Authors: Jennet Conant
As Colonel Dudley recalled, Oppenheimer also advised him that in evaluating possible sites, he should bear in mind that some existing facilities were needed: “The idea was that the six scientists would move in and start a think-tank operation immediately.” Dudley surveyed parts of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, but as the air force and navy had already been through these areas and picked off the best spots, and as coastal areas were ruled out because of the possibility of attack by sea, Dudley quickly narrowed the list to five sites: Gallup, Las Vegas, La Ventana, Otowi, and Jemez Springs. After being evaluated, the first three failed to meet the requirements, and Dudley concluded that based on what he had seen of the remaining two, their best bet was Jemez Springs, New Mexico.
It was decided that they should all meet there and take a look for themselves. On November 16, 1942, Dudley took Oppenheimer and Ed McMillan out to Jemez Springs, which turned out to be a narrow, deep canyon cut out of the Jemez Mountains. While it technically met all their requirements, Oppenheimer worried that being hemmed in by cliffs on three sides might have a depressing effect on laboratory personnel. There was also the politically sensitive problem of relocating the many Indian families who farmed there. They were in the midst of discussing the difficulties of inspecting the steep perimeter when Groves arrived. After a quick look around, Groves vetoed the site, declaring tersely, “This will never do.” It was then that Oppie, who had had the Otowi site in mind all along and had been maneuvering toward it in his subtle way, suggested that while they were there, they might as well inspect another location nearby. He told Groves, “If you go on up the canyon, you come out on top of the mesa, and there’s a boy’s school there which might be a usable site.”
They all piled into cars and drove up a perilously winding dirt road to the Los Alamos Ranch School. It was late afternoon when they reached the top of the mesa, and a light snow was falling. They did not enter the grounds, as McMillan recalled, but stood at the gate looking in:
It was cold and there were the boys and their masters out on the playing fields in shorts. I remarked that they really believed in hardening up the youth. As soon as Groves saw it, he said, in effect, “This is the place.”
Four days later, on November 20, after a hasty meeting in Washington, Oppenheimer and McMillan went back to carefully inspect the site, this time accompanied by Ernest Lawrence. Oppie, as it turned out, had been there before and had privately wanted Los Alamos from the beginning. He and his brother owned a ranch nearby in the Pecos Valley, just across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, whose snowcapped peaks glowing dusky red at sunset had inspired the early Spanish settlers to name them “Blood of Christ.” It seemed typical somehow of Oppie to choose such a dramatic setting, perched on the cone of an extinct volcano. The broad tabletop of the mesa, two miles long and almost 7,300 feet above sea level, afforded majestic views of the whole mountain range. It was bordered on the north and south by steep rock canyons, which offered natural protection. A beautiful grove of cottonwood trees, for which Los Alamos was named, grew beside a shallow stream that ran along the edge of the canyon to the south. The school grounds provided a scattering of buildings and crude log cabins that could be used until additional laboratory space and housing were constructed. The surrounding area was unpopulated, with empty canyons, flat green valleys, and acres of open fields for future testing grounds.
Although only a thirty-five-mile drive from Santa Fe, the Los Alamos site was isolated in the extreme and virtually inaccessible. The last, treacherous, ten-mile track leading up to the school was unpaved and riddled with deep ruts left by the dry creek beds called “arroyos,” that flooded each spring and turned the road into an almost impassable bog. The road was precipitously steep as it approached the narrow Otowi Bridge leading up to the mesa, and parts of it were cut out of the solid wall of the canyon and featured half a dozen hair-raising switchbacks leading up the face of almost perpendicular cliffs. The nearest railroad was more than sixty miles away, which meant all the truckloads of goods, building materials, and heavy laboratory equipment would have to be hauled up over hill and vale. There were numerous objections to the site besides the road’s obvious shortcomings, including the lack of water and power. But Oppie was happy. He had gotten what he wanted, and the problems were not insurmountable. Groves immediately began formal steps to acquire the school and surrounding land.
Oppenheimer returned to Berkeley ecstatic about his trip. Greene knew he had been investigating possible sites and asked him how that had gone. He told her he had found the ideal spot. “He said he had had this marvelous weekend on a beautiful mesa in New Mexico and was going out there to do a project.” She had been intrigued by the rhapsodic descriptions of the countryside in letters she had typed and without hesitating asked, “Can’t I go too?” Oppie said he would be delighted to have her along, which annoyed Lawrence no end, as he now had to replace another secretary. Lawrence reluctantly agreed to let her go, on the condition she find her own replacement. Greene went to work for Project Y right away, using the office of a physics professor who was on leave. “I was twenty-three,” she recalled. “It was a very exciting time. There was no formality—potential staff visited and I got to go to all the parties.”
There was an almost constant round of parties as Oppenheimer threw himself into courting the very best men for the Los Alamos laboratory. It was not an easy task, and Oppie chased all around the country wooing potential staff members. By late 1942, unemployed physicists were hard to find. Ernest Lawrence had already raided the universities and recruited the cream of the crop for the secret Radiation Laboratory (Rad Lab) at MIT. Oppenheimer knew if he were too aggressive in luring away the Rad Labs supply of talent, he would raise the hackles of his old friend and ally. On the other hand, now that he was focusing on the technical difficulties of actually engineering an atomic weapon, it was becoming increasingly clear that he would need a “very large number of men of the first rank.”
On November 30, 1942, Oppenheimer sent a detailed report to Conant, who was already familiar with Los Alamos, having once considered sending his youngest son to the elite preparatory school, which was known for taking sickly city boys and toughening them up with a strenuous regimen of academics and outdoor activity. Oppenheimer caught Conant up on the latest developments at the Met Lab and then launched into the main purpose of his letter, namely, the recruitment of his key staff. It was a tricky area, and he confessed he felt himself “on less secure ground.” At the same time, he warned Conant that he could not afford to proceed too cautiously: “The job we have to do will not be possible without personnel substantially greater than that which we now have available.”
Conant promised his support and said he would look into getting some top people released from the MIT Rad Lab. Observing Conant’s skillful behind-the-scenes politicking, Oppenheimer realized he had much to learn about maneuvering within the treacherous Washington political and military establishments, and that the shrewd, businesslike Harvard president would be an ideal mentor. “Oppenheimer saw this faculty of Conant and wanted to learn from it,” said John Manley, who watched their relationship develop into one of mutual fondness and trust. “[Oppie] relied on him a great deal.”
Bolstered by Conant’s assurances and advice, Oppie flew to Cambridge and succeeded in convincing Hans Bethe, and his wife, Rose, to come out west with him. Securing the participation of Bethe was a coup. Not only was the thirty-six-year-old Bethe an exceptionally gifted theorist, but since moving to the United States in 1935 and joining the faculty of Cornell University, he had earned a reputation as a singularly energetic, confident, and productive scientist. A bull of a man, with an affable manner and a booming laugh, he was married to the lovely daughter of a famous German physicist, Peter Paul Ewald, who like Bethe had left Nazi Germany when the climate became threatening to those with Jewish ancestry. Bethe was as close to being a natural leader as anyone in the field and was well liked and respected by both his colleagues and competitors—all of which made him invaluable to Oppenheimer’s cause.
While in Cambridge, Oppenheimer had also hoped to recruit I. I. Rabi and even offered him associate directorship of the laboratory. In those early months, however, Rabi believed the project’s overall odds for success were fifty-fifty at best. “I thought we could lose the war because of the lack of radar,” he wrote later, explaining why he felt he could not leave the MIT Rad Lab. “As far as the fission bomb was concerned, it was very iffy.” His wife, Helen, had also made it clear she did not want to go, telling him, “That’s no place to raise children.” The Rabis were not alone in their reluctance to become involved in building a bomb. According to Robert Bacher, whom Rabi eventually sent in his place, “People at the Radiation Laboratory thought that this was just absolutely crazy to take people off radar and put them on this fool’s project out there.”
Oppenheimer was painfully aware of the skepticism with which a great many physicists regarded the bomb project. “There was a great fear that this was a boondoggle, which would in fact have nothing to do with the war,” he admitted later.
As a consequence, Oppenheimer felt he badly needed Rabi on his side and attempted to persuade him again. Failing that, he called on Rabi often for his help and counsel during the formative stages of the project. Of all the various matters that had to be settled that winter, perhaps none was more important, or more controversial, than the proposed “militarization” of the laboratory. Oppenheimer had been so eager for the top job that he had readily agreed to Groves’ demand that the laboratory be run as a military installation, with the scientists all outfitted in army green and assigned rank. From the laboratory’s opening day on, Oppenheimer would be a lieutenant colonel. He had already ordered his uniforms. “I would have been glad to be an officer,” Oppie said later. “I though maybe the others would.” But Rabi was appalled at the prospect of scientists becoming commissioned officers in the army, and after talking it over with three other Rad Lab recruits—Bob Bacher, Ed McMillan, and Luis Alvarez—he was convinced the plan would not work. He was adamantly opposed to the whole idea. If Oppie went along with Groves’ plan, Rabi told him in no uncertain terms, “none of [them] would come.”
Caught between Groves’ orders and Rabi’s refusal, Oppenheimer wrote Conant on February 1, 1943, that he feared he was facing insurrection from the best scientists if he did not meet their “indispensable conditions for the success of the project.” After summarizing their demands in detail, Oppenheimer worriedly told Conant that he was uncertain how Groves would respond to the scientists’ ultimatum that the project be demilitarized. “I believe that he realizes the seriousness of these requests, but I am not sure that he feels that they can be met.” But by the end of the letter, Oppenheimer mustered his confidence and argued firmly and eloquently that their services were needed too urgently to risk losing them, and ignoring their concerns would certainly result in further problems and delays:
At the present time I believe the solidarity of physicists is such that if these conditions are not met, we shall not only fail to have the men from MIT with us, but that many men who have already planned to join the new Laboratory will reconsider their commitments or come with such misgivings as to reduce their usefulness. I therefore regard the fulfillment of these conditions as necessary if we are to carry on the work with anything like the speed that is required.
Conant was not entirely persuaded, as he had served as a chemical officer in World War I and regarded enlisting in the army as a mere formality. But at Oppenheimer’s insistence, he helped negotiate a compromise with Groves to leave the laboratory under civilian administration during the early experimental stages of the work. The military was to assume control at a later, more dangerous stage, at which point the scientists would become commissioned officers (a transition that ultimately was deemed unwise and never came to pass). This setup was formally communicated to Oppenheimer in a letter of February 25, 1943, from Conant and Groves. To help Oppenheimer with his recruiting, the letter was written in such a way as to assure scientists that there would be no military censorship of information. It stipulated that not only would Los Alamos researchers be exempt from the usual wartime restrictions that prevented them from learning what was going on at other laboratories, but Conant would serve as Groves’ technical advisor and liaison: “Through Dr. Conant complete access to the scientific world is guaranteed.”
With the crisis thus defused, Oppenheimer wrote to Rabi the next day, this time asking him to compromise and come out to Los Alamos only for the opening session in April. Clearly cognizant of the extent of Rabi’s doubts, about both his leadership and the project, Oppenheimer makes, in his letter of February 26, an abject appeal for help. Admitting that he did not know if the arrangements outlined in the Groves-Conant letter would work, Oppenheimer asserted that he was going to make a “faithful effort” to go forward with the project, as he did not feel the Nazis allowed him any other option:
I think if I believed with you that this project was “the culmination of three centuries of physics,” I should take a different stand. To me it is primarily the development in time of war of a military weapon of some consequence. I know that you have good personal reasons for not wanting to join the project, and I am not asking you to do so. Like Toscanini’s violinist, you do not like music.
Since he could not win him over, Oppenheimer continued, he was asking for only two things, “within the limits set by [Rabi’s] own conscience”—first, that Rabi agree to give the project “the benefit of [his] advice at a critical time” and, second, that as he exercised a great deal of influence over Bethe and Bacher, he “use that influence to persuade them to come rather than to stay away.” The last line of the letter reveals just how unsure he was of Rabi’s support: “I am sending a copy of this letter to Dr. Conant and General Groves to keep the record straight.” In the end, Rabi acquiesced to Oppenheimer’s requests. He agreed to participate in the opening physics conference at Los Alamos and saw to it that the Rad Lab sent a half dozen of its most productive physicists out west to work on the project, including Bethe, Bacher, Alvarez, Kenneth Bainbridge, and Norman Ramsey.