The Manhattan Project consisted of a number of labs in
secret locations around the country, each charged with solving
a different aspect of bomb construction. Enrico Fermi's lab at
the University of Chicago was dedicated to creating the world's
first controlled nuclear chain reaction. Meanwhile, huge processing
factories in Tennessee attempted to manufacture the large quantities
of radioactive material that the scientists would require. The
bomb would need to use one of two materials: uranium 235 (U-235)
or plutonium. Both were very rare. U-235 is an isotope of uranium,
and, unfortunately, ninety-nine percent of uranium is U-238, which meant
that scientists needed to find an efficient way of extracting enough
U-235 to create a nuclear explosion.
But the core of the project was the design and creation
of the bomb itself, a task which was entrusted to a secret laboratory
in an isolated location, directed by an untested administrator:
Robert Oppenheimer. Leslie Groves had met Oppenheimer shortly after taking
control of the Manhattan Project and was deeply impressed by the
young physicist. Although Oppenheimer had never been in charge
of anything larger than a class of physics students, and although
the military was still suspicious of his ties to communism, Groves
placed Oppenheimer in charge of the bomb design program.
Groves, obsessed with keeping the Manhattan Project a
secret, kept the project decentralized in its early phases, and
it was his intent that no group of scientists would ever know what
another group was doing. But Oppenheimer objected, saying that
this type of secrecy would hinder the scientists' work and slow
the project. What was good for security was not necessarily good
for science, and eventually Oppenheimer, and science, won out.
Groves and Oppenheimer agreed to select an isolated location to
which they would bring the country's top physicists, creating a
refuge in the middle of nowhere where the scientists could work
together and live together. Oppenheimer selected the location himself:
Los Alamos.
Los Alamos–a name is now synonymous with the bomb project–was
nothing more than a deserted mesa in north-central New Mexico in
1942. Oppenheimer was already familiar with the area, since, in
1928, he and his brother had vacationed in New Mexico and had loved
it so much that they bought a cabin there. Now it would be his home
for the next several years. Oppenheimer and Groves renovated the
building of an old boys' school to serve as a base camp and built
a set of cheap barracks that would house the physicists and their
families.
The lab was ready–but would the physicists come?
Oppenheimer set off on a trip around the country to recruit
the best scientists he could find. He called upon his current and
former students, as well as some of the world's most famous physicists. Many,
such as Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, and Niels Bohr, were refugees
from Nazi Europe who knew all to well what would happen if Hitler
got the bomb before the United States and were only too willing
to help prevent that from happening.
Whether they were inspired by patriotism, fearful of the
Germans, or entranced by the physics itself, the physicists flooded
to New Mexico. Oppenheimer originally estimated that he would need
housing for thirty scientists and their families, but, by the end of
the war there were 6,500 people living at Los Alamos.
Many of the scientists of Los Alamos look back on it as
a unique period in their lives, one in which they felt purposeful
and driven as never before. One notable physicist has recalled,
"It was one of the few times in my life when I felt truly alive."
Despite the poor conditions–isolation, cheap housing, a poor heating
system, few connections to the outside world–the scientists and
their families thrived. They skied and hiked and fell in love with
the southwest, and they relished the once-in-a-lifetime chance
to live in a closed environment with so many brilliant people,
all focused on a common–and, they believed–noble goal.
The most common complaint was, unsurprisingly, a distaste
for the secrecy and seemingly excessive security measures imposed upon
them by the military, who were a constant presence at Los Alamos.
Groves had originally suggested that all the scientists be enlisted
in the army, but the fiercely independent physicists chafed at
the idea of compulsory enlistment, so the idea was dropped in a hurry.
Instead, Groves and Oppenheimer compromised: the physicists came
to the base as civilians but were under constant scrutiny by the
military. Oppenheimer himself was being watched most closely of
all. Throughout the war, the military tapped his phone, opened
his mail, and kept him under constant surveillance–despite his
efforts on their behalf, the government remained unconvinced of
his loyalty.
And Oppenheimer was making a heroic effort. It was his
job to mediate between the feisty scientists and the wary military,
as well as to motivate the scientists to keep their goal always
firmly in mind. It seemed that if the Manhattan Project failed
to produce a viable bomb, Oppenheimer would hold himself personally
to blame. Yet somehow, he managed to do it all–he kept the military
happy, he kept the scientists happy, and in only a few years, he
accomplished what had seemed an almost unattainable goal: the detonation
of the world's first atomic bomb.
