. . . hence my quote of the Franck Report.
Once again, what was stated in the report was that the strength and devastation of the atomic bomb would have been too big to be used as a conventional weapon, so they pressed that it would have been demonstrated instead. What the US government did instead was to authorise the drop of the two bombs dead in the middle of two big cities.
That’s certainly not my understanding when I read the Franck Report – see original text here: http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/franck.html
The scientists were primarily concerned with the dangers to the USA from a “race for arms” of other countries building nuclear weapons and a perceived vulnerability of the USA because of the way industries were concentrated.
The technology could not be kept secret since too many other countries were already only a few years behind with the technology. However, they accepted they were scientists not politicians:
The scientists on this project do not presume to speak authoritatively on problems of national and international policy. However, we found ourselves, by the force of events, during the last five years, in the position of a small group of citizens cognizant of a grave danger for the safety of this country as well as for the future of all the other nations, of which the rest of mankind is unaware.
All of us, familiar with the present state of nucleonics, live with the vision before our eyes of sudden destruction visited on our own country, of a Pearl Harbor disaster repeated in thousand-fold magnification in every one of our major cities.
Their big fear was the sneak attack which, unless industry and population could be dispersed from the major centres, would see the USA as the most vulnerablde to an A-bomb attack. They argued for some international agreement to ration materials (especially Uranium) needed for the bomb, or other ways to limit their availability and use.
We believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for an early unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable. If the United States were to be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race for armaments and prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on the future control of such weapons.
Much more favorable conditions for the eventual achievement of such an agreement could be created if nuclear bombs were first revealed to the world by a demonstration in an appropriately selected uninhabited area.
They were not trying to end the Japanese war with a demonstration, they were suggesting that America would be in a stronger position politically as a result. The politicans disagreed.
Sign In
