Original subtitles

(ENGINE STARTING)

PAUL TIBBETS: Our job was to deliver one bomb to Hiroshima.

We wanted pinpoint accuracy.

TIBBETS: It was inconceivable as to what we were looking at.

ROBERT FURMAN: One plane had completely devastated the city.

It wasn't there anymore.

NARRATOR: In the decades that followed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

the men and women of the Manhattan Project,

gave a series of candid interviews.

ROBERT. R. WILSON: We did discuss whether, perhaps,

what we were doing was morally wrong.

NARRATOR: They talked about building and using the ultimate weapon,

and the secret mission that came next.

PHILIP MORRISON: The radiologist, he said,

"You Americans conducted a human experiment."

NARRATOR: As the city smoldered,

teams from the Manhattan Project

went to Japan to study the effects of the bombs.

STAFFORD L. WARREN: The bodies, of course, of all the dead were in the rubble.

I'll never forget the stench.

NARRATOR: They were followed by American film crews,

who recorded scenes of such devastation,

the films were suppressed for decades.

This is what the Americans saw and the Japanese lived through

at the end of history's deadliest experiment,

seventy-five years ago.

(WOMAN SPEAKING JAPANESE)

J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER: We have made a thing,

a most terrible weapon,

that has altered abruptly and profoundly the nature of the world.

REPORTER: It's war. Our enemies Japan, Germany and Italy are out in the open.

The nation prepares to protect its traditions and its way of life.

Our only cause now is victory.

NARRATOR: As the United States enters World War II,

a group of American scientists with the support of Albert Einstein

are secretly developing a weapon

with the power to destroy cities.

The atomic bomb.

Many of the world's leading physicists are German.

The Americans are terrified that the Nazis will develop a nuclear device first.

And believe their own effort is lagging behind.

Codenamed the Manhattan Project after its first offices,

the American program gets a new boss,

Brigadier General Leslie Groves.

LESLIE GROVES: I started to review the laboratories.

Columbia, Chicago, Berkeley,

to see just where we stood scientifically,

and I was horrified to see how far they were

from anything that was essential for us to do any construction with.

They just didn't know anything.

Before that project, none of them had ever had to produce.

They did research. If it didn't turn out, well, nobody cared.

If they didn't feel like working,

that's all right, they went out and went fishing,

or played golf or sat around and talked.

There was none of the feeling that

"The country depends on me."

NARRATOR: Sharing an office with Groves

is Brigadier General Kenneth Nichols.

KENNETH NICHOLS: General Groves, I would say,

is the biggest son of a bitch I've ever met, bar none. (LAUGHS)

He was very cutting in his remarks,

and in his treatment of people.

He had the biggest ego of any individual I'd ever met.

Coupled with ego he had guts.

When he made a decision, he stuck with it.

You need that type of guy to get a thing like this done.

NARRATOR: One of the program's scientists is Samuel K. Allison.

SAMUEL ALLISON: There was a good deal of irritation and antagonism.

Groves couldn't understand the fact

that there was practically no respect for authority.

NARRATOR: To break the deadlock,

Groves needs an ally who can speak the scientists' language.

His attention is drawn to a Professor at Berkeley,

known for his great relationship

with the younger physicists, J. Robert Oppenheimer.

ROBERT BACHER: If one knew Robert Oppenheimer and knew Groves,

it would be hard to think of two people

who are more unalike, dissimilar.

ROBERT SERBER: You know, Oppenheimer had this inspirational quality.

You know, he spoke very well,

and he had an appealing character.

GROVES: Oppenheimer's great mental capacity impressed me.

I was appalled by his ignorance of American history.

He had no experience in administration in any way.

NARRATOR: Nevertheless, Groves saw something in the professor

that made him override any objections.

GROVES: Oppenheimer was selected by me,

and the whole basis of it was that there wasn't a better man.

BACHER: The fact was,

I think Groves had very great trust in Oppenheimer.

And when he was told things that were difficult for the project by Oppenheimer,

he'd cope with them in a very responsive way.

NARRATOR: Now the most powerful scientist in America,

Oppenheimer's task is daunting.

OPPENHEIMER: The doubts which then existed

were not of a metaphysical quality.

NARRATOR: Struggling with the theoretical problems in designing a bomb,

the Manhattan Project begins a massive recruitment drive.

And young physicists like Philip Morrison

suddenly find themselves in demand.

MORRISON: We could see the war was coming closer and closer

to the United States and we were fearful.

Hitler was running Europe.

Germany was the leader of modern physics,

and seemed to have the threat of a nuclear weapon.

MORRISON: Physicists were drained out, everywhere, they disappeared.

We knew very well that something was going on in Chicago about fission.

And a lot was going on in Boston about microwaves.

And I imagined that there was an atomic project,

a uranium project somewhere.

NARRATOR: That uranium project is focused at the University of Chicago,

where scores of scientists

experiment on ways to create chain reactions.

MORRISON: In December '42,

Bob Christy who'd been in my class in Berkeley,

asked me to come to Chicago.

And said, "Now, what do you think we're doing here?"

I said, "Well, I don't really know,

"but it's pretty clear to me, it's something to do with uranium."

He said, "Yes. We are making bombs."

This was the most extraordinary thing

that I had ever heard anyone say.

My life changed absolutely.

NARRATOR: It's late 1942,

and the Axis powers occupy large portions of Europe, y.

North Africa and Asia.

In America, the Manhattan Project

is finally making progress in the race to build an atomic bomb.

But it needs a radiation specialist

to understand the vast amounts of radioactivity the bombs will unleash.

Working in Rochester, New York State,

is Dr. Stafford Warren,

A pioneer in the use of X-rays to detect breast cancer.

WARREN: Late '42, I was invited to lunch at the country club,

and I met these two gentlemen in civilian clothes.

Mr. Groves and Mr. Marshall.

And they said "We'd like to talk to you in private."

We got upstairs.

They looked in the closet,

and locked the door.

They said that "We would like to have you work

"on a secret program in which we need a doctor

"who is familiar with things that you've been working with."

(CAMERA CLICKS)

I said, "This is radiation?"

He said, "I won't answer that until we've tried you out."

Then the security people came and they asked all our neighbors.

They asked, "Does Mrs. Warren play bridge? Is she a gossip?"

How many children have we got.

Once you're in a highly classified program,

your life is an open book.

NARRATOR: One of Warren's first assignments

is to help Groves build a secret city,

in a remote corner of Tennessee.

At Oak Ridge, factories will be constructed

to refine uranium, pure enough to fuel an atomic bomb.

WARREN: Oak Ridge was a large area of very low-grade farming.

The topography lent itself very well

to isolating three or four big operations in little valleys,

and it was difficult to get there.

The only transportation was a few taxis in Knoxville.

NARRATOR: Oak Ridge is so remote,

it needs all the amenities of a major city.

WARREN: "We've got to build a hospital."

He said, "We'll also have to worry about recreation halls,

"and things like that because this is going to be classified.

"We'll have to have all of the essential elements here."

Anything that was necessary to keep them

satisfied with the job.

NARRATOR: Brigadier General Kenneth Nichols

is in charge of the day-to-day construction.

But the plumbers, electricians and carpenters he hires

won't be told why they are building a city that is not on any map.

KENNETH NICHOLS: We had recruiting teams out all the time, all over the country

to bring in the type of labor that we wanted.

All right, I'll be there.

NICHOLS: Generally, you told a man no more

than he needed to know to do his job.

A carpenter didn't worry what we were making.

He might be building a dormitory here,

working in one of the plants, but he didn't know what it was going to be.

I just learned a secret. It's a honey. It's a pip.

But the enemy is listening, so I'll never let it slip.

'Cause when I learn a secret, boy, I zipper up my lip.

NICHOLS: We would give them a cover story, classified.

For example, if we were making a catalyst with gasoline

to extend the range of bombers.

NARRATOR: 99% of the people in Oak Ridge

will not find out what they are actually working on,

until after the war has ended.

NICHOLS: We started from scratch,

and built the fifth largest city in Tennessee.

NARRATOR: At its peak, Oak Ridge will house 75,000 people,

and consume more electricity than New York City.

Built at a cost of $1.2 billion,

it is funded directly by the President,

and not even Congress know about the vast expense.

As huge factories rise out of the ground,

the scientists hit a roadblock.

They don't have enough uranium 235,

the key radioactive material to make multiple bombs.

And so their focus shifts

to the newly discovered element of plutonium.

MORRISON: I remember very well, the shipment was given to us.

This is the first shipment

in which the weight of the plutonium

is greater than the paper that goes with it.

NARRATOR: But to make that plutonium

will require the building of another massive facility

in the wilds of Washington State.

GROVES: The whole design

of the plutonium chemical reduction plant at Hanford,

there were two of them,

cost somewhere around $50 million apiece.

It was based on a millionth of a pound of plutonium.

ALLISON: We decided on the Columbia River as the water supply

for the first power reactors to produce plutonium.

The army was very fearful

that we might make the water in the Columbia River radioactive.

GROVES: What we were afraid of

was that the discharge of radioactive material would affect the fish.

NARRATOR: Groves calls in Stafford Warren to conduct a study.

WARREN: It appeared that

it'd be a good idea to see whether the radioactive materials

that were in the discharge water

were of sufficient concentration to be a hazard to the fish.

Because we didn't want anything to happen

that would give a bad name to the... Any stage of the process.

GROVES: We would have been subjected to terrific criticism,

if we destroyed all of the salmon in the river,

and we would have scared the country to death.

NARRATOR: It's early 1943,

and the outcome of World War II hangs in the balance.

At Stalingrad,

Russia successfully beats back the Nazi onslaught

but it had cost half a million men.

In the Pacific,

US forces suffer several thousand casualties

as they take control of the strategically important island of Guadalcanal

from the Japanese.

And in the United States,

construction is underway on the classified city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

and the plutonium reactors at Hanford, Washington State.

But the project needs a centralized laboratory for the final stage,

building the atomic bombs.

Oppenheimer suggests Los Alamos,

which happens to be near his vacation home in New Mexico.

OPPENHEIMER: We had a ranch, Sangre de Cristo, New Mexico.

It's about 3,000 meters high,

and it's 50 miles by a very rough

and terrible trail from there to Los Alamos.

GROVES: It was in an area isolated enough

so that any experiments wouldn't attract the attention of people.

NARRATOR: At Los Alamos, there is a boys' school that is struggling financially.

GROVES: It was a school for rich Easterners

who wanted their sons to learn what it was

to have a horse and to live outdoors.

We sort of looked at it casually.

There were enough buildings there,

so we could move in and get started without waiting.

Didn't take me long to say, "Well, this is it."

NARRATOR: Within a matter of weeks,

the finest scientific minds in the country

are ordered to report to the secret site in the New Mexico Desert.

Among them is Philip Morrison.

MORRISON: I came to Los Alamos when many people came to Los Alamos.

Many of my old friends were there

living in a wonderful community.

Of course, we worked around the clock,

six days a week and Sundays too.

Because every day we read of the battles

in which our friends were being killed in droves.

And we were the bottleneck

in the manufacture of a weapon which if we didn't make first,

would lead to the loss of the war.

NARRATOR: In the fall of 1944,

ace pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets gets a call from the brass.

TIBBETS: I was called to the office

of Commanding General of the Second Air Force.

He told me that I had been selected

to organize a unit

that will be capable of employing this atomic weapon.

Needless to say that I didn't comprehend everything that was going on.

He said, "You've got to work with General Groves, you've got to satisfy him."

NARRATOR: The design of the bomb had not been finalized,

but it's anticipated to be larger and heavier than any before it.

TIBBETS: We were not permitted to use radar.

Meaning we were only allowed to make a release under visual condition.

So they gave us some practice units.

The shape was the actual shape of the bomb.

Our particular job was to deliver one bomb.

We wanted pinpoint accuracy.

NARRATOR: But at Los Alamos,

the scientists' faith in building a real bomb is about to be shaken.

Here it is, General Groves, plutonium.

NARRATOR: The bomb's design is based on the scientists' experiments with uranium.

But the material Groves has spent

hundreds of millions of dollars creating

is the lesser known plutonium.

Well, that's the, uh, first I've ever seen,

but, uh, after this, if you don't mind,

I wish you'd hold something under it,

because after all,

there's about over $50 million in that tube.

MAN: Cut.

NARRATOR: But initial tests show this plutonium is so volatile,

it can burn itself up before the weapon leaves the lab,

making it a dud.

MORRISON: The kind of plutonium material they were making

was too radioactive ever to make a bomb

according to the design that was then current.

NARRATOR: Physicist Robert Bacher witnesses the repercussions.

BACHER: That then caused the whole project to have an enormous crisis.

The nature of the explosive charge just needed complete re-design.

Groves, when I told him first,

went just as white as that sheet of paper.

NARRATOR: Uncertain now if plutonium will work,

Groves orders the labs to develop a uranium bomb

and a plutonium bomb at the same time.

MORRISON: There were two bombs,

in everybody's mind, as soon as this was discovered,

the Fat Man and Little Boy.

NARRATOR: It will be a race against time

to get a functional plutonium design before the war ends.

REPORTER: (ON RADIO) The red army is advancing street by street

through the burning ruins of Berlin.

The war in Europe is ending.

On the other side of the world in the Pacific,

on the islands and coral atolls,

the Japanese are resisting fanatically.

The toll of United States dead and wounded on the beaches and the jungles is rising.

FURMAN: As it became apparent that the Germans would be defeated,

Groves began to talk about targets in Japan with Roosevelt.

NARRATOR: As the idea of using the atomic bomb to end the war gains traction,

Colonel Paul Tibbets, who will drop the bomb,

is brought more fully into the plan.

TIBBETS: I was called in to a meeting in February or March of '45,

here in the Pentagon in which I was told

that certain targets had been selected in Japan

that had not been bombed.

And the reason was they wanted to be able to make bomb blast studies

on virgin targets once the bombs were used.

NARRATOR: As the war progressed,

US planes had fire bombed the industrial cities that fed the Japanese military machine

but the loss of life has been staggering.

In Tokyo, 100,00 perish in a single night.

FURMAN: There was a great problem of trying to find targets

because we had bombed so many cities.

They tossed around Kyoto as a prime target

and that was thrown out because it's a religious center.

NARRATOR: The targets shortlisted are Yokohama,

Kokura, Niigata, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But suddenly the project is faced with an unexpected twist.

REPORTER: The grief stricken nation mourns the death

of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States.

Vice-President Harry S. Truman takes the oath of office as 32nd President.

NARRATOR: Groves is called in to brief his new boss.

GROVES: As far as I know and I've never heard anything to the contrary,

Mr. Truman knew nothing about this project

until he became President.

NARRATOR: Groves quickly receives the backing of the new president,

but whether the bomb will actually work is still in doubt.

NARRATOR: On July 16th, as fighting continues in the Pacific,

the men of the Manhattan project

prepare for the first test of the bomb

at a site in the desert some 200 miles from Los Alamos.

The entire team works around the clock to get the test ready,

but the most critical job falls to Robert Bacher,

head of the so-called "G Division."

BACHER: G stood for "Gadget".

It was a simple code word for the bomb.

The problem of getting ready was pretty rough.

NARRATOR: Designed to be the most devastating weapon in history,

how much destruction the explosion will cause is unknown.

Most observers are positioned 20 miles from the bomb site.

But Dr. Stafford Warren fears that may not be far enough.

WARREN: I was the only one who had any worry about afterwards.

So we began to lay out a plan

for distributing the people around

in case we were wiped out at the headquarters.

There was a ditch there which had some dry leaves and some hay in it,

so we suggested that everybody lie down in the ditch.

Oppie, he was in the bunker where a lot of the control equipment was.

In 40 seconds we'll know.

The stakes are pretty high.

ISIDOR ISAAC RABI: It's going to work all right, Robert,

and I'm sure,

we'll never be sorry for it.

MAN: (ON RADIO) 40, 39, 38, 37...

26, 25, 24, 23...

Nine, eight, seven, six,

five, four, three, two, one, now.

WARREN: At first, of course, there was a feeling of great heat,

as if you had just opened a great big furnace door.

BACHER: It was even more impressive

than most everybody thought it was going to be.

SERBER: It was as if somebody had set off a flashbulb right in your face.

You got completely blinded for about 30 seconds.

Then gradually, your vision cleared.

OPPENHEIMER: I remembered the Hindu scripture,

"Now I am become death the destroyer of worlds."

MORRISON: I really thought it would be terrible.

But, you know, we were committed by that time.

REPORTER: During a series of meetings in Potsdam, Germany,

the final doom of Japan is settled by the big three and their advisors.

Delivering an ultimatum of unconditional surrender to the Nipponese war lords.

NARRATOR: The day after the test explosion in New Mexico,

Truman meets his Soviet and British allies

to discuss how to end the war in the East.

Let's not forget

that we are fighting for peace.

NARRATOR: Although it does not talk openly of a nuclear device,

the Potsdam Declaration warns

that if the Japanese do not immediately surrender,

they will face prompt and utter destruction.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, the first atomic bomb,

the enriched uranium Little Boy, leaves Los Alamos

under the watchful eye of General Grove's assistant, Robert Furman.

FURMAN: When the bomb was ready,

General Groves sent me out to pick it up,

and I remember the authorities in Los Alamos wanted a receipt,

so I signed a receipt for an atomic bomb.

Then they decided it was too secret for me to keep the receipt.

And they actually developed a receipt for the receipt that I had just given them.

(LAUGHS)

Then I took the bomb in a convoy down the mountain.

And then we had a flat tire.

Very secret, very important project

stood by the side of the road while some GI fixed a tire.

(LAUGHS)

In Albuquerque, I got on a plane with the bomb.

There was a plane ahead of me and one behind me,

and we flew without incident over to San Francisco,

and took the bomb aboard the Indianapolis,

which then sailed the Pacific.

What I carried was really half the bomb.

Because if I had the whole bomb the thing would blow up at any time.

So the other half was flown over.

NARRATOR: The warship USS Indianapolis

carries Furman and the bomb

across the Pacific to the island of Tinian in record time.

But only three days after depositing its precious cargo...

The Indianapolis is sunk by Japanese torpedoes

in shark infested waters.

Of the nearly 1,200 men onboard, only 316 survive.

At the same time at Los Alamos,

the scientists are having second thoughts about their experiment.

MORRISON: Once it became clear the Germans were beaten,

the original sense of fear and anxiety disappeared from the project.

At Los Alamos, there was certainly concern

whether somehow the project was no longer necessary.

NARRATOR: Young physicists like Robert Wilson

are deeply concerned by the ethics.

WILSON: I organized a small meeting at Los Alamos.

The title was "The Impact of The Gadget on Civilization".

In between 30 and 50 people came.

We did discuss whether perhaps what we were doing was morally wrong.

MORRISON: There was a great deal of feeling of hesitancy,

but there was a great deal of feeling it was not our responsibility to decide.

NARRATOR: With trademark charm,

Oppenheimer intervenes to keep the scientists on track.

MORRISON: Oppenheimer's view was that unless we found out

if there was such a thing as nuclear weapons,

you could hardly build a peace in which nuclear weapons were not recognized.

WILSON: On that logical basis,

we all decided that that was right,

and that we ought to go back in the laboratory,

and work as hard as we could to demonstrate a nuclear weapon.

NARRATOR: But that does not entirely settle the matter,

as over 100 scientists from Oak Ridge and the Chicago lab,

dispatch a secret letter to the White House,

insisting that the bomb should not be dropped

without prior warning to the Japanese.

NARRATOR: The idea is rejected by the military.

Not least the man whose job will be to drop the bomb,

Paul Tibbets.

TIBBETS: When we were on the island, I heard certain things.

One of the things suggested was that we drop this weapon

where they could see it explode,

and from that realize that we had a terrible weapon of destruction.

I would liken this to the fighter in the prize ring.

I don't see any reason to telegraph your blow.

FURMAN: Everybody on the military side wanted to see it dropped.

From where we sat, the Japanese were determined

to fight to the very end.

The whole country was being directed by the military,

and the military would not give up.

REPORTER: At Okinawa alone, 50,000 American casualties.

The military is determined to fight to the death.

Their plans are carried out by the Kamikaze pilots.

Sworn to give their lives for the Emperor and the honor of the nation,

they carry on the only air war left to Japan.

GROVES: If we didn't use the bomb, it would have come out.

Sooner or later, in a congressional hearing, if nowhere else.

And then every mother whose son

was killed after such and such a date,

the blood is on the head of the President.

NARRATOR: The debate ends.

And a few days before the bomb is to be dropped,

scientists Robert Serber and Philip Morrison

are dispatched across the Pacific to help arm the bomb.

TIBBETS: The night before we took off,

the people from Trinity had arrived in the Marianas,

and they had with them colored photographs

of the Trinity explosion in New Mexico.

So we got the gang together.

TIBBETS: Gentlemen,

when we met at Wendover

for the first time about ten months ago,

I told you at that time that I had great hopes

that the mission that we are about

to undertake could end the war.

We didn't use the word atomic bomb.

We did not use that. But we said, "Okay. Now this is the bomb."

This is what will happen

when we make our flight tomorrow.

This is what we're gonna see.

NARRATOR: As the Americans prepare to use the weapon,

citizens of Hiroshima, like school girl Fumiko Amano,

go about their lives as best they can against the backdrop of war.

(FUMIKO AMANO SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: It's the early hours of August the 6th.

On Tinian Island, pilot Paul Tibbets

assembles the crew of his plane the Enola Gay.

After months of practice in the Utah desert,

final preparations are being made for the first atomic mission.

The culmination of an experiment years in the making.

No mistakes can be made.

TIBBETS: Take-off was somewhere around 2:00 in the morning.

It had been agreed that we would not take off with the bomb armed

because, should there be an accident of any kind,

the chances of losing half of the island existed.

NARRATOR: Among the planes accompanying the Enola Gay,

are two carrying scientists from Los Alamos

there to survey the biggest explosion in history.

TIBBETS: We climbed up to our altitudes,

started on our way to our rendezvous at Iwo Jima.

NARRATOR: With 1,500 miles to Japan,

Tibbets must level with the crew.

TIBBETS: Once we were airborne,

I called back where the enlisted men were,

poured some coffee,

and I told them actually what we were doing and what we were carrying.

NARRATOR: One concern is the aftershock could knock the plane

out of the sky.

TIBBETS: About 30 minutes from our landfall on Japan,

the weather being clear at our primary, which was Hiroshima,

there was no decision left.

(BELLS TOLLING)

NARRATOR: Oblivious to what is coming,

Hiroshima residents like six-year-old Takako Kotani

wake to a beautiful summer's morning.

(TAKAKO KOTANI SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: Takako's family are planning to leave the city,

believing they will soon be a target for conventional bombing raids.

(TAKAKO KOTANI SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: Having circled the city at 8:15 a.m.,

the Enola Gay reaches its release point.

(TAKAKO KOTANI SPEAKING JAPANESE)

TIBBETS: The bomb blast hit us in two different shockwaves.

We continued our turn to head directly back towards Hiroshima.

It was kind of inconceivable as to what we were looking at there.

This explosion was so big that it seemed almost unreal.

NARRATOR: Exploding 1,870 feet above the ground,

the bomb unleashes a shockwave

that spreads 15 miles within a minute,

and a ball of fire one mile high.

(FUMIKO AMANO SPEAKING JAPANESE)

PRESIDENT TRUMAN: A short time ago,

an American airplane

dropped one bomb on Hiroshima

and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.

That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT.

It is an atomic bomb

loosed against those who brought war

to the Far East.

NARRATOR: To the leader of the Manhattan Project,

this mission has been successful.

GROVES: After I got the first news of the dropping,

this was about 11:30 at night,

I went right to sleep.

Oh, no, I never had any trouble sleeping.

MORRISON: When the aircraft came back from the raid,

as soon as the pilot leaped onto the ground,

a big medal was pinned on his chest.

And that was the time of triumph.

A large party which lasted for a long time.

I think we did not understand the full novelty of our weapon.

NARRATOR: In Tokyo, the newspapers report

that Hiroshima has been attacked by a new type of bomb.

There are no details and the government is skeptical,

as Japanese war-time leaders will later explain.

HISATSUNE SAKOMIZU: President Truman first mentioned

that it was an atomic bomb,

but we didn't believe what he said.

COLONEL SABURO: On the following day, August 7th,

General Arisue, of Japanese intelligence,

headed an investigating team,

including the nuclear physicist Dr. Nishina

and flew to Hiroshima to investigate.

GENERAL ARISUE: When the plane flew over Hiroshima,

there was but one dead tree

and it looked like a great claw.

There was nothing there,

but for that dead tree.

GENERAL ARISUE: But Dr. Nishina, the nuclear physicist,

said it's the atomic bomb.

NARRATOR: But in spite of this discovery,

the Japanese do not surrender.

And three days later,

the plutonium-fueled Fat Man is loaded onto a B-29.

The bomb is due to be dropped on the city of Kokura.

But bad weather forces the pilot to divert

to Nagasaki.

Exploding over Nagasaki at 1,650 feet,

but slightly off target,

it's effect is nearly as devastating

as the uranium bomb in Hiroshima.

NARRATOR: In spite of pressure from his generals to continue the war,

Emperor Hirohito decides to surrender.

(HIROHITO SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: In Hiroshima, the surrender has come too late

for Takako Kotani and her family.

(TAKAKO KOTANI SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: At Los Alamos, news of the bomb's explosion

is initially greeted with a sense of satisfaction.

But at this point, little is known about the effects

of the atomic bomb experiment.

Awaiting news

is Chief Medical Officer Dr. Stafford Warren,

the project's radiation specialist.

WARREN: Well, I think it was about August 12th.

I suddenly was tracked down by a GI in a car

who said General wanted to talk to me.

And he said he was offering me,

not ordering me,

because the situation was pretty delicate,

the chance to lead a party into Nagasaki and Hiroshima

to study the casualties

and, above all, what contamination

of radioactive material was on the ground.

NARRATOR: When planning the bomb, physicists calculated

that if it exploded above a certain altitude,

the dangerous by-product of radiation

would simply be blown away.

It would be Stafford's job to find out

if this really had been the case.

WARREN: The expectation had been with the high detonation

of the two bombs,

that there would be almost none on the ground to study.

NARRATOR: Allowed only one call to his wife,

Warren heads to San Francisco

to begin the long journey west.

WARREN: There were about 20 of us.

GIs and officers, medics.

When we left San Francisco

everybody was looking out the windows

to be sure that they got a good view,

as it might be their last view of the States.

We had no idea what to expect.

NARRATOR: The mission comes with risks.

Although the Emperor has announced the Japanese surrender,

no formal peace has been reached.

Landing at Tinian,

Warren is joined by scientists Robert Serber and Philip Morrison

whose job will be to explore the physical impact

on the bombed cities.

MORRISON: I was frightened.

They had a terrible war.

We burned the hell out of them.

I was especially afraid because we went ahead of the occupation troops.

NARRATOR: In the first week of September,

the American mission arrives in Tokyo

and is divided into two groups.

One will go to Nagasaki,

the other, led by Stafford Warren,

will go to Hiroshima.

For the traveling scientists and medics,

the scenes are apocalyptic.

Images captured by the first American cameramen in color footage,

large sections of which have never been publicly broadcast

and are shown now with black and white footage,

confiscated from Japanese film crews.

WARREN: We headed to the middle of Hiroshima.

(FLIES BUZZING)

There were flies everywhere.

They were so bad that we had to close up the windows to the car

to keep the flies out.

Then you would see a man or a woman

with what looked like a polka-dot shirt,

but when you got up close, it was just a mass of flies.

The bodies, of course, of all the dead were in the rubble.

And the stench was just something awful.

I'll never forget the stench.

NARRATOR: 185 miles to the southwest,

the second American team nears Nagasaki.

Their radiation doctor is Navy reservist Shields Warren.

He's had no prior involvement in the Manhattan Project,

but on hearing news of the bombs,

he lobbied his superiors to send him to Japan.

SHIELDS WARREN: I thought that we had grave responsibility

to get medical teams into the area

and that it was very urgent

that the atomic bombs survivors should be studied.

NARRATOR: As he approaches Nagasaki,

he is unprepared for the destruction he sees.

SHIELDS WARREN: We had come from Isahaya,

winding over terraced hillsides

and entered a tunnel through the mountains.

When we came out the other side,

we shifted from a view of a peaceful countryside

to utter devastation.

NARRATOR: In Nagasaki, the survey discovers the bomb

has damaged or destroyed 88% of the buildings in the city,

over an area of 40 square miles.

SHIELDS WARREN: A large portion of it was essentially squashed flat.

The steelwork of the Mitsubishi shipbuilding plant

looked exactly as though

a giant had simply smeared it with his hands.

You could see grass and plants

that had been burned into the wood

by the intense heat of the bomb.

NARRATOR: Back in Hiroshima,

a nervous Stafford Warren and his team

settle in under the watchful eye of their Japanese hosts.

WARREN: We were the first ambassadors of the country.

The Japanese had us bivouacked into what was a very famous hotel.

It was about five miles down the harbor.

MORRISON: There were guards, armed guards.

We couldn't understand them very well.

But I said, "It's very strange to be here

"if somebody decides that we are the very culprits

"that blew up their cities."

WARREN: We all decided the best thing was to act nonchalant,

but sleep on our guns.

NARRATOR: The next day, they'll meet the victims of the bomb

for the first time.

It's been less than 24 hours since they arrived in Hiroshima

and the American team prepares to meet

Japanese victims of the bomb.

WARREN: The second morning we began to be aware in the bushes

were vague forms with white bandages.

It turned out that here were probably 10,000 casualties

being treated in a kind of outdoor hospital.

We asked, "Are there any of these that we could do anything for?"

Because we had penicillin with us,

but they said, "No."

NARRATOR: The Japanese have agreed to cooperate with the American survey

on the condition that they do not interfere with the work of local doctors.

They are here only to observe and record.

SHIELDS WARREN: Under the terms of the treaty,

we were not allowed to treat any Japanese ourselves.

Of course, sooner or later this broke down

and we were treating them just like the Japanese were.

And lots of things, we ought to have done but we just couldn't do.

NARRATOR: Initial estimates have put the fatalities from Hiroshima at more than 70,000,

but the death toll keeps rising

and the doctors' job is to decipher

what it is about the atomic bomb that has caused these injuries.

SHIELDS WARREN: One of our main tasks was to try to decide

how many of the casualties were due to radiation,

how many to other injuries instant to the explosion.

It was singularly difficult to get adequate eyewitness accounts

as the survivors were overwhelmed.

Time and again they would say,

"I saw a bright flash and then a cloud rolled over my mind."

NARRATOR: Among the survivors is Akira Nakamura,

a 14-year-old factory worker in Nagasaki.

(AKIRA NAKAMURA SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: The accounts of the explosion

confirm the medics' expectations

about the immediate effects of the bomb blast,

but what they are really here to discover is the invisible effect of the radiation.

WARREN: We weren't particularly interested in skin burns.

Skin burns and things like that were common to all warfare.

We'd divide our day in half.

In the morning, we would see casualties.

In the afternoon, we would look over the destruction

and try to make measurements

what the downwind contamination might be.

NARRATOR: While Stafford Warren and his medical team explore the human costs,

physicist Robert Serber studies the effect on buildings and infrastructure.

SERBER: Bill Penney and I wandered around Nagasaki

and Hiroshima, now, for several weeks.

Completely alone.

The thing that was really astonishing about the whole thing was,

we had no difficulty at all with the people.

We wandered around the ruins

among the people whose families had all been killed.

We had no feeling of danger at all.

NARRATOR: The scientists want to establish

how the blast effects in an atom bomb compare to conventional weapons.

To do this, they must verify the height at which the bomb exploded.

Serber needs to find a building

that is still standing which was directly in line with the bomb.

SERBER: It's a piece of a wall

of a schoolhouse in Hiroshima,

about half a mile from where the bomb went off,

and it's flash burned, scarred by broken glass.

You can see the shadows of the window sash

and the chord of the shade.

And from the angle of which this shadow was cast,

we could measure the height at which the bomb went off.

And this was the evidence,

that it really went off at the height of what was supposed to be Hiroshima.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Philip Morrison searches the city

to quantify the effects of the radiation.

MORRISON: I went around just as Bob Serber did

and tried to look for significant clues,

measuring, confirming, the Japanese measurements out on the site.

NARRATOR: But with a month having elapsed since the initial detonation,

he needs local help.

MORRISON: I discovered the man called Kimura.

Kimura lived in a little, one-room shelter.

And he had a very nice electrometer

and a stopwatch, and a slide rule,

and many, many, foils that he had collected

with phosphorus on them from the bones of the victims.

And he had measured these radiation doses,

and done the right calculations all over the city.

NARRATOR: Contrary to American expectations,

Kimura's results show vast quantities

of highly toxic radioactive matter fell

in doses up to 1.5 million times greater

than that judged safe for a medical X-ray.

NARRATOR: It's six weeks since the bombs were dropped.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been decimated by the blasts.

And the US scientific mission is finding people

in both cities suffering the effects of radioactive fallout.

Throughout the Manhattan Project,

Stafford Warren has conducted radiation experiments on animals and fish.

These studies will provide clues

to how much radioactivity has been absorbed by the Japanese people.

WARREN: We had expected from our animal experiments to find

a great deal of gastrointestinal damage

as well as bone marrow damage and blood count reductions.

In the dogs, we had extensive information about the timing.

We didn't know what the timing of these clinical changes

would be in the human because there was no prior experience.

NARRATOR: While the team had guessed most deaths would come from the bomb blast,

the radiation is causing a second wave of fatalities.

Sawako Tamura is one of the nurses who witnessed it.

(SAWAKO TAMURA SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: These survivors continue to turn up weeks after the bombing,

puzzling the US scientific team.

WARREN: Day after day we would come and look at these people

and they would have purpura, bleeding spots,

about eighth of an inch in diameter, on various parts of the body.

Mostly face, chest, and arms.

Any place that got slightly bruised had a hemorrhage underneath

and they would be a sickly yellow color.

And we did a few white blood counts

and found 50 cells instead of 5,000.

The next day we'd come back and they'd be gone.

They had been incinerated overnight.

NARRATOR: Across the city, people who survived the bomb,

like 20-year-old Aoki Shigeru, are afraid they will develop the same symptoms.

(SHIGERU AOKI SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: One theory why many continue to show symptoms

is that two hours after the bomb fell,

a storm broke over Hiroshima,

the falling water mixed with radioactive dust from the explosion,

creating a toxic "black rain" that fell on the survivors.

(MAKOTO NAGAHARA SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: Though the radiation has killed tens of thousands,

in a rare case, Shields Warren encounters a doctor

who has actually benefited from the bomb.

SHIELDS WARREN: One remembers little oddities.

The professor was suffering from leukemia,

and he was actually helped by the bomb.

He got about 300 R and it shrank his spleen appreciatively.

NARRATOR: It's a singular case of good fortune.

The team discovers radioactive fallout extends for 30 miles beyond the city.

In the final toll it's estimated

140,000 people died from the initial explosions,

but a further 60,000 die from radiation sickness between August and November.

As the team is ordered home, talk turns to the helpful role of the local Japanese.

SHIELDS WARREN: By the 26th of September,

we had located most of the survivors.

Without the wholehearted cooperation of the Japanese,

we wouldn't have been able to accomplish a fraction of what we did.

I was tremendously impressed by the cooperation

that we had, not only from the scientific Japanese,

but at every level.

MORRISON: The only

nuanced but clearly present resistance

that I found from any Japanese,

in my entire tour through Japan,

the radiologist Suzuki

from the University of Tokyo,

very distinguished.

He said the following thing which I'll never forget.

Very polite, quite good English,

"Dr. Morrison."

"Yes."

"I have some experience in radiation, whole body radiation,

"but mine was only

"a few dogs.

"You Americans conducted a human experiment."

NARRATOR: October 1945, and the scientific mission

to study the effects of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

returns to America.

On landing in Santa Fe,

Stafford Warren is immediately taken

by General Groves to Los Alamos

for a grand ceremony

celebrating the success of the bomb.

WARREN: The E ceremony,

a capital E for excellent performance

during the war.

In any case, the Manhattan Engineer District job was done.

It had delivered the bombs,

better than they had expected from the military standpoint of view.

I got home about 9:00 that night

and I slept almost three days solid.

NARRATOR: One month later,

Groves is called before a Senate Committee

in Washington DC

convened to understand

whether the billion-dollar experiment has been a success.

GROVES: The atomic bomb mission which we had overseas

made no attempt at Nagasaki and Hiroshima

to secure or estimate the exact casualties

because the mission did not survey the cities

until over a month

after the dropping of the bombs.

The best overall estimates come from the Japanese.

At Hiroshima, the casualties, dead and missing,

were somewhere between 70,000 and 120,000.

The injured between 75,000 and 200,000.

At Nagasaki,

the dead and missing were between 40 and 45,000,

and the injured about 40,000.

The atomic bomb

made it impossible

for the Japanese to continue the war.

Senator, in answer to your question

as to what are the prospects of an effective defense

against the atomic bomb,

I would state

that there are no prospects

at the present time of an effective defense.

NARRATOR: At the hearing, the Senate accepts Groves' declaration

that because the bombs ended the war,

hundreds of thousands of Japanese and American lives were saved,

but he makes no disclosure

of the mission's findings on radiation.

And the team who went to Japan

are given no time to write up their results,

as leading members are asked

to help plan the testing of new bombs.

WARREN: Unfortunately, when I got home,

I had those two problems,

one was the unwinding of the military operation,

and the other was the Bikini preparations.

I was transferred to the Joint Task Force

by General Groves

very soon after I got back,

before I could do any writing up.

MAN: Three, two, one.

WARREN: The only write-up is the Army Historical Unit's report of my office,

and that is rather sketchy.

And then Shields Warren was appointed as my successor.

SHIELDS WARREN: Eventually, a monograph on the acute effects

of the atomic bomb in Japan came out.

This was delayed

for a long time through red tape

and did not appear until 1951.

NARRATOR: The film footage and medical reports

were stored in warehouses

and classified,

deemed too sensitive to be viewed or shared for decades.

To the future head of atomic safety,

Shields Warren, it became clear

that most people wanted to draw a line under the bombings.

NEWSREEL: Washington is jubilant

and in Chicago

more than a million sing and dance in the streets.

SHIELDS WARREN: I was in and out of Washington enough

after the Hiroshima bomb had exploded

to know that there were no plans to follow up study, medically.

It was quickly apparent that the general tendency in government,

and indeed the public as a whole,

once the war and immediate post-War period was over,

was to go back to things as usual

and not realize

the entirely new type of scientific world

into which the development

of the atomic bomb had thrust us.

NARRATOR: The war may have been over

but there was great regret

amongst team members like Philip Morrison.

He'd been part of the atomic experiment from the beginning

but had also witnessed the huge impact

the bombs had on a civilian population.

MORRISON: I was pretty conflicted about the whole history of the war.

It was such a terrible thing to do,

but we never saw that it could be avoided.

In two years the whole society changed,

and the world changed,

to the murder in some obscure way

of a whole city.

Nobody really understood our weapon,

nobody could see what the future meant,

how great it would come to be,

how numerous they would come to be.

NARRATOR: In the years that follow the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

deaths continue to grow with 60,000 more people perishing

from radiation related illnesses across the next seven decades.

The morality of dropping the bombs continues to be debated,

but for those who built them,

its success remains a necessary evil,

to end a war that had already cost millions of lives.

Well, the Manhattan Project is a tremendous project.

It built three or four cities.

It managed research in six or seven universities.

It's a miracle that the bomb was developed.

It's wonderful that we were able to use it to end the war.

The dropping of the atomic bomb

started the Atomic Age.

It's the biggest thing that we have to manage.

NARRATOR: A message reiterated by the architect of the bomb,

J. Robert Oppenheimer.

I have been asked whether

in the years to come it will be possible to kill

40 million American people

in the 20 largest American towns

by the use of atomic bombs in a single night.

I am afraid that the answer to that question is yes.

NARRATOR: Oppenheimer will spend the rest of his life

speaking publicly about the dangers of his invention.

OPPENHEIMER: Members of the academy,

some of you will have seen photographs

of the Nagasaki strike,

seen the great steel girders of factories twisted and wrecked.

Some of you will have seen pictures of the people who were burned.

We have made a thing that by all standards of the world we grew up in

is an evil thing.

A most terrible weapon.

It has altered abruptly and profoundly

the nature of the world.

During our lifetime,

atomic weapons could be either a great or a small trouble.

The pattern of the use of atomic weapons

was set at Hiroshima.

They are weapons of aggression,

of surprise and of terror.

For not even a better understanding of the physical world

should make us content to see these weapons

turned to the devastation of the earth.

If they are ever used again,

I think that it will not help to avert such a war

if we try to rub the edges off this new terror

that we have helped bring to the world.

I think the only hope

for our future safety

must lie in the collaboration

based on confidence and good faith

with the other peoples of the world.

NARRATOR: 75 years after the dropping of the bomb,

the message is echoed by the Japanese survivors

for whom the experiment never ended.

(SHIGERU AOKI SPEAKING JAPANESE)

(TAKAKO KOTANI SPEAKING JAPANESE)

NARRATOR: Every year on August 6th,

Japanese gather with lanterns to remember the dead

and remind the world of the scars of the bomb.

(SAWAKO TAMURA SPEAKING JAPANESE)