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INFORMING THE PUBLIC
(August 1945)
Events > Postscript -- The Nuclear Age, 1945-Present
- Informing the Public, August 1945
- The Manhattan Engineer District, 1945-1946
- First Steps toward International Control, 1944-1945
- Search for a Policy on International Control, 1945
- Negotiating International Control, 1945-1946
- Civilian Control of Atomic Energy, 1945-1946
- Operation Crossroads, July 1946
- The VENONA Intercepts, 1946-1980
- The Cold War, 1945-1990
- Nuclear Proliferation, 1949-present
The atomic bombing of Japan in early August 1945 suddenly thrust the
Manhattan Project into the center of the public eye. What formerly
had been privy to a select few now became the object of intense public
curiosity and scrutiny. Manhattan Project officials, however, had no
intent to release what they viewed as essential military secrets. To
both allay inordinate inquisitiveness and satisfy the legitimate public
need to know, officials in early 1944 began a carefully designed public
relations program in anticipation of when they would have to announce the
news to the world. They perceived that, from the standpoint of
security, the release of some selected information would make it easier to
maintain the secrecy of the highly classified aspects of the
project. The public relations program had two parts: preparation of
a series of public releases and preparation of an administrative and
scientific history of the project.
Responsibility for preparation of press releases fell upon General Leslie Groves
and his Washington staff. Realizing the need for professional
guidance, Groves approached William Laurence, the well-known science
reporter for the New York Times. The Times agreed to
release Laurence to the Manhattan Project for as long as he was
needed. During the early months of 1945, Laurence visited the major
atomic facilities and interviewed the leading participants. He also
witnessed the Trinity test and the bombing of Japan. Laurence
drafted most of the press releases on various project activities and
events.
Release of the prepared statements was carefully controlled and managed
following Hiroshima. Sixteen hours after the bombing, the White
House released a statement by President Harry S. Truman, who was en
route from the Potsdam Conference aboard the U.S.S. Augusta.
"It is an atomic bomb," Truman announced, "harnessing . . .
the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws
its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far
East." Describing the race with the Germans for the bomb
as the "battle of the laboratories," he noted that the contest
"held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land
and sea, and we have won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the
other battles." Looking to the future and the possible mixed
blessings of this atomic victory, the President observed that it had
"never been the habit of the scientists of this country or the policy
of this Government to withhold from the world scientific knowledge. . . .
but under present circumstances it is not intended to divulge the
technical processes of production or all the military applications,
pending further examination of possible methods of protecting us and the
rest of the world from the danger of sudden destruction."
Recommendations would be made to Congress, Truman promised, on how the
atom could become a "powerful and forceful influence towards the
maintenance of world peace."
In the press releases that followed both before and after the bombing
of Nagasaki, the public received selected background information on
the Trinity test, atomic processes, production plants, communities,
significant personalities, and the prospects of harnessing atomic energy.
The well-orchestrated program of public releases revealed the drama of the
atomic story in surprisingly detailed episodes. At the same time,
the press release program managed to adhere to the central objective of
preserving essential military security.
The second and largely complementary part of the
Manhattan Project's public relations effort was the preparation and
release of an administrative and scientific history of the project.
In fall 1943, James Conant, Arthur Compton, and Henry D. Smyth, a Princeton physicist and a consultant to
the Manhattan Project, discussed the possibility of preparing a public
report summarizing the technical achievements of the wartime
project. In Conant's view, a technical report would at once provide
a basis for rational public discussion and make it easier to maintain
the essential military secrets. When Vannevar
Bush independently suggested a technical history in March
1944, Conant proposed assigning the task to Smyth. Groves agreed, and
Smyth was provided with carefully drawn criteria to guide his
efforts. Groves and various project scientists, including Robert Oppenheimer
and Ernest Lawrence, reviewed the manuscript for accuracy and to ensure that
nothing within it should be withheld.
On August 12, three days after the Nagasaki bombing, the War Department
released the 182-page account, which became known as the Smyth
Report. The report contained a wealth of information lucidly
presented, but, as Groves clearly stated in his foreword, "no
requests for additional information should be made." Persons
either disclosing or securing additional information without
authorization, Groves declared, would be "subject to severe penalties under the Espionage Act."
The immediate public response to news of the Manhattan Project and the
atomic bombings of Japan, as filtered through the project's public
relations efforts, was overwhelmingly favorable. When asked simply "do you approve
of the use of the atomic bomb?", 85 percent of Americans in one August
1945 poll replied "yes." Few doubted that the atomic bomb had ended
the war and saved American lives, and after almost four years of
war, few retained much sympathy for Japan. The writer Paul Fussell,
who as a 21-year-old second lieutenant was slated to be part of the
invasion force going into Japan, perhaps has put it most succinctly:
When the bombs dropped and news began to circulate that [the
invasion] would not, after all, take place, that we would not be obliged
to run up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being mortared and
shelled, for all the fake manliness of our facades we cried with relief
and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow up to adulthood after all.
Over time, other reactions to the abrupt beginning of the atomic age
began to emerge. Newspapers, magazines, and the airwaves around the United States
became filled with a variety of opinions regarding the meaning of nuclear energy. These ran the spectrum from dark
pessimism about the future of the human race to an unbounded utopian optimism. One of the most common reactions,
especially among the intelligentsia, was to abolish war once and for
all. The logic was simple: a future world war would inevitably
involve nuclear weapons, and a war with nuclear weapons would mean the end
of civilization -- therefore, there could never be another world
war. A flood of peace and disarmament campaigns had followed the
First World War, and a second world war had followed only two decades
later. Thus, for some, the only solution appeared to be the creation
of one government for the entire world. The movement to create the
United Nations was already well underway, but doubtless some of its
postwar support derived from this initial desire among many for world government.
In
contrast to the fearful forebodings of the "one worlders" were
the views of those for whom nuclear energy was a panacea, a new hope for
humanity that in the very near future would create an "atomic utopia." Many magazines
and newspapers in the late 1940s were filled with breathless stories of the benefits
of virtually free and unlimited energy and predictions of everything from "atomic
cars" to "atomic medicines." The belief that nuclear energy
would ultimately prove more beneficial than harmful was strongest among those
who had the most education.
A certain sense of remorse also
slowly began to build among the public, especially as details became known
of the destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An
important early step in this process was when the entire August 21, 1946,
issue of The New Yorker magazine was devoted to stories of the devastation
of Hiroshima. (These articles were later reprinted as a book: John Hersey's Hiroshima.)
- Informing the Public, August 1945
- The Manhattan Engineer District, 1945-1946
- First Steps toward International Control, 1944-1945
- Search for a Policy on International Control, 1945
- Negotiating International Control, 1945-1946
- Civilian Control of Atomic Energy, 1945-1946
- Operation Crossroads, July 1946
- The VENONA Intercepts, 1946-1980
- The Cold War, 1945-1990
- Nuclear Proliferation, 1949-present
Next
Sources and notes for this page.
Portions of the text for this page were adapted from, and portions were taken
directly from the Office of History and Heritage
Resources publication: Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr.,
The New World, 1939-1946: Volume I, A History of the United States
Atomic Energy Commission (Washington: U.S. Atomic Energy Commission,
1972), 368, 406-407, and from Vincent C. Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the
Atomic Bomb, United States Army in World War II (Washington: Center of
Military History, United States Army, 1988), 553-562. Also used was Paul Boyer,
By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the
Atomic Age (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985,
1994). President Harry S. Truman's "Statement by the President
Announcing the Use of the A-Bomb at Hiroshima," August 6, 1945, is in Public
Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Harry S. Truman, 1945
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1961), 197-200. The "Smyth Report" is
Henry DeWolf Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes: The Official Report
on the Development of the Atomic Bomb under the Auspices of the United States
Government, 1940-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1945); the
Smyth Report was commissioned by Leslie Groves and originally issued by
the Manhattan Engineer District; Princeton University Press reprinted it
in book form as a "public service" with "reproduction in whole or in part
authorized and permitted." On the continued postwar emphasis on security, see
the numerous press releases issued by the War Department throughout the rest of
1945 and 1946 emphasizing the continued need for security; these releases can
also be found on the University Publications of America (UPA) microfilm
collection, Manhattan Project: Official History and Documents
(Washington: 1977), reel #1/12; and the UPA microfilm collection President
Harry S. Truman's Office Files, 1945-1953 (Frederick, MD: 1989), Part 3,
reel #41/42. See also the August 11, 1945, advisory for the press (which is
also available on reel #1 of the UPA Manhattan Project microfilm
collection). Paul Fussell quote from "From the Rubble of Okinawa: A Different
View of Hiroshima," Kansas City Star, August 30, 1981. The photograph of
James F. Byrnes and Truman on the U.S.S. Augusta is courtesty the Truman Presidential Library. Click here for information on the photograph of
Vannevar Bush and James Conant. The photograph of Henry Smyth and
Ernest Lawrence discussing the Smyth Report is reprinted in Hewlett and
Anderson, The New World, facing page 376. Click here for more information on the comic book
images. The photograph of the lone soldier walking through an
almost-completely leveled portion of Hiroshima is courtesy the Department of the Navy
(via the National Archives); it was taken by Wayne Miller.
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