A Day of Clouds and Blackness April 23, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: History, Memory, Myth
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November 1, 1952. Richard Garwin stood on the deck of the Navy destroyer, looking across the ocean between the ship and Enewetak Atoll. The sun lay low on the horizon as Garwin’s team prepared to detonate the world’s first thermonuclear fusion bomb. A device of Garwin’s own design, it would be the largest explosion in human history, harnessing the destructive forces of the sun. As he listened to the countdown blaring through the ship’s PA system, he slipped on the goggles that he desperately hoped he would need. The voice hit zero, and for a split second nothing happened. In the next instant, a brilliant light that surpassed the sun’s radiance blinked soundlessly into existence above the island. A massive fireball rose into the sky, and as the thunderous shockwave reached the ship he saw the top of the inferno begin to spread into the characteristic mushroom shape. Garwin stood on the deck, continuing to watch as the cloud swelled, twenty miles across at the base and a hundred at the cap, twenty-five miles above his head. As he marvelled at the ceiling beneath which he stood, sunlight slanting under the edge, Garwin listened to reports that were filtering in: the island had been completely obliterated, and his mentor Edward Teller had radioed with news that the seismic shocks had been felt around the world. Oppenheimer, his intellectual predecessor, had turned to the Hindu holy book to describe the Trinity test, but Garwin was reminded of a different passage referring to the “splendor of the Mighty One”:
“Before them the earth shakes,
the sky trembles,
the sun and moon are darkened,
and the stars no longer shine.”
Ivy Mike, the First Hydrogen Bomb
The Cold War
The Plot Against America
The Bible
Demon Core April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: History, Memory
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In 1945 and 1946, two scientists working on experiments to enhance the efficiency of nuclear fuel died as the result of accidental radiation poisoning. In August 1945, Harry Daghlian received a lethal dose of radiation when he accidentally caused a plutonium core that he was working on to go critical; in May 1946, Louis Slotin suffered a similar fate while working on the same plutonium core. The core was nicknamed the “demon core” for its role in the two men’s deaths, and was eventually used for a test detonation to validate their work. The men, who both managed to prevent the reaction from proceeding further at the cost of their own lives, were memorialized in a poem:
“May God receive you, great-souled scientist!
While you were with us, even strangers knew
The breadth and lofty stature of your mind
Twas only in the crucible of death
We saw at last your noble heart revealed.”
Hibukasha April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: History, Memory, Myth, Video
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Tsutomu Yamaguchi stood in his office, explaining to his boss what had happened to him. “Three days ago, I was in Hiroshima for that meeting you sent me to. I was just getting off the train in downtown when the bomb went off. The thunder ruined my hearing, and the flash would have destroyed my sight if I hadn’t been facing in the other direction. Even though I was shielded by the train, I could see my shadow cast by the brilliant light. The pain of these burns knocked me off my feet. As I laid there, I didn’t know what had happened. This is the Land of the Rising Sun, but in that moment it seemed that the sun had descended into Hiroshima. I count myself lucky to be alive.”
“Incredible,” said the supervisor. “If only we had known, you could have stayed here in Nagasaki and avoided this altogether. As it is, I’m just glad you survived.”
Six miles overhead, Major Charles Sweeney gave the order to his crew.
Revelation April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Image, Myth
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Bert was uneasy as he tossed in his bed, trying to go to sleep. His encounter with that dying old vet at the hospital had not been a pleasant one, but he needed a good night of rest before he started his new job. Any time now, that drink he had was going to kick in…there it was. As he drifted into sleep, his last thought was of that girl he met in the bar—Lizzy or Libby or something like that.
Startled in his sleep by a thunderous roar, Bert ran out of his new house wearing only a pair of shorts. An orange ripple ran through the clouds in the midnight sky, away from the expanding pillar of smoke and flame that towered over him. The horrifying realization that his house was only a few miles from the lab, on the other side of the town’s namesake wooded ridge, blew the sleepiness out of his mind. As he turned to run, motion on the deserted road into town caught his eye. He realized that it was someone coming from the direction of the blast; he started to yell, then stopped in shock. It was not a fleeing survivor, but a figure with four crossed arms seated on a red horse, riding at the head of a wave of fire. The inferno swept toward him, drawing closer.
The alarm clock buzzed, and Bert jolted awake. It was his first day of work.
Sources:
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Campbell Doctrine April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Doxa, History
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Major Campbell stepped up to the microphone:
“The consensus rationalization for the offensive deployment of nuclear weapons is that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was intended to expedite the end of the war in Japan. This is the primary mode of discourse for those on all sides of the debate: what is often missing is a discussion of the other effects of the bombings. It is my opinion that the necessity of the bombing insofar as it actually motivated the Japanese surrender is irrelevant. What truly mattered was the effect of the bomb on the Soviet Union. As we all know, the Soviets agreed to enter the war in Asia in August 1945, and invaded Manchuria just before the end of the war. The atomic bombings, which I personally believe to have been no more militarily effective than the bombing of Dresden or Tokyo, sent a clear message to the Soviets, a message of technological superiority. In addition, it sent a message of moral superiority to the rest of the world, East and West alike. The United States, and by proxy our allies in the West, were able to claim responsibility for the capitulation of Japan while denying the Communists and their Eastern bloc credit for their efforts in China. By establishing America, and America alone, as the winner in the Pacific, we beat not only Japan but the Soviets as well. We are not only victorious but righteous in our cause, in this Cold War as in the World Wars. We must fight the Communists at any cost.”
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Cold War
Smoky April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: History, Memory
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Bill was laying in a hospital bed in Knoxville with an oxygen tube in his nose and an IV line in his arm. The latest round of radiation was still working its magic on the tumor in his chest, but he didn’t have a clue if it would work or not. The government, paying for his treatment, was probably hoping it didn’t; in spite of the morbidity of the thought he had to laugh a little at the irony of his situation. “What the hell are you laughing about?” That was the new guy in the other bed, who looked to be some white-collar jerk in for a routine checkup; he sounded annoyed that Bill’s existence was interfering with his own. “Nothing you’d understand,” he replied. “What are you doing in this damn hospital?” The other guy, who had said his name was Bert and promptly started ignoring Bill, looked a little put out at the intrusion, but after a second he said, “Just a workup before I start over at Oak Ridge.” “On second thought, I’ll let you in on the joke,” said Bill. “My first posting in the army was to Nevada back in ’57, just in time for an Operation Plumbbob. Ring a bell?”
Bert considered that for a minute, a look of dawning recognition on his face.
“You know, never mind. That’s a story I’d rather not hear.”
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Cold War
March 1, 1954 April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Image, Memory
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John stood at his kitchen counter making coffee as the little radio on the table droned away. They didn’t get news very quickly in the Marshall Islands, but there was some available from the military base and from over in the Philippines. John was half-listening to the voice on the radio, which was talking about the new atomic bombs the army had. John had heard about them, knew that they had supposedly ended the war in Japan. He also knew that the Reds had the bomb too; he had even heard they blew a few up in their own country to see what would happen, the barbarians. Tuning out the little radio, he started to go out onto the porch to sit and watch the sun rise—the glow on the horizon was just beginning to show. Light flooded the house, and with a queer suddenness it was a bright morning outside. Bewildered, John walked onto the porch to see a brilliant sunrise in the west.
Pacific Sunrise
Ragtime
Origin Story April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: Doxa, History, Memory, Myth
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Although Oppenheimer was not personally a religious man, he was very aware of the cultural significance of religion, both in America and in the wider world. He chose the name of the first nuclear test to be “Trinity” because of his identification of his work with the poetry of John Donne, which is loaded with religious and mythic figures. The allusion to the Christian Trinity dovetails with the scientists’ work, which many believed to be unlocking the power of creation. This also tied into the Hindu mythology that Oppenheimer drew heavily upon when describing the event. However, he refused to reduce the concrete reality of the bomb to mythological symbolism. Oppenheimer advocated for scientific responsibility and awareness, something he spoke out about often. He is often reappropriated as a paragon of the anti-militant movement associated with the Cold War arms race, but he himself took issue with this view. In response to one playwright’s depiction of him as a reluctant participant in the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer responded:
“I had never said that I had regretted participating in a responsible way in the making of the bomb. I said that perhaps he had forgotten Guernica, Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Dachau, Warsaw, and Tokyo; but I had not, and that if he found it so difficult to understand, he should write a play about something else.”
Tsar Bomba April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: History, Video
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Just as World War II motivated many of the original members of the Manhattan project, the Soviet threat during the Cold War was a major factor in the American research and development efforts of the era. Although America got the bomb first, the Soviet Union did not waste much time in matching and even surpassing the American’s technological advantage. In 1961, the Soviets detonated the largest bomb in the history of humanity in Siberia: the Tsar Bomba was a 50 megaton thermonuclear device, scaled down from a theoretical yield of 100 megatons.
The fireball was 5 miles wide and caused damage over 1000 miles away. With this scale of destructive power, for many the important issue of the Cold War was not the relative righteousness of the two factions, but the basic survival instinct. Many American scientists contributed to the war effort in spite of personal reservations to prevent the destructive forces that power the sun’s furnaces from touching America’s cities and landmarks.
The Cold War
War’s End April 22, 2009
Posted by gbcarter in Trinity.Tags: History, Image
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Some people got involved in the arms race during the beginning in World War II, when it was all about winning the war. After Germany surrendered, defeating Japan was the most immediate concern, and all the efforts of America’s research and development were thrown into meeting that goal. The widely-accepted view that the Allies were firmly on the side of good in the war confirmed for many of these individuals that any measures that hastened the end of the war were justified. Although this is a conventional perspective, it can’t be dismissed as insignificant for our purposes. Although it was not a universal motivation, there were certainly those who felt strongly that this was the case. One of those people was Charles Sweeney, the pilot that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Sweeney was very outspoken about the necessity of the bombing, and did not shy away from taking respnsibility for his actions.
Photo of the Nagasaki Bombing, Signed by Charles Sweeney
Trinity 