American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

Oppenheimer knew the names of the Japanese cities on the list of potential targets—and the knowledge was clearly sobering. “Robert got very still and ruminative, during that two-week period,” Wilson recalled, “partly because he knew what was about to happen, and partly because he knew what it meant.” One day soon after the Trinity test, Oppenheimer startled Wilson with a sad, even morose remark. “He was beginning to feel very down,” Wilson said. “I didn’t know of other people who were quite in the mood he was in, but he used to come from his house walking over to the Technical Area, and I used to come from the nurses’ quarters and somewhere along the way we often bumped into each other. That morning, he’s puffing on his pipe and he’s saying, ‘Those poor little people, those poor little people’—referring to the Japanese.” He said it with an air of resignation. And deadly knowledge.