• In August 1945, the US used atomic bombs on Japan, killing over 100,000 individuals.
• Weeks earlier than, dozens of Manhattan Challenge scientists signed a petition opposing its use.
• President Harry Truman by no means noticed the petition; its existence remained a secret for over a decade.

On August 6 and 9, 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, killing a minimum of 100,000 individuals immediately and hundreds extra from radiation sicknesses and accidents, based on the Nationwide Archives Museum. 

Three weeks earlier, Leo Szilard and dozens of different scientists who labored on the Manhattan Challenge signed a petition to President Harry Truman, pleading with him to rethink dropping the bombs that they had helped create. 

‘Opposition on ethical grounds’

Whereas the bombs would doubtless finish the warfare, they felt “that such assaults on Japan couldn’t be justified” till Japan was instructed in regards to the weapon and given an opportunity to give up. Seventy scientists, largely from the Chicago Met Lab and Tennessee Oak Ridge undertaking websites, added their signatures. 

“I personally really feel that it could be a matter of significance if a lot of scientists who’ve labored on this discipline went clearly and unmistakably on report as to their opposition on ethical grounds to using these bombs within the current part of the warfare,” Szilard wrote within the petition’s cowl letter. 

The petition did not embrace names from the Los Alamos, New Mexico scientists as a result of they weren’t given the possibility to signal, Edward Teller, one of many Manhattan Challenge’s scientists, later stated.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of Los Alamos Laboratory, persuaded Teller to not distribute the petition. “Oppenheimer talked me out of it, saying that we as scientists haven’t any enterprise to meddle in political stress of that sort,” Teller stated.  

However Teller additionally wrote to Szilard on the time, “The issues we’re engaged on are so horrible that no quantity of protesting or fidgeting with politics will save our souls.”  

Truman did not really see the petition earlier than he ordered the bombs to drop, based on the Atomic Heritage Basis. Szilard requested for permission to make the petition public in late August 1945, but it surely wasn’t declassified for over a decade. 

Doubts in Los Alamos

Although Oppenheimer stated years later in 1961 that he did not carry the dropping of the bombs on his conscience, not everybody who labored at Los Alamos felt that manner. Some had been conflicted, particularly after Adolf Hitler’s demise in April 1945. 

“For me, Hitler was the personification of evil and the first justification for the atomic bomb work,” Los Alamos physicist Emilio Segrè later wrote. “Now that the bomb couldn’t be used towards the Nazis, doubts arose. These doubts, even when they don’t seem in official stories, had been mentioned in lots of personal conversations.” 

Learn the total petition from the Manhattan Challenge scientists and their names (offered by Szilard biographer Gene Dannen) under. 

The Manhattan Challenge petition asking President Truman to not bomb Japan

A PETITION TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

July 17, 1945

Discoveries of which the individuals of the US aren’t conscious could have an effect on the welfare of this nation within the close to future. The liberation of the atomic energy which has been achieved locations atomic bombs within the fingers of the Military. It locations in your fingers, as Commander-in-Chief, the fateful resolution whether or not or to not sanction using such bombs within the current part of the warfare towards Japan.

We, the undersigned scientists, have been working within the discipline of atomic energy. Till lately we have now needed to worry that the US could be attacked by atomic bombs throughout this warfare and that her solely protection would possibly lie in a counterattack by the identical means. Right now, with the defeat of Germany, this hazard is averted and we really feel impelled to say what follows:

The warfare needs to be introduced speedily to a profitable conclusion and assaults by atomic bombs could very properly be an efficient technique of warfare. We really feel, nevertheless, that such assaults on Japan couldn’t be justified, a minimum of not till the phrases which might be imposed after the warfare on Japan had been made public intimately and Japan got a possibility to give up.

If such public announcement gave assurance to the Japanese that they may stay up for a life dedicated to peaceable pursuit of their homeland and if Japan nonetheless refused to give up, our nation would possibly then, in sure circumstances, discover itself compelled to resort to using atomic bombs. Such a step, nevertheless, ought to not be made at any time with out severely contemplating the ethical obligations that are concerned.

The event of atomic energy will present the nations with new technique of destruction. The atomic bombs at our disposal signify solely step one on this route, and there’s nearly no restrict to the damaging energy which is able to turn out to be accessible in the middle of their future improvement. Thus a nation which units the precedent of utilizing these newly liberated forces of nature for functions of destruction could need to bear the duty of opening the door to an period of devastation on an unimaginable scale.

If after the warfare a state of affairs is allowed to develop on the earth which allows rival powers to be in uncontrolled possession of those new technique of destruction, the cities of the US in addition to the cities of different nations might be in steady hazard of sudden annihilation. All of the assets of the US, ethical and materials, could need to be mobilized to stop the arrival of such a world state of affairs. Its prevention is at current the solemn duty of the US—singled out by advantage of her lead within the discipline of atomic energy.

The added materials power which this lead offers to the US brings with it the duty of restraint and if we had been to violate this obligation our ethical place can be weakened within the eyes of the world and in our personal eyes. It will then be harder for us to stay as much as our duty of bringing the unloosened forces of destruction below management.

In view of the foregoing, we, the undersigned, respectfully petition: first, that you simply train your energy as Commander-in-Chief, to rule that the US shall not resort to using atomic bombs on this warfare until the phrases which might be imposed upon Japan have been made public intimately and Japan figuring out these phrases has refused to give up; second, that in such an occasion the query whether or not or to not use atomic bombs be determined by you within the gentle of the consideration introduced on this petition in addition to all the opposite ethical obligations that are concerned. 

Here is everybody who signed

• David S. Anthony, affiliate chemist
• Larned B. Asprey, junior chemist
• Walter Bartky, assistant director
• Austin M. Brues, director, biology division
• Mary Burke, analysis assistant
• Albert Cahn, Jr., junior physicist
• George R. Carlson, analysis assistant
• Kenneth Stewart Cole, principal biophysicist
• Ethaline Hartge Cortelyou, junior chemist
• John Crawford, physicist
• Mary M. Dailey, analysis assistant
• Miriam Posner Finkel, affiliate biologist
• Frank G. Foote, metallurgist
• Horace Owen France, affiliate biologist
• Mark S. Fred, analysis affiliate
• Sherman Fried, chemist
• Francis Lee Friedman, physicist
• Melvin S. Friedman, affiliate chemist
• Mildred C. Ginsberg, laptop
• Norman Goldstein, junior physicist
• Sheffield Gordon, affiliate chemist
• Walter J. Grundhauser, analysis assistant
• Charles W. Hagen, analysis assistant
• David B. Corridor, place not recognized
• David L. Hill, affiliate physicist
• John Perry Howe, Jr., affiliate director
• Earl Ok. Hyde, analysis affiliate
• Jasper B. Jeffries, junior physicist, junior chemist
• William Karush, affiliate physicist
• Truman P. Kohman, chemist
• Herbert E. Kubitschek, junior physicist
• Alexander Langsdorf, Jr., analysis affiliate
• Ralph E. Lapp, physicist
• Lawrence B. Magnusson, junior chemist
• Robert Joseph Maurer, physicist
• Norman Frederick Modine, analysis assistant
• George S. Monk, physicist
• Robert James Moon, physicist
• Marietta Catherine Moore, technician
• Robert Sanderson Mulliken, bodily chemist, coordinator of data
• James J. Nickson, doctor
• William Penrod Norris, affiliate biochemist
• Paul Radell O’Connor, junior chemist
• Leo Arthur Ohlinger, senior engineer
• Alfred Pfanstiehl, junior physicist
• Robert Leroy Platzman, chemist
• C. Ladd Prosser, biologist
• Robert Lamburn Purbrick, junior physicist
• Wilfrid Rall, analysis assistant
• Margaret H. Rand, analysis assistant
• William Rubinson, chemist
• B. Roswell Russell, place not recognized
• George Alan Sacher, affiliate biologist
• Francis R. Shonka, physicist
• Eric L. Simmons, affiliate biologist
• John A. Simpson, Jr., physicist
• Ellis P. Steinberg, junior chemist
• D. C. Stewart, workers sergeant
• George Svihla, place not recognized
• Marguerite N. Swift, affiliate physiologist
• Leo Szilard, chief physicist
• Ralph E. Telford, place not recognized
• Joseph D. Teresi, affiliate chemist
• Albert Wattenberg, physicist
• Katharine Method, analysis assistant
• Edgar Francis Westrum, Jr., chemist
• Eugene Paul Wigner, physicist
• Ernest J. Wilkins, Jr., affiliate physicist
• Hoylande Younger, senior chemist
• William Houlder Zachariasen, guide