Photo/Illutration J. Robert Oppenheimer at a news conference in Japan in 1960. (Asahi file photo)

This day in 1945 marked the first detonation of a U.S. atomic weapon under the Manhatten Project in the so-called Trinity test.

Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory where the world’s first atomic bomb was designed, smiled with relief when a blinding flash suffused the desert of New Mexico.

Hearing that a U.S. film based on a critical biography of Oppenheimer is now in production, I read a Japanese translation of the book, the original title of which is “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.”

Until the successful test, Oppenheimer withstood the tremendous pressure of being entrusted with this highly secretive national undertaking and was determined to bring World War II to an early end.

However, his thoughts began to change after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, according to Shiho Nakazawa, a professor at Bunka Gakuen University and an expert on Oppenheimer’s life and works.

“The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose,” he would repeat. And by late August 1945, he was already telling a colleague that nuclear power needed to be placed under internationally unified control without delay.

Oppenheimer intended to proceed with nuclear control in collaboration with the Soviet Union, aiming also for joint scientific research on nuclear power.

However, the U.S. government rejected his proposals.

Oppenheimer famously told President Harry S. Truman, “I feel I have blood on my hands.” But Truman later wrote him off as a “cry-baby scientist."

Oppenheimer was eventually branded a communist and expelled from positions of influence.

Reading about his triumphs and setbacks, I thought about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s commment about Russia as “one of the world’s most powerful nuclear nations.”

And in what was an outright act of intimidation, he conducted a simulated launch of a ballistic missile capable of being armed with a nuclear warhead.

Oppenheimer’s reputation is mixed. He was lauded as “the father of the atomic bomb,” but also denounced as a “physicist without morality.” Still, he definitely understood, better than anyone, the capability of nuclear weapons to destroy human civilization itself.

Were he alive today, I wonder how he would try to talk reason to the out-of-control Russian dictator.

--The Asahi Shimbun, July 16

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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