. To his dismay, they were filled with tiny air holes. When General Groves adamantly refused to delay the test, Kisty devised a plan. He used a dental drill to drill holes in some faulty casings in order to reach the air cavities, then mixed a batch of liquid explosives and filled the holes drop by drop. When I asked him about how it felt to be working on a bunch of unstable explosives, he replied, "You don't worry about it. I mean, if fifty pounds of explosives goes in your lap, you won't know it." I didn't know it at the time, but Kisty's reasoning would reappear several times in the next few days.
On July 12, I helped assemble the plutonium core of the bomb. Then, just twelve hours before the detonation was scheduled, a storm rolled in. Oppie got really worried about the bomb. All he could do was imagine last-second problems. So he got this physicist I roomed with once, Donald Hornig, to babysit it. Hornig said, "The possibility of lightning striking the tower was very much on my mind." He could foresee two outcomes. One, the tower's steel frame would conduct the electricity harmlessly into the ground. Two, the electrical burst would set off the bomb. "And in that case," he said, "I'd never know about it! So I read my book."
I cannot hope to describe all that occurred, but I hope that I have given you a better picture of the creation (and the creators) of nuclear weapons. Someday I will be able to give you this letter, and then we will read it together. I don't know what you will think of me, and I don't know what I will think of myself. I don't know where this science will go, and I probably have no conception of the good or evil it will work, but I hope you will understand, whatever happens.
Your loving brother,
Elliot
Dear Anabelle,
Even as I am writing this letter, I know I cannot send it to you. Our mail here is censored, and everything I am about to write is confidential. I am not even supposed to mention censorship in my letters, much less the work we are doing here. Three days ago, I witnessed the first ever explosion of an atomic bomb. That's the "stuff" I've been working on all these years- ever since I met Enrico Fermi at the University of Columbia.
Anabelle, I hardly know how to describe it. It was unlike anything I have ever seen or felt. I watched the blast from a bomb shelter six miles away. I actually am not sure how I got assigned to that shelter. It was the control center, and the room was full of a lot of our top scientists. Anyway, waiting for the blast was excruciating. The countdown started at zero minus twenty minutes, and time seemed to slow indefinitely. In the last few minutes of the countdown, I tried to distract myself from my nerves by looking at my fellow scientists. I saw worry, fear, and an intense curiosity plastered onto quite a few of their faces. Oppenheimer (we call him Oppie) scarcely breathed- he held on to a post to steady himself.
Sam Allison, the scientist doing the countdown, finally shouted "Now!" I saw a yellow glow, which grew instantly to a blinding white flash with an intensity even brighter than that of the sun at noon-day. It lit up the entire countryside- every peak, every crevasse, and every ridge of the nearby mountain range was completely visible. The clarity with which I saw everything around me cannot be described, only imagined. Looking into the blast was like opening a hot oven. I could feel the searing heat of the explosion warming my face. The light turned to yellow and then to orange. It became a stupendous ball of fire about a mile in diameter. The fireball began to rise, its color changing from deep purple to blue, from grey to gold, and then back to orange. It expanded as it rose, billowing and rolling up toward the heavens until it looked like one giant, magnificent, beautiful, terrifying mushroom. Mankind has never before made anything so powerful. I heard General Farrell, General Groves's second-in-command, say of it afterward, "It was the beauty the great poets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately." About thirty seconds after the explosion came the sound. It was a tremendous roar, swallowing up all other sounds in existence. It was a thunderclap, bouncing off the mountains and echoing back to pound into our ears so that we would realize the significance of what we had just done. I thought, "No one has ever before rendered such a perfect depiction of doomsday."
The tension in the room lifted immediately. Oppie wore the same expression of relief that he had had on since the explosion lit the horizon. Everyone started congratulating each other. All of our pent-up emotions were released in those first few minutes. Then a chill came over the room. It was extremely solemn. A few people laughed, and some cried, but most were silent. We had done the impossible, but we had also created an entirely new force- one to be used for good or evil. We had paved two roads- one leading to unprecedented scientific discovery and efficiency, and one leading to mass destruction and possibly our downfall. For all our sakes, I desperately hope to follow the former. In this war, the technology we've created will save thousands of American lives, but the world will never be the same. We've made the greatest discovery to ever affect human existence. There will be no going back.
I do not do the event justice with these words, Anabelle. To truly understand everything we were feeling, you would have had to be there since the beginning. You may never fully understand what I have written, Anabelle, but I will try to briefly describe some of the history leading up to this momentous occasion.
There had been no project like this ever before. We are a gathering of great minds from all over the world and young scientists willing to learn (that's me!), all working toward a common goal. There was a tremendous feeling of purpose. In 1939 when Lise Meitner discovered nuclear fission, most of us had possessed no knowledge whatsoever on the subject. Then we had all been asked to leave our homes and jobs for a dusty town in rural New Mexico to work on a secret project for the government. Under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer, we were united. When we came close to achieving our goal in early 1944, our confidence was crushed. Our design for one of two bombs was completely flawed. The entire project appeared in jeopardy. We scrambled for a new design, and we were back on track by early 1945. It was a miracle.
That June and July, every waking moment was spent working on the bomb. It seemed like there was a new mini-disaster every day. On July 2, George Kistiakowsky (Kisty for short) x-rayed the explosives he had custom-made to start the nuclear chain-reaction in the bomb. To his dismay, they were filled with tiny air holes. When General Groves adamantly refused to delay the test, Kisty devised a plan. He used a dental drill to drill holes in some faulty casings in order to reach the air cavities, then mixed a batch of liquid explosives and filled the holes drop by drop. When I asked him about how it felt to be working on a bunch of unstable explosives, he replied, "You don't worry about it. I mean, if fifty pounds of explosives goes in your lap, you won't know it." I didn't know it at the time, but Kisty's reasoning would reappear several times in the next few days.
On July 12, I helped assemble the plutonium core of the bomb. Then, just twelve hours before the detonation was scheduled, a storm rolled in. Oppie got really worried about the bomb. All he could do was imagine last-second problems. So he got this physicist I roomed with once, Donald Hornig, to babysit it. Hornig said, "The possibility of lightning striking the tower was very much on my mind." He could foresee two outcomes. One, the tower's steel frame would conduct the electricity harmlessly into the ground. Two, the electrical burst would set off the bomb. "And in that case," he said, "I'd never know about it! So I read my book."
I cannot hope to describe all that occurred, but I hope that I have given you a better picture of the creation (and the creators) of nuclear weapons. Someday I will be able to give you this letter, and then we will read it together. I don't know what you will think of me, and I don't know what I will think of myself. I don't know where this science will go, and I probably have no conception of the good or evil it will work, but I hope you will understand, whatever happens.
Your loving brother,
Elliot