Correction Appended
He was only 7 years old but he remembers the headlines. And he
remembers asking his parents what they would do now that there was
no more news.
It was August of 1945 and, up to that point, Michael
Intriligator, now a UCLA professor of economics, said, “In my
life as a little boy, all the news was about the war. … We were
so wrapped up in the war that when we heard it was over I thought
there would be no more news.”
On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped two atomic
bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first
such attacks in the world’s history. The news was so
unprecedented that many men and women over 60 today remember where
they were when they heard the news.
Built in secret by the United States, the atomic bombs were in
large part researched and developed at Los Alamos National
Laboratory, which was managed then, as it is now, by the University
of California.
The first use of nuclear weaponry unleashed a force so powerful
that in the blink of an eye some 70,000 people died in Hiroshima
and an estimated 70,000 more died later from the radioactive
fallout. Three days later, the second use of an atomic bomb killed
about 80,000 people in Nagasaki.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Masako Hashida, a
survivor who was 15 and working in a factory a mile from where the
bomb fell in Nagasaki, remembers hearing a loud metallic noise and
then seeing waves of red, blue, purple and yellow light. After
losing consciousness, she awoke outside a factory that had made the
torpedoes used in the attack on Pearl Harbor, now a mound of
twisted metal.
Hashida said she saw a person trying to stand, with burns and
swelling so severe it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a
woman.
Few could have predicted the devastating effects resulting from
the potential energy of the atomic bomb, but 60 years later, many
have made it their life’s mission to stop such an act from
happening again.
This week, vigils and protests are being held across the globe
to mark the 60th anniversary of the attacks in an attempt to remind
people of the lessons learned from the dropping of the bombs as
well as call for a ban on all nuclear weapons.
A result of the Manhattan Project, the creation of the atomic
bomb came together through a massive nationwide initiative that
brought together scientists from around the world.
The program instituted by the United States government was given
the highest priority. Bigger than the biggest corporation at the
time, the Manhattan Project was a top-secret program with a clear
assignment and unlimited resources.
“They needed a lot of copper for conduction and at one
point they ran out of copper. So the government told them they
could use silver ““ an even better conductor. … They were
given carte blanche, freedom, a blank check to do whatever they
needed to carry it out,” said Intriligator, who for years
taught an undergraduate seminar on nuclear weapons, most recently
in the spring of 2003.
Among the many scientists working on the project was Robert
Scott, now a UCLA professor emeritus in the department of chemistry
and biochemistry.
After graduating from Harvard in 1942, Scott went to Princeton
as a graduate student where most people there at the time were
working on something military related. Working with polymer
solutions, Scott was moved into a small research group in 1944, and
it was there he would work on the Manhattan Project.
Describing the project as compartmentalized, where he would
rarely talk with other scientists about the project in general,
Scott said, “We just worked on our particular
problem.”
That particular problem consisted of better understanding the
nuclear fission of variants of uranium ““ uranium 235 and 258.
Nuclear fission is a process by which a massive nucleus is split,
releasing the energy used to hold it together.
The work on the nuclear fission of uranium would later be used
to make Little Boy, the bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima
with a force of approximately 14 kilotons.
“At this point I have to confess, I was sufficiently
stupid. I never realized this was wanted for a bomb. In hindsight,
I should have realized that the government wouldn’t spend so
much time and money on just nuclear energy,” Scott said.
In July 1945, the first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico by
researchers at the Los Alamos lab.
“The production of this bomb, and its gun-type
counterpart, ushered in the atomic age. The development of these
weapons represented the culmination of more than three years of
intense research and development effort,” according to
documents posted to the Los Alamos National Laboratory Web
site.
With a unique interest in studying nuclear technology,
Intriligator has made friends with many of the researchers who once
worked on the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos lab.
Intriligator tells the story of how many scientists resigned
from the program after Germany surrendered. For those scientists,
the purpose of building an atomic bomb became futile, since the
program was first initiated because Germany started their own
atomic bomb program.
Scott remembers where he was when he heard about the first bomb
being dropped over Hiroshima ““ gathered around the radio with
his family.
After victory was declared in Germany, the resources were more
available, and on Aug. 6, 1945, Scott and his family were able to
get some gasoline to drive up to a summer home in Connecticut.
“We got up there late on Aug. 6. We were pretty tired, and
it was only the next morning that we turned on the radio and knew
what had happened. … When it was developed as a bomb I was
greatly surprised,” Scott said.
“You know, attitudes to the atomic bomb and World War II
in general differs with generations. No one my age doesn’t
believe that the war wasn’t justified.
“But I’m not so sure the second bomb was
necessary,” Scott said.