Visiting the country that was bombed by two artifacts that you designed yourself must not be easy at all. Let them call it Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. The American physicist went to Japan in September 1960, 15 years after the nuclear catastrophes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which occurred on August 6 and 9, 1945. The bombs dropped caused a level of total destruction that it was key to Japan’s surrender and thus ending World War II.
The first to be shocked by the devastating power of these artifacts was Oppenheimer himself, protagonist of Christopher Nolan’s film of the same name, which is filling cinemas this summer. The scientist led the Manhattan Project, the research and development plan for the first nuclear weapons, such as Little boy and Fat man, the bombs that exploded in the infamous Japanese towns and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
During the visit to Japan, Oppenheimer revealed his anguish at the disaster caused, while defending the great scientific advance that was the development of nuclear-powered artifacts. “I don’t think coming to Japan has changed my sense of anxiety about my role in this story. Nor has it made me completely regret my responsibility for the technical success of the company”, answered the physicist in a chat with the Japanese press. When asked about his feelings about visiting Japan, Oppenheimer summed it up succinctly: “It’s not that I don’t feel bad. It’s just that I don’t feel worse tonight than last night.” “I have the duty and the hope to talk and meet with your people about our common problems and about the difficulty we face”, reflected the physicist.
During the trip, in addition to attending to the media, Oppenheimer gave several conferences in Tokyo and Osaka. The Japanese, despite what it might seem, received him with enthusiasm. They did not express rancor, but considered his testimony useful in knowing how to manage a world increasingly threatened by nuclear weapons that he and his team designed. Especially at that time, in the sixties, when the planet was immersed in a missile crisis and a cold war that could heat up at any moment.
Perhaps in order not to contribute to this warming, Oppenheimer did not go to Hiroshima. “It is not clear that it is practical”, he said. Although he also expressed his desire, never fulfilled, to visit the city “in silence”, without the journalists who accompanied him on the 1960 trip.
Visiting the Japanese town is not easy for the authorities of the United States, starting with their presidents. Only two presidents have gone there. The latest is Joe Biden, in May, as part of the G-7 summit. But the first to visit the area was Barack Obama, in 2016, 71 years after the catastrophe.
Despite the fact that Oppenheimer did not visit Hiroshima, the receptive attitude of the Japanese contrasts with the coldness of the United States authorities towards the physicist. Starting with the then president, Harry S. Truman, who was in charge of pressing the nuclear button. The father of the atomic bomb revealed to Truman that he felt he had “blood on his hands.” The president of the United States, angry, replied that the responsibility for that decision was solely his as head of state. Truman’s anger was so great that he asked never to see “that whiny scientist” again.
Relations did not improve with Truman’s successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower. His administration terminated his contract as an adviser to the United States Atomic Energy Commission, while Oppenheimer advocated for nuclear containment.
Instead, under the administrations of Democrats John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert Oppenheimer was awarded the Enrico Fermi Prize for his scientific contributions. The award also had the aim of cleaning up the accusations received throughout an intense professional career without which contemporary history would not be understood.