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 . 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.
