Living with the Bomb and Oppenheimer, the man and the movie

As the 40th anniversary of the atom bomb being used on Japan approached in the mid-‘80s, I struck up a conversation about nukes with my father at lunch.

Afterall, my father was bobbing in a small boat off the coast of Japan when Fat Man and Little Boy, the nicknames given to the brand-new weapons, were dropped. He was a frogman as a member of the UDTs, the progenitor of the Navy SEALs, during World War II.

As we ate, I was full of rhetorical questions. Why didn’t Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the Manhattan Project that built the bombs, bring Japanese diplomats or military bigwigs when they detonated the test explosion in White Sands, N.M.? You know, show the enemy what was about to happen if fighting didn’t cease. Or maybe the U.S. could have spared the city of Hiroshima by dropping Little Boy in an open area, and not the city’s center, to show its power? And did Oppenheimer realize that had let the nuclear genie out of the bottle?

My father, who had remained silent while I had pondered aloud, said, “Are you done now?”

I nodded yes.

Then he said, “You are free to think what you will about The Bomb but your little a— wouldn’t be sittin’ here if they hadn’t dropped ‘em. We were looking for the best place to launch a full-scale invasion of Japan. I would have been one of the first ones on the beach and I probably would have been killed. When my UDT squad got news of the Japanese surrender, it was like being strapped in the electric chair and the governor called with a full pardon seconds before the switch was pulled.”

With that, he pushed his chair back from the table and cleared his plate. I never asked him about The Bomb again.

Tallahassee connections:'Oppenheimer' and the Manhattan Project as remembered by an FSU professor who was there

To build the bombs using a small city of scientists, Oppenheimer took over an all-boys school atop a remote mesa in a place called Los Alamos, nearly 35 miles north of Santa Fe. My wife, Amy, and I visited the once-secret city, which is still home to a nuclear lab, in the early 2000s. I knew I had found Los Alamos when I saw a sign that read: “No exploding trucks beyond this point.”

We spent the night off the mesa in the tiny town of Ojo Caliente, which translates as Hot Eye in English. For dinner, we ate at an eating establishment called Pi. Yes, Pi served pie for dessert.

The cozy diner was hopping. Everyone knew everyone else. It was like being in Mayberry. Amy and I were the outsiders. We soon became the center of attention. Where were we from? Why were we in the boonies of New Mexico? Wow, how did we know about Oppie and what he made?

Turns out, most of the customers in Pi that night were nuclear physicists or retired nuclear physicists from nearby Los Alamos. One recent retiree told me he received more radiation for his prostate cancer treatment than his 20-odd years at the nuclear lab.

“I got tested for radiation every day and I never had any trouble,” he said. “I set off every detector and alarm after treatment.”

These days, Los Alamos is one of the richest towns in the nation. The salaries are high. Los Alamos has the U.S.’s highest concentration of workers holding Ph.D. degrees.

Apparently, there is money to be made from nuclear annihilation.

The biographer Kai Bird came to the Word of South festival in Tallahassee last year. He is the co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” Bird wrote the 721-page-turning tome with his friend and fellow historian Martin J. Sherwin, who died in 2021.

“I just got back from New Mexico where (director) Christopher Nolan is shooting the film that is based on the book,” Bird said in April 2022. “I think it’s going to be a good one. I even have a bit part in the movie.”

Turns out, Bird was right about the biopic.

“I am, at the moment, stunned and emotionally recovering from having seen it,” Bird told Variety magazine in June, a month before the film opened. “I think it is going to be a stunning artistic achievement.”

As of this writing, “Oppenheimer,” which hit theaters screens July 21, has pulled in $400 million across the world. A movie about building The Bomb is anything but a bomb at the box office.

The test explosion at the Trinity tower in White Sands was loud in the movie. The boom was so intense that Amy grabbed my arm and flinched. Welcome to the Nuclear Age, hold on tight.

Amy and I watched “Oppenheimer” on the five-story screen at the downtown IMAX screen because a movie about The Bomb needs to be big. Real big.

The Irish actor Cillian Murphy stars as Oppie and is on screen for nearly all the three-hour running time. He is the real reason to see “Oppenheimer.” The movie is told from his point of view in all his chain-smoking glory. And Murphy is tremendous as Oppie’s colossal ego drives him to build “the device” and then his guilt over its use forces him to speak out.

The story bogs down in the post-WWII years when Oppie tries to get his security clearance passed by Washington, D.C. bullies during the Red Scare. The scientist’s political naiveness leads him to a committee meeting that is essentially a kangaroo court of right-wingers. The right is obsessed with Oppie’s left-leaning past, so they destroy him. The father of the atom bomb was denied security clearance. He died a broken man of throat cancer in 1967.

I hate the weapon Oppenheimer unleashed on the world, but I might not have written this sentence without it or without him.

The 78th anniversary of The Bomb drop is Aug 6.

Mark Hinson is a former senior reporter with the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached [email protected]