Organizational Dynamics of Atomic Scientists: Finding a Political Voice in the Second World War

Abstract

On July 16th, 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer stood in the cold isolation of the New Mexico desert. He was somewhere halfway between Alamogordo and Secorro, and uncertain if he was more than halfway down an exponential trajectory of growth in the destructive power that humankind had brought to bear on its world. On that day, however, his work would reap many certainties. At 5:30 in the morning, the fireball of the Trinity Test ascended in a column of smoke that would not soon escape the gaze of the scientists who had just rendered it possible. Oppenheimer-awkward, eccentric, stoic-announced that he had "become Death, The Shatterer of worlds," a realization inspired from the Bhagavad-Gita epic that has since come to capture the sense of partial awe, power, urgency, and perhaps inner conflict that the first bomb must have engendered in its creators. The shock at New Mexico would soon shake the world, as Nagasaki and Hiroshima would soon witness and endure the epicenter of the bomb. So on these terms, and not necessarily on the terms of the scientists behind the miracle, the mushroom clouds would come to symbolize the end of the Pacific War and the triumph of American military might. The unique finale of the Pacific War has forced academics to produce a vast and diverse literature to grapple with the consequences of the discovery, development, and use of nuclear weapons. Particularly pressing are the historiographical treatment of the moral questions raised by the combatant use of atomic weaponry, the bomb's cost-benefit strategy undertaken by the military, and the diplomatic uncertainties that the bombs made likely in the postwar. In this way, the history of the end of the war often precipitates questions concerning the political, diplomatic, and military elements of the decision to use the atomic bomb. Yet, presenting such pressing issues squarely in the arena of the military and political elite has often left the scientists who were central to the testing and development of the bomb with peripheral political importance. This historical treatment is no coincidence. Prior to the war, science interfaced minimally with government. This precedent meant that there were few formal channels through which the greater scientific community could organize to exert their political will on Federal affairs. With respect to the historiographical treatment of the decision to use the atomic bomb, this examination identifies the wartime scientists as a politically weak amalgam of interest groups that could not contend with greater political powers for a meaningful voice on a national stage. This analysis is substantiated by two contrasting trends. First, parts of the community wanted to assume a greater social responsibility for their work, yet they were denied that opportunity. In the Chicago branch of the Manhattan Project enterprise, the scientists of the Metallurgical Lab made political demands regarding continued postwar research funding, international control of the atom, and a reconsideration in the use of the bomb against Japan. None of these grievances were immediately realized because none of them could be formally communicated to the upper echelons of the decision-making machinery in Washington. The Met Lab scientists, instead, floundered in their own political frustrations vis-à-vis reactionary committees and internal memoranda, most of which never saw the light of day. A second trend, however, emerged after the bombs had been dropped on Japan. In the postwar era, the scientific community revised their strategy and decidedly consolidated their political power into national organizations like the Federation of Atomic Scientists and the National Science Foundation. Their collective power garnered considerable public appeal and political influence to the point that the scientists became a respectable political lobby. Many of the concerns of the Met Lab scientists, then, came to light in the postwar termination of research restrictions in the May-Johnson Bill, and were rewarded with recognition in the more amicable McMahon Bill.