The Amazing Saga of Manhattan Project Engineer Who Tried to Halt the Atomic Bombings

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.

A sure sign of the cultural impact of a hit movie is that, after the first week, we are still seeing one article after another inspired by it, from the often silly (who is buying Oppie’s hat?) to the serious. Somewhere in between is this interesting piece in today’s New York Times on imagery of the mushroom cloud, from the ‘50s and ‘60s (e.g. Dr. Strangelove) through to The Day After and much more in the 1980s, to Asteroid City and Oppenheimer now.

Nolan returns the nuclear explosion from the realm of symbolism to a primal zone of fears and urges – a cataclysm created by other human beings like us.

But let’s not forget Arnold and Jamie Lee in True Lies (with the real Terminator behind them)

When an Obscure Engineer Tried to Prevent the Atomic Attacks

After toiling in a top-secret government program for two to three years, many scientists who were part of the Manhattan Project, and not at Los Alamos, finally learned in 1945 that all that work was aimed at creating a revolutionary new weapon, the atomic bomb, and with Germany defeated it might very well still be used – over Japanese cities in the months ahead.   Indeed, this would occur, seventy-eight years ago next week. This eventuality deeply troubled some of them, fearing the toll on civilians, and the uncharted radiation effects that would result, as well as setting a precedent for future use.

Yet none of them took these concerns public.   Wartime security controls were still very much in place and anyone who did leak or speak to the press faced severe penalties.   A key Chicago scientist, Eugene Rabinowitz, later recounted that he deeply considered speaking out.   It wasn’t so much that he opposed any possible use of the bomb but that – I find this profound – Americans deserved to know, in advance, what was likely about to be done by their leaders, in their names.   There is no record of anyone else within the massive Manhattan Project – with sprawling sites in a several states – coming close to doing that.

One of the most famous scientists who played a key early role in developing the bomb, Leo Szilard, did mount an earnest private campaign, gaining the support of dozens of atomic scientists in the project.  We see a little of this in Oppenheimer, once via Szilard and a couple of times raised by Teller. They petitioned President Truman to never use, or at least hold off using, the new weapon until Japan was given a much longer period to surrender, or possibly demonstrate the power of the bomb for the enemy before actually dropping it over a city.   The petition was blocked (partly by Oppie) from reaching the desk of the president before it was too late.

This has been documented by historians for decades.  Almost nothing has been reported about the saga of the one true internal “whistleblower” within the bomb project, a man whose name is almost lost to history:  Oswald C. Brewster.   And he took his warning straight to the president himself.

Brewster was an engineer for a leading Project contractor, the Kellex Corporation, living in New York City.  Deeply involved with the separation of uranium isotopes, he supported the race with Germany for the bomb.   Then, on May 24, 1945, risking arrest and long imprisonment for security violations – indeed he would later claim he was followed by agents and his phone tapped – he penned a powerful and prescient 3000-word letter and transmitted it through U.S. Army channels to Truman, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the new (very pro-bomb) Secretary of State James Byrnes.

Brewster warned that an atomic bomb would easily destroy any large city and a massive number of civilians, spread dangerous radiation, and inspire many other countries to race for their own such weapon.  Therefore he opposed using it against reeling and surrounded Japan.   While admitting this was an “unpopular and minority view” among his peers – and might be considered by some “treason” – he felt duty-bound, as one of the relatively few Americans who knew about this plan, to take his protest to the top.

Brewster recognized the key factor influencing the decision to drop the bomb:  all of Truman’s advisers, tightly bound to the Project and its success, had strong personal or career reasons for making sure the new weapon was utilized (as did Oppenheimer).  There was as well the need to justify having spent $2 billion, a truly massive number then,  to create it.  He pleaded for Truman to seek “disinterested counsel” from “unbiased” observers, a brilliant, much-needed proposal.

Japan could be used as a “target” for a “demonstration” of the bomb, but his preference was for non-use, rather than “bring upon the world the tragedy of unrestrained competitive production of this material.” Once the bomb was unleashed, even the U.S.’s closest allies would want the bomb because “how could they know where our friendship might be five, ten, or twenty years hence….

This thing must not be permitted on earth. We must not be the most hated and feared people on earth, however good our intent must be….I beg you of you, sir, not to pass this off because I happen to be an unknown…There surely are men in this country to whom you could turn, asking them to study this problem.

Against all odds, the letter (unlike Szilard’s petition) reached Stimson’s desk, and he read it. Rather than rejecting the argument and/or its threat to security, he urged General George C. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, to peruse this “remarkable document” from an “honest man” and share “the impress of its logic,” just as the key high-level discussions about using the bomb against Japan was reaching a climax at the May 31 meeting of the Interim Committee.

This session is re-created in Oppenheimer in accurate detail. As it happens, the minutes seem to show that neither Marshall nor Stimson mentioned the Brewster letter, or reflected its contents in their comments. Oppenheimer himself took the lead in shooting down the idea of any “demonstration.”

Stimson, nevertheless, then delivered the letter directly to Truman himself, not knowing that the president had been sent his own version.  Somehow O.C. Brewster’s message had reached the top. Part of the letter:

There was no indication, however, that Truman read any version of it or discussed it with anyone.   The decision had been pretty well set by then, and he was traveling to Potsdam to confirm from Joseph Stalin that Russia would, as promise, declare war on Japan by mid-August  (“Fini Japs” when that occurs, Truman wrote in his diary, even without the use of the new bomb).  There he also issued his ultimatum to Japan to surrender unconditionally, and when that did not occur, the first atomic weapon was dropped over Hiroshima on August 6, and then over Nagasaki on August 9.  Then Truman allowed Japan to keep its emperor, a major “condition” that might have ended the war sooner.

Two months later, with the bomb project no longer secret, atomic scientists were now a little more free to voice their urgent concerns.   A group of them even inspired the MGM studio in Hollywood to launch the first movie to dramatize the story of the bomb and warn against making even more powerful weapons.   But Hollywood, like Washington, was not ready to take this warning seriously, and Truman and the military soon turned the movie, The Beginning or the End, into little more than pro-bomb propaganda (see my book with same title).

There is no record of Brewster’s response to the utter rejection of the entire spirit of his “whistleblower” letter, and he faded deep into obscurity – though he was never arrested for any security breaches.

>Post-script: When I wrote a version of the above three summers ago, I received an email, amazingly, from Brewster’s great-grandson, Joshua Brewster, calling my piece “a great conversation starter within the family.” It seems that Oswald was known as “Owl” and Joshua confirmed, “We don’t have any record of a response from Truman or his administration.” Among other personal reflections, he told me:

Oswald’s personal journey was interesting. He considered himself a pacifist, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre while serving in the American Field Service as an ambulance driver [in World War I] as opposed to the military. He was struck by shrapnel – I have his helmet. He was worried about Germany in WWII, so he felt it was appropriate to join the Manhattan Project. He was technologically brilliant (patents on a number of topics) and at the same time interested in having his opinions/thoughts heard.

Though sadly, not followed, in the case of the new earth-shattering weapons in the spring and summer of 1945.