Transcripts For CSPAN3 Oral Histories 20151025

One in hiroshima, the other in the socket. We will hear next from murray peshkin, recruited by the u. S. Army to work at the Los Alamos Laboratory to design the bomb. He talked about the spies who infiltrated the site, as well as safety concerns trade this 45 concerns. This 45 minute oral history is from the forces of the Manhattan Project. Mr. Peshkin how did i get involved in the Manhattan Project . I was an undergraduate student at cornell university, a group of about 10 who were studying physics. It was clear that we cannot be kept out of the army very long. Programs looking for in which we could serve youthfully, and i really believe that there was Something Else behind it. In the first world war, a manned named i think it was henry moseley, who is considered probably the youngest, probably the most promising young atomic scientists in the country had against the advice of his friends and colleagues volunteered to fight in the infantry and died. A shocking thing to the entire science community. And i think that our professors were really trying to save us. It wasnt that los alamos needed me. How about your [indiscernible] mr. Peshkin well, i was informed by one of my professors that there was this project where i could serve and to make use of what little training in physics i already had. And that it would be a really good thing to do. And but it was completely secret. I would be somewhere in the united states, but i would not be able to tell my family where and what not see them again until we ended the war. And that was really all he would tell me except that he advised me to go that way, so i did. And what happened was that at the and of the semester, i informed my draft board that i am ready, and i was duly drafted, sent to basic training inlouisiana, and somewhere the middle of the basic training i was pulled out and sent very dramatically on a train with about 10 other young men with field orders which carried us first used towards oak ridge, then north to cincinnati, and so on. And finally to a train which took us to to los alamos. It was a very interesting demonstration i relaxed later of the power of that project because not only could they pull us out just when people were needed to fight in the infantry, but even in traveling, whenever we got to any stations, we are given immediate irony. In st. Louis, we were given our own railroad car and found a train to political as. Then when we arrived in los alamos, the entry port train station to santa fe, we got off this train and we found ourselves in the middle of a desert. We were tired and dirty and discouraged. We couldve sat down and cried except we were ashamed. But after a while, a car came for us and took us to los alamos. Also in the army was david green glass, the notorious by spy. He was not in my barracks. My contact with him was indirect, but it has some affect. We had a mutual friend, a fellow soldier, who had an apartment in albuquerque where he met his wife weekends. She was also in the army, but not at los alamos, but nearby. And at one time his wife was way for a few months, and greenglass came to him and thanked him to let my friend use that apartment for his wife to stay. She was in the last part of seemedncy, and he was rather pathetic. Itfriend knew greenglass and disliked him intensely, as did i, by the way. And he asked me my opinion, and i said dont do it. This guy is nothing but trouble. But he did it anyway because he felt like a dog in the manger. Well, that was the apartment where greenglass gave his secret information to his brother and the comment julius his brother in law, julius rosenberg. In the end, my friend had Serious Problems with security people about that after the war. And it even rubbed a little off on me because i defended him, which was not the political thing to do. Me wereconsequences for minor, mainly because i was lucky the mccarthyism was just about over by the time they got to me. Ms. Kelly [indiscernible] do you know him . Mr. Peshkin very slightly. And i dont think he knew me at all. You have to understand that i was a very insignificant player. I was working for the confinement, that is how i knew people at all, but i was working for him on a trivial level. He needed to do numerical calculations. That involved very laborious hand competition using an electric calculator. Electronic can not been invented at that time. And i did that for him a lot. Feynmane had if digg had had the kind of electronic pocket calculator that you can buy today for 50, he wouldnt have needed me at all. Luckily for me, he didnt have that. And so i had the opportunity of being with them just lots and lots of the time, and it was fascinating, it was wonderful. Ms. Kelly tells about him. Mr. Peshkin well, he was different from anybody else i ever met. And i met many very great physicist. He was a very intuitive person. He looked at everything in a different way. His way was always clear and better clearer and better than the way you wouldve thought of by yourself. The keyword there is clearwe. Clearer. It was absolutely impossible to imitate him. I knew him again when i was a student now, and he was one of my professors with whom i interacted a lot. And, boy, you could learn physics from him wonderfully. You got all these great insights. But you couldnt learn to do physics like that because only he could do that. His idea of a proof was to give two examples of a mathematical proof. He had so much insight that he could take those two examples in such a way that they tested every week point. Mayor mortals had to actually proof it. Mortals had to actually proof it. And if we grumbled that his proofs were not rigorous, he would say, do you know what rigor mortis means . It means died of too much rigor. [laughter] one way of explaining how it was with him was that you could go to his lectures, and they were magnificent. But you could no more learn how to do physics that way then you could learn to dance by watching a ballerina. It just cannot be done. Exposure to neutron. I was working at there is, so i didnt have any exposure to neutrons at all. Other people in the laboratory who were doing Experimental Work often took risks that nobody would accept except under the pressure of a war. Other young men like us were in trenches in france. And they did experiments that today would be considered insanely dangerous. Example wasreme louis. Another part of the same group after the war thats a louis was impaired they were doing what we called critical assemblies in order to learn more about the interactions of neutrons with plutonium. And what they were doing was they had the two paths of a plutonium halfs of a plutonium bomb. The lower half was on the table, and the upper half was gradually being lowered. As a got closer, the neutron activity became greater and greater. Seeing how the level of neutron activity, which they could monitor and hear a click every time a neutron was detected in the counter, was to see how that depended upon the distance between the two. Now, you may ask, the war was over, what were we doing such insanely dangerous experiments . In fact, it was worse than that. It had been agreed that you never lowered, you only raised a second hemisphere because if you dropped it and the two can together, you had left a bomb that would make it physical explosion, but you have a bomb that would make an explosion of neutrons. For whatever reason, they were lowering it. And they dropped it. Had the upper hemisphere, had his hands on it. And he threw it away, but of course it was all over. There was a burst of neutrons. Nobody heard anything. The fact that he threw it away was irrelevant. I think it expanded enough to exterminate the reaction. They all ran out the door, i was told. I was not present. Here was an armed guard whenever you had plutonium, there was an armed soldier. Even though we were ringed by armed soldiers anyway. He was standing next to the door. He was the last run out of room because he didnt know anything had happened. 10 days later, louis died. Beginning, why were they doing such an insanely dangerous experiment when the war was over . And the only answer i could give that makes any sense to me i never asked any of the people who were then involved the only answer i can give really is that it was the momentum. This is what they did. They were accustomed to doing these experiments. They were scientifically fascinating. The information wasnt needed in such a hurry anymore, but it just would have been against the culture of the time and place to stop and say, this is too dangerous, lets not do it. Explosion,rinity oppenheimer said now the physicists have known sins. I had not earlier heard any statement doubting that this was a good thing to do. I am sure that older and wiser people probably did have such discussions. I was a 19yearold kid. I dont know that that statement of oppenheimers really contributed to the discussion afterwards, but it was a bit of a shock when we heard about it. Ms. Kelly up until the trinity, did you what was the atmosphere . Were people confident or were they nervous that this would work . What kind of odds would you have guessed that this thing would work . Mr. Peshkin the people i talked with all thought it would work. I dont know what kind of odds, but better than even running. We certainly hoped it would work. We didnt really think about the consequences. Ms. Kelly after the mr. Peshkin let me supplement that a little. You know, the war against germany ended pretty early. We were fighting japan. The hatred of japan and of the japanese was really a pervasive. It was stoked continually by the newspapers and by the government. I would like to think that it wasnt significantly racial, but it probably was. Exploded over hiroshima, we just erupted in cheers. And the more people who are dead, the better, you know . Ms. Kelly how did you feel about the decision to drop the second bomb . Mr. Peshkin i questioned it at the time. Im sorry. The decision to drop the second bomb after such a short time, even at the time i had my doubts about that. It seemed it seemed unnecessary. We had not given them time to organize themselves to surrender. ,ne person, even the emperor does not successfully surrender. He has to get the generals to agree to stop fighting. Ms. Kelly you didnt [indiscernible] mr. Peshkin the only people who went to trinity were the ones who had something to do with their or were leaders of the project and could hardly be denied the opportunity. Ms. Kelly did you know what was going on . Mr. Peshkin oh, sure. Sure. Alreadyy i think you yes2 did know 3 mr. Peshkin yes, i did know what was going on. Ms. Kelly [indiscernible] well, life at los alamos was not just work. There was fun. Way, beingrticular anyone tends to be fun if you are not in danger in not seeing the terrible description destruction and all that stuff because Everybody Knows what he has to do and there are no doubts about what you will do in the longterm future trade it is an easy life if you or your loved ones are not really victims of the war. One of the things that happened to me was almost a [indiscernible] after the trinity test, a few weeks later well, almost immediately after the test, a few people went in to measure the radiation. Went into the greater wichita left. This is a crater of about 10 feet deep and, i dont know, a couple hundred feet in diameter. I dont know exactly. Then volunteers were needed to go in and dig out some blast gauges so that one can figure out how stark the blasted ben. And i and the other members of my group, there were five of us altogether, volunteered. I think maybe partly out of curiosity, but partly because we had a feeling that a lot of the experiment had already experimenters had already been exposed to radioactivity and we had not. So the idea was that we would drive across the desert to that spot, and then we would go in and dig out those blast gauges. We had a map that showed where they were before the explosion. And in the events they did not move very much. So, we did that. We drove in there. And we got out and walked on this famous green glass that was all over the place. And we dug out those gauges could we had radiation gauges gauges, and we had radiation gauges on us. But we never reached the level of radiation that would have caused us to retreat in those days. And we got these gauges out and we came out and we were all covered with radioactive dust, so we stripped off all our clothes and threw it in the trunk of the car. And there were these five naked men driving in the sudan across the desert. Nobody were a stitch of clothing except me. I was driving her car and the pedals were hot, so i wore shoes and socks. So we got back to the base, we showered and changed to our ordinary clothes and went home. It was very funny. Lets see, the next thing i want to talk about is in , what you as well thought about him and thought about him. Mr. Peshkin phil morrison. After the war ended, my group evaporated. I was left alone in it. That was quite useless. Phil morrison was building what was then a very novel type of reactor. And so i went to see him and could i work with him. Sure. He always had use for hands. So, we worked on building this reactor. In a canyon that was next to the mesa where the Technical Area was. It was surrounded by its own gate and it had its own guards and it had its own machine gun tower in one corner. And one night, i had a really scary experience there. I went down to work on something, and i was alone in this concrete building we had built for working on this to build this reactor. The guards were very nervous. Allegedthere had been to be an invasion. Im sure there had not, but a tord just doing the rounds see that the windows were closed properly and just checking things out the previous night had gone in there to do that and had been found unconscious on the floor. He claimed to that in intruder had slugged him. Phil morrison, who is in charge of the project, speculated that he had been swinging and one of those hooks from the ceiling and crashed into something. However that may be, there are was alone. These guards were terribly nervous. They told me stay away from the windows. And i had not been there half an hour before i was so nervous that there was no use my staying, so i wanted to leave. Was i wanted to leave, i about to tell them i was coming out the door. By that time i figured it out and they called them and they said just come out the door, and i said to come in and get me. So they did. And i tell you this story to illustrate the level of tension around the place. Phil was a remarkable man. He was a trade a theoretical physicist, but he was one of the people who armed to the bomb. Project,s leading this building this reactor. He was very versatile. And working with him was really quite inspiring. Who walked a man with a cane and could not stand straight. He had been a victim of polio as a child. But he seemed, you know, eight feet tall. After the war, he was one of my professors at los alamos. Phil had been one of the first few people to go into japan after the bombing and to talk with people. And he was so horrified by what he saw that he became a tireless crusader against the use of nuclear weapons, and tried in many ways to get this thing under control. He was a person who had a lot of trouble during the mccarthyism because his generation didnt find communism so threatening in the days before he really found out what its face was like. Persecuted by one of the congressional im not quite sure. The reason that they were after him is very interesting. They were really after oppenheimer. And they didnt have a handle on him yet. So they were going after his former students, of whom phil was one, and trying to fragment into implicating oppenheimer to saying he had been a member of the communist party, which he may well have been. It was very interesting that phil, like many of his fellows in that class, was various with oppenheimer because oppenheimer was throwing these people to the wolves in order to protect himself but angry as they were at 10, they were willing to pay corbel risks at him, they were willing to take horrible risks. And i have it only from him, but it is absolutely certainly true. Phil, in being questioned by this committee, refused to testify on some untried constitutional grounds that could well have landed him in jail. His good luck was that this was an executive session. If he had them that way in an open session they could not have let him off the hook. Waras a professor after the in cornell. Or duringer this the time this Congressional Committee was after him, the fbi was trailing him around. We had many humorous incidents of things that they did, but it was pretty darn serious for him. There was, of course, pressure from the trustees are quite now to have him fired at cornell to have him fired. And he had tenure, luckily, otherwise they probably would have fired him. But he never let any of those things stop him in his campaign to get Nuclear Energy under control. Tireless in his efforts also to fight the mccarthyism, not only for his own benefit, but for the benefit of others. Thiss a person to whom country is enormously in debt. Ms. Kelly what about the degree of secrecy . Mr. Peshkin yeah, secrecy. Thats a very hard question. Greenglass and we had ted, and perhaps there were other leaks that i dont know about. Almost what we wouldve thought as thought of as a prison camp. Oppenheimer thought we would make much better our grass if people could share better progress if people could share problems and share solutions. I am sure that if they had really clamped down, if none of us were ever allowed to leave the mesa, if the external form on ted been cut, it if if they had monitored closely whom we spoke to and when instead of relying on us to use discretion internally in the laboratory, i am sure that the leaks would have been slower. Hand, he knew the only importance he grinned only important secret before he came to los alamos. It was without we could do it and was working on it. All the rest, it helped them a little to know these things, but that was the big thing. That is when stalin knew he had to get his guys working on it. Ms. Kelly was that secret available . The soviets knew about our project from the get go. Mr. Peshkin they knew about it from him, and perhaps from others. But but they knew about the project. He provided them with marvelous Technical Information im sure. Who hadto one rushed been at the institute in moscow at the time, which was the russian equivalent of los alamos ,nd oak ridge, and he told me you know, he told me this in 1980 something. 1970 something. Long after the war was over. He had this wonderful intuition about nuclear crosssections, Nuclear Reactor is, and things like that. And that they made measurements of various kinds. And he would say, you know, this one looks funny, maybe you better do that one again. Now we know why. He had the information from [indiscernible] that i know to that nothing about these things directly. Only what i have read. But from everything that i have read, and also from knowing him very, very slightly, i do not believe that greenglass could give them anything useful. Could, i very much doubt it. He was a machinist. Ms. Kelly [indiscernible] mr. Peshkin oh, David Greenglass was a machinist. Luckily for me, i did not associate with him because i didnt like him. Ms. Kelly did you know ted . Mr. Peshkin no. Ms. Kelly no. Mr. Peshkin i did not know ted hall. Well, i probably met him, but i didnt have when his name when he became famous later, i barely remembered him. Ms. Kelly [indiscernible] mr. Peshkin well, should we have built. Bomb . Built that bomb . And having built it, should we have used it . Which are justs the reflections of a person who has been thinking about it for many years. It has little to do with my experience directly at los alamos. I was not part of any of these decision processes, of course. Well, it was known not by us that the germans had given up around 1942, i think. Certainly by 1944. We were building it because we were in a race with the germans. And, roy, that was some powerful incentive to work on it. We certainly knew when the war ended that we were no longer in a race with germany. We continue to work on it at the same pace, taking the experimenters, taking the same deadly risks, without giving it a moments thought most of us there was one person who left the project and there mustve been others who had grave doubts i did not hit we were working on it, we still were at war with japan. Was one, butjapan won, but we didnt pay much attention to it. I think we even relished the idea of using this weapon on the japanese, at least many of us to. Im afraid i did. Well, should we have built that bomb . In retrospect, i think that the answer is yes, but for a totally Different Reasons than the one i just mentioned. Norman ramsey, who was on the plane that accompanied the hiroshima bombings, the panel gay, said in enola a public speech that i heard an answer to a similar question if we had not used the bomb to and that war to end that war, it is highly probable that it would have been used to start the next war. More than likely by us. That is a very interesting statement. We would not have done the experiment that showed is quite how horrible the consequences were, and we wouldve had a lot more arms and others would have used them on us. It doesnt take to the question, should we have built the bomb, but it is related to it because discoveredn had been in 1939, it was obvious to every physicist in the world that the possibility of making a decision bomb fission bomb existed. It was not quite obvious that it would succeed, but only a few relatively easy experiments were needed to find out. We and the russians we and the soviets, they were then could not have trusted each other. They would have had to go for it. And we wouldve had to go for it right we had the advantage of great industrial superiority. They had a ruined economy, but they had the advantage that stalin could force all the best people to work on it. We did not have that advantage. It is not obvious that we couldnt have gotten all these people to leave the universitys and go to los alamos. Speculate, but it is certainly a reasonable speculation that they would have gotten there first, and then what wouldve happened . Bomb ise of using the much more complicated. And Important Reasons pro and con have been given. People have debated that for a long time. The mostons pro obvious reason pro is that we are about to invade japan. We anticipated when knowing casualties, of whom one fourth wouldve been dead. We anticipated one million casualties, of whom 1 4 would have been dead. War right thene and there. That was certainly a powerful reason. Im sorry, its wasnt Richard Richard b frank, the historian, mentioned another reason that i have not heard until i read his book. Said, wasse army, he killing 100,000 people a month in china. Civilians, that is. And every day that you waited to use that arm, 3000 more would be killed. Well, i dont know whether that would have influenced the Decision Makers. But what truly would have influenced the Decision Makers is that russia was ready to join the war. Had it joined it, in part, a few days before the bomb was dropped. Us withd let them help the invasion of japan, they would have shared in the occupation. And that leads to a kind of a calculus. Y awful in that sense, the people of hiroshima and nagasaki were the first victims of the cold war. The awful thing is is that in that sense, everybody else in japan was a beneficiary of our having used the bomb. I have many japanese friends, and i have gingerly felt them out, and i have yet to speak with one who didnt say in some way that they were somehow relieved. I am sure there are such ones, but i have yet this because one. Tobut i have yet to speak one. Also, we had cracked the japanese code. And we knew what the emperor and the generals and admirals were saying to each other. And richard b frank, who has read the translated transcripts says he is a historian says that they were not ready to surrender. On the other hand, morton sherman, was also a historian, has done that same thing. And he thinks that they were ready to surrender. And he thinks that the people around president truman knew that they were ready to surrender on conditions that they get to keep their emperor, which was the condition on which they finally surrendered anyway. I could easily see that truman and the generals, faced with the choice between using that bomb or carrying out that dangerous that dreadful invasion might have found it a very easy decision to use the bomb. Discussion one generally hears. The question really was, why invade . The japanese were defeated. Why not one them . Warn them . I think all historians are in agreement that no such attempt was made. Was made. You have asked, should we have done it. Im not quite sure. I think not. By doing it, we caused all that suffering which you can maybe on the suffering that wouldve occurred if we had not done it. You could say we had done nothing new because on march 9, 1945, we had conducted a 1000 plane raid over tokyo and killed at least 100,000 people. But you know, it was really a qualitatively new weapon. 1000 planes is something you can mount once in a war may be. Know, 30st, i dont b29s, all that stuff. This was a raid by one airplane. You could do it once a week, if you could make the bombs once a week. It did Something Else, too. It destroyed our moral leadership in the world. Whatever we have been thinking, other people in the world saw that we had used this horrible new weapon on a defenseless, unwarned civilian population, and, incidentally, that the civilians were not white, they were not christians. To learn ae had lesson from that. Every country in the world have to face the fact that we might be willing to bomb them under some circumstances. Especially the third world countries. To which we dont have the same attachment that we have to europe. Think. Ie, i think that a wellmeaning president made the worst decision that everybody in the world has ever made. And as far as my own part is concerned, i recognized that we had to do that and that i didnt have anything to do with the decision. And i wish i hadnt. Ms. Kelly do you think that the hadnt usedt if we it in the second world war, it would start the next work and that wouldve been far worse of an outcome . Mr. Peshkin well, that is what Norman Ramsey indicated. And it could easily have been true. The russians could of gotten there first and attacked us. The notion that we would not unprovoked by what we thought was a survival problem use that on people is one which i think is very naive. These decisions are not made by you and by me. They are made by military people who are used to doing things that you and i shudder to think of. They are made by president who are subject to amazing pressures i may not rethinking clearly. And let me tell you, it is not only they. Russell was a48, great pacifist and at one time a great communist. He urged in a public speech that we should use those bombs to attack the soviet union before they got them. If russell could suggest such a thing, i think Norman Ramsey is right. We might have done it. There was one well, it showed you in a way. You remember that we went in there to help train out that lab. It was another it was just funny. Ordinaryorkers janitorial type workers, mostly people lived in the area who had to go in and clean up the place. And phil asked they said all the bugs and there were dead. And phil just laughed and said i guarantee you if you put new bugs in, they wont die because they had died in that explosion or they had died of starvation or something at the time the lab was closed. Doesnt take very long. But they were afraid, so another person and i went in and cleaned it out. It was not dangerous. There was so little induced radioactivity it was nothing to consider. And so we went and then we cleaned out the stuff. It is a sidelight on the way that we just continued to go on and do things. There was no hurry about cleaning up the place. The plutonium had already been removed. Announcer join american forory tv on november 7 the world War Ii Museum. We will take your questions for historians joining us from new orleans throughout the day. World war ii 70 years later. Live from the National World War Ii Museum saturday, november 7 here on American History tv on cspan3. Tonight, New York Times amy reporter amy shares her experiences from president Clintons Campaign and compares what it is like now compared to 2008