The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition

by Richard Rhodes

April 12 in America was Friday, April 13, in Japan, and on the night of that unlucky day B-29’s bombing Tokyo bombed the Riken. The wooden building housing Yoshio Nishina’s unsuccessful gaseous thermal diffusion experiment did not immediately burn; firemen and staff managed to extinguish the fires that threatened it. But after the other fires were out the building suddenly burst into flame. It burned to the ground and took the Japanese atomic bomb project with it. In Europe John Lansdale was preparing to rush to Stassfurt to confiscate what remained of the Belgian uranium ore; when Groves heard of the success of that adventure later in April he wrote a memorandum to George Marshall that closed the German book: In 1940 the German Army in Belgium confiscated and removed to Germany about 1200 tons of uranium ore. So long as this material remained hidden under the control of the enemy we could not be sure but that he might be preparing to use atomic weapons.2267 Yesterday I was notified by cable that personnel of my office had located this material near Stassfurt, Germany and that it was now being removed to a safe place outside of Germany where it will be under the complete control of American and British authorities. The capture of this material, which was the bulk of uranium supplies available in Europe, would seem to remove definitely any possibility of the Germans making use of an atomic bomb in this war. The day these events cluster around, April 12, saw another book clo...