J Robert Oppenheimer "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,"

 

  

The July 21, 2023 theatrical release of the film Oppenheimer focuses on the life of prominent American nuclear physicist,J. Robert Oppenheimer, and should help to remind us of how badly the development of modern weapons has played out for individuals and for all of humanity.

Partially based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, American Prometheus, written by Kai Bird and the late Martin Sherwin, the pacy blockbuster film from director Christopher Nolan starring Cillian Murphy  tells the story of the rise and fall of  the young J. Robert Oppenheimer,when he was  recruited by the U.S. government during World War II to direct the construction and testing of the world’s first atomic bomb.

The Manhattan Project, set up in 1942, was guided by fear that if the US and its allies didn't make them first, Hitler's Nazi scientists would.

Oppenheimer is the first film to properly tackle the scientist and his legacy, The film explores Oppenheimer’s moral quandary over his role in creating the most destructive weapon ever made, with the blockbuster film  currently hitting theaters, millions will learn more about nuclear weapons development. But the film won’t show you how the Trinity test ushered in an era of nuclear testing where the U.S. government knowingly exposed tens of thousands of  people to toxic materials and radiation.and  nuclear disarmament campaigners fear its power to persuade people of the existential threat posed by nuclear arms may be diminished by its focus on scientific achievement.

“The overall impact of the film is unbalanced – people leave the theatre thinking how exciting a process it was, not thinking ‘God, this was a terrible weapon of mass destruction and look what’s happened today’,” said Carol Turner, a co-chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s London branch.

 

 

Born to a affluent Jewish family in New York in 1906, it became apparent at an early age that Oppenheimer’s academic ability outstripped those of his peers and he entered Harvard University aged 18 where he graduated after just three years summa cum laude (with highest praise).

However, he struggled with his mental health. During his time at college, he expressed suicidal thoughts. Of his time studying physics at Harvard, Oppenheimer f said: "My feeling about myself was always one of extreme discontent." and, while pursuing a graduate degree at Cambridge University, deliberately left an apple, poisoned with laboratory chemicals, on his tutor’s desk.

By the outbreak of World War II, though, Oppenheimer had transformed himself into a respected professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and had already made numerous, significant contributions to science.

During his time at Berkeley, he fell in love with Jean Tatlock (played by Florence Pugh in Oppenheimer), the daughter of a Berkeley literature professor and a student at Stanford University School of Medicine. She was a member of the Communist Party, which later became an issue in his security clearance  (Oppenheimer himself during  his student years had seen him drawn to the left as Germany's fascist regime saw friends and relatives oppressed and forced to flee.)

They broke up in 1939 and, a year later, he married Katherine (”Kitty”) Puening with whom he had two children.

During their marriage, Oppenheimer rekindled his relationship with Tatlock and the two had an affair. She later committed suicide in 1944.

Oppenheimer was appointed by General Leslie Groves, the project's military leader, to head up Site Y - a secret weapons research facility, 210 miles south of Los Alamos, New Mexico, on the plains of the Alamogordo Bombing Range, known as the Jornada del Muerto.

 J. Robert Oppenheimer chose the name "Trinity" for the test site, inspired by the poetry of John Donne. but little did he know that the fallout from these tests was devastating — and the United States has failed to reckon with the consequences. 

When the bomb was finally secretly detonated at 5.30 a.m, on July 16, 1945, atop a steel tower, an intense light flash and sudden wave of heat was followed by a great burst of sound echoing in the valley. A ball of fire tore up into the sky and then surrounded by a giant mushroom  cloud stretching some 40,00 feet across. With a power equivalent to around 21,000 tons, the bomb completely obliterated the steel tower on which it rested, destroying everything in its vicinity and melting huge swathes of sand into sea-green glass. The Nuclear Age had begun,,
Less than a month later, the United States would drop a nearly identical weapon on the city of Nagasaki in Japan. The bomb, named Fat Man, fell three days after Americans dropped a uranium bomb called Little Boy, on Hiroshima. Both weapons immediately killed tens of thousands of Japanese people and forced Japan's surrender on August 14, bring an abrupt end to the war.
Many of the scientists who witnessed the Trinity blast quickly realised the "foul and awesome" power they had set free. Mr Oppenheimer said a Hindu scripture ran through his mind at the sight of the explosion: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

The verse in question is from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita. Chapter 11, Verse 32, in which the deity Krishna reveals his divine form to the warrior Arjuna. Witnessing the terrifying sight of Krishna's cosmic form, Arjuna is overwhelmed with awe and fear. 

Oppenheimer, who was well-versed in various philosophical and religious texts, including the Bhagavad Gita, reportedly recited this verse upon witnessing the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb during the Trinity test. The quote has since become closely associated with Oppenheimer and his reflections on the destructive power of the atomic bomb. 

In the context of Oppenheimer's statement, he was expressing a profound sense of the magnitude and implications of the scientific achievement he had helped bring to fruition. The immense destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb made Oppenheimer acutely aware of the devastating potential of nuclear weapons. His use  of the quote from the Bhagavad Gita reflects his introspection on the consequences of his work and the moral responsibility that came with

Kenneth T. Bainbridge, the test director at the time , was less poetic than Oppenheimer. "Now we are all sons of bitches," he said.

 Oppenheimer was changed by the atomic bomb, believing it made the prospect of future conflict "unendurable".

"It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country," he said in 1946, later signalling his opposition to his government's plan to develop even bigger nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer was ignored and held in deep suspicion,

The Trinity test exposed the communities in the areas downwind from the blast to dangerous levels of radiation and fallout. In the following decades, the "Downwinders" from the Tularosa Basin who were not even informed about the test have faced long-term health consequences including cancers, even across generations. Like the Hibakusha,a term widely used in Japan, that translates as ' explosion effected/Surrvivor of the Light' and global victims of nuclear tests, the Downwinders have raised their voices to fight for a better future.
The thousands living  downwind from  the Trinity Blast were knowingly exposed to extremely high levels of radioactive fallout . Many New Mexicans living in the vicinity of the Trinity test were ranchers, Native Americans, Hispanic settlers who lived a rural and substinence lifestyle. Unbeknownst to them their land, their water and their food was severely contaminated to radioactive fallout. The effects of this exposure are still evident 78 years later in the physical, economic and mental hardships of survivors and their families. Downwinders developed certain types of cancers at rates that far exceed the general population. In many case, entire families have developed cancer at rates that far exceeded the general population. Many downwinders were also forced into debt and poverty from costly health treatments, none of which were compensated by the federal government.

During the immediate postwar years, Oppenheimer, widely lauded as “the father of the atomic bomb,” attained extraordinary power for a scientist within U.S. government ranks, including as chair of the General Advisory Committee of the new Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).  But Oppenheimer was changed by the atomic bomb, believing it made the prospect of future conflict "unendurable".

"It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country," he said in 1946, later signalling his opposition to his government's plan to develop even bigger nuclear weapons.Oppenheimer was ignored and held in deep suspicion.

In the fall of 1945, during a meeting at the White House with Truman, Oppenheimer said: “Mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands.” Incensed, Truman later told Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson that Oppenheimer had become “a crybaby” and that he didn’t want “to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again.”  Oppenheimer was also disturbed by the emerging nuclear arms race and, like many atomic scientists, championed the international control of atomic energy. Indeed, in late 1949, the entire General Advisory Committee of the AEC came out in opposition to the U.S. development of the H-bomb―although the president, ignoring this recommendation, approved developing the new weapon and adding it to the rapidly growing U.S. nuclear arsenal.

In these circumstances, figures with considerably less ambivalence about nuclear weapons took action to purge Oppenheimer from power. In December 1953, shortly after becoming chair of the AEC, Lewis Strauss, a fervent champion of a U.S. nuclear buildup, ordered Oppenheimer’s security clearance suspended. Anxious to counter implications of disloyalty, Oppenheimer appealed the decision and, in subsequent hearings before the AEC’s Personnel Security Board, faced grueling questioning not only about his criticism of nuclear weapons, but about his relationships decades before with individuals who had been Communist Party members.These hearings were skewed and manipulated in McCarthyite fashion.

Ultimately, the AEC ruled that Oppenheimer was a security risk, an official determination that added to his public humiliation, completed his removal from government service, and delivered a shattering blow to his meteoric career. He died of lung cancer in 1967 with none of the power he once yielded. But while extremely harmful professionally and personally, the hearings were not Oppenheimer’s greatest tragedy.

The greatest tragedy was despite his remarkable gifts as a physicist and as a human being was the building of a weapon that could  potentially lead to the destruction of humankind and destroy virtually  all life on earth. We we are all part of Oppenheimer’s tragedy. Oppenheimer’s life does not influence us. It haunts us.

The poet Ai (2010) wrote in what she called “The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Fiction”:

            my soul, a wound that will not heal…./We strip away the tattered fabric/of the universe….we become our own transcendent annihilation

Since the Trinity Test 78 years ago, at least eight countries have detonated over 2,000 nuclear weapons at more than 60 locations around the globe,according to data released by https://www.armscontrol.org/

all with the potential to destroy virtually  all life on earth.

More than half of these tests have been conducted by the United States, most have have taken place on colonized land and the lands of indigenous and minority people, never close to those who made the decisions to conduct them

People living in the vicinity of these tests exposed to radioactive fallout are part of the under acknowledged ;collateral damage' of our nuclear industry. The history of nuclear testing also exposes the oppressive and racist nature of relying on nuclear weapons for “security”.
Radiation from nuclear tests harms children more than it does adults. Infants and young girls run the highest risk of cancer across their lifetime after exposure and teenage girls will suffer almost double rates of cancer compared to boys.

Terrifyingly, in recent years, thanks to a sharp increase in international conflict, the potential for nuclear war has dramatically revived. All nine nuclear powers (Russia, the United States, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) are currently engaged in upgrading their nuclear arsenals with new production facilities and new, improved nuclear weapons. 

During 2022, these governments poured nearly $83 billion into this nuclear buildup. Public threats to initiate nuclear war, including those by Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, and Vladimir Putin, have become more common.

The hands of the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, established in 1946, now stand at 100 seconds to midnight―the most dangerous setting in its history.

Not surprisingly, the nuclear powers display little interest in further action for nuclear arms control and disarmament. The two nations possessing some 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons―Russia (with the most) and the United States (not far behind)―have pulled out of nearly all such agreements with one another.

Although the U.S. government has proposed extending the New Start Treaty (which limits the number of strategic nuclear weapons) with Russia, Putin reportedly responded this June that Russia would not engage in any nuclear disarmament talks with the West, commenting: “We possess more weaponry of such sort than the NATO countries. They know that and are always trying to persuade us to start negotiations on reduction. Nuts to them . . . as our people say.” 

The Chinese government―whose nuclear arsenal, while growing substantially, still ranks a distant third in numbers―has stated that it sees no reason for China to engage in any nuclear arms control talks. 

To head off a looming nuclear catastrophe, non-nuclear nations have been championing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).https://www.icrc.org/en/document/2017-treaty-prohibition-nuclear-weapons Adopted by an overwhelming vote of nations at a UN conference in July 2017, the TPNW bans developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, and threatening to use nuclear weapons.

The treaty went into force in January 2021 and.though opposed by all the nuclear powers. it has thus far been signed by 92 nations and ratified by 68 of them. Brazil and Indonesia are likely to ratify it in the near future. Polls have found that the TPNW has substantial support in numerous countries, including the United States and other NATO nations.  There does remain some hope, then, that the nuclear tragedy that engulfed Robert Oppenheimer and has long threatened the survival of world civilization can still be averted.

We do well to remain haunted by Oppenheimer's story but also to learn from him that, while the capacity to create instruments of planetary destruction will remain with us, our best hope for survival of our species lies in abolishing them. We should make Oppenheimer’s legacy to us the recognition that our only form of what has been called “nuclear ethics” is abolition.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has put together an Oppenheimer: myths vs facts explainer. It covers topics such as the legacy of nuclear testing on New Mexico residents, the myth that nuclear weapons ended World War Two, or that nuclear weapons keep us safe today. https://www.icanw.org/oppenheimer_facts_myths_nuclear_weapons?link_id=2&can_id=dc3a87c4b00455c28953a76b1b992301&source=email-going-to-see-oppenheimer-know-the-facts-about-nuclear-weapons&email_referrer=email_1995355&email_subject=going-to-see-oppenheimer-know-the-facts-about-nuclear-weapons  

ICAN also has an Oppenheimer Action Kit to help campaigners talk about nuclear disarmament. It includes social media graphics, talking points, and a draft letter to your local newspaper.https://www.icanw.org/oppenheimer_action_kit?link_id=3&can_id=dc3a87c4b00455c28953a76b1b992301&source=email-going-to-see-oppenheimer-know-the-facts-about-nuclear-weapons&email_referrer=email_1995355&email_subject=going-to-see-oppenheimer-know-the-facts-about-nuclear-weapons