American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

ON AUGUST 6, 1945, at exactly 8:14 a.m., a B-29 aircraft, the Enola Gay, named after pilot Paul Tibbets’ mother, dropped the untested, gun-type uranium bomb over Hiroshima. John Manley was in Washington that day, waiting anxiously to hear the news. Oppenheimer had sent him there with one assignment—to report to him on the bombing. After a five-hour delay in communications from the aircraft, Manley finally received a teletype from Captain Parsons—who was the “arming” officer on the Enola Gay—that “the visible effects were greater than the New Mexico test.” But just as Manley was about to call Oppenheimer in Los Alamos, Groves stopped him. No one was to disseminate any information about the atomic bombing until the president himself announced it. Frustrated, Manley went for a midnight walk in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. Early the next morning, he was told that Truman would make an announcement at 11:00 a.m. Manley finally got Oppie on the phone just as the president’s statement was released on nationwide radio. Although they had agreed to use a prearranged code for conveying the news over the phone, Oppenheimer’s first words to Manley were: “Why the hell did you think I sent you to Washington in the first place?”