Dialogue critical to avoid nuke war: grandson of 'father of A-bomb' (2024)

Charles Oppenheimer, grandson of physicist Robert Oppenheimer, known as the "father of the atomic bomb," visited Hiroshima for the first time this summer, 79 years after the nuclear attack and emphasized the critical need for dialogue among nuclear power adversaries to prevent a war that could annihilate humanity.

During his visit to the western Japan city, Oppenheimer interacted with atomic bomb survivors, including Keiko Ogura, who testified before U.S. President Joe Biden and other Group of Seven leaders last year.

Although his grandfather visited Japan in 1960, he did not travel to Hiroshima.

"I wanted to have human dialogue with A-bomb survivors and the people of Japan. My words and actions are driven from the family philosophy that nuclear weapons are dangerous in the first place, and that we can get over that danger by increasing dialogue and cooperation," Oppenheimer told an interview with Kyodo News in Tokyo in May.

"I think we need to recognize and understand our past. My grandfather visited Japan in 1960 but did not go to Hiroshima. I have wanted to go and visit the people, then use that to help guide our thoughts about how to deal with the future," he said.

This year, the movie 'Oppenheimer' was screened nationwide in Japan, but some A-bomb survivors expressed dissatisfaction, as the film did not depict the inhumane devastation caused by the bomb.

While sympathizing with such a reaction, Oppenheimer critically evaluated the film.

"My grandfather and the other scientists involved in the Manhattan Project clearly saw the arms race before the war ended, and saw a way to avoid it by increasing cooperation. However I think the movie doesn't seem to understand and focus on it," he said.

On Aug. 17, 1945, Robert Oppenheimer, in consultation with fellow scientists Enrico Fermi, Earnest Lawrence and James Compton, wrote a letter to then Secretary of War Henry Stimson. According to the grandson, Oppenheimer said, "We're going to make more weapons. They're going to get more powerful. But they will never make us safer."

Two days after the end of World War II, Robert Oppenheimer's letter warns: "We believe that the safety of this nation...cannot lie wholly or even primarily in its scientific or technical prowess. It can be based only on making future wars impossible. It is our unanimous and urgent recommendation to you that...all steps be taken, all necessary international arrangements be made, to this one end."

The "father of the atomic bomb" feared the emergence of the hydrogen bomb, which would possess far greater destructive power than atomic bombs. Before the Soviet Union developed its own atomic bomb, Oppenheimer envisioned preventing nuclear technology from spiraling out of control through "international control of nuclear power."

"There will never be any defense against nuclear weapons. And he was able to give that advice to Henry Stimson," Oppenheimer said of his grandfather.

"The only possibility, then, of safety from them is international cooperation. That's what he worked on for from the moment the war ended until he was attacked by his government, trying to get that message that there was a way to avoid an arms race through increased cooperation."

Stimson, who led the Manhattan Project, was also interested in the idea of "international control of nuclear power." On Sept. 11, 1945, he sent a secret memorandum to then President Harry Truman to sound the alarm, saying that the destructive nature of the atomic bomb was so revolutionary and dangerous that humanity needed to manage it in a new way.

"But, it didn't go through. My grandfather had a dialogue with Truman, where Truman asked him, 'When do you think the Russian's get the bomb?' He said 'I don't know.' Then Truman said 'I know. Never.'"

"In that case, you were having a politician override a scientist, who knew what would happen. And I think people who didn't understand the science thought that they could keep it secret and that the U.S. was the best country in the world. And, if we could just keep fission secret, it would prevent everybody else from having it"

History shows Truman was wrong. The Soviet Union successfully conducted its first nuclear test in August 1949. Subsequently, the United States and the Soviet Union pursued the development of the hydrogen bomb and competed with each other in the expansion of nuclear arms.

The concept of "international control of nuclear power" was buried, and instead, "Mutually Assured Destruction" emerged. It is based on a "balance of terror," whereby each side would possess a large amount of nuclear weapons, and one would face intolerable nuclear retaliation if one of them fired first. And it is also a gamble that includes the risk of human annihilation.

"The world actually has changed, fundamentally. That's why Robert Oppenheimer said that the world will never be the same," the grandson said. "Nonetheless, the United States did not take into account the fears of the Soviet Union and gave priority to the belief that 'Communism is evil.' The Soviet Union also regarded the United States as an enemy and proceeded with nuclear development, believing that it needed to defend itself."

"They ran into 'fear of the other'. That is what drove the policy into the arms race, which my grandfather was most afraid of. And it opened a door of the nuclear age of madness," he said.

China has also become a strong nuclear power, and the world appears to have entered an era in which artificial intelligence can press the "nuclear button" is no longer a completely imaginary scenario.

"We should sit down and talk with people we think are our enemy. And that's the only way to get over today's threats," Oppenheimer said.

"I think, today, people are not afraid enough of the risk of nuclear weapons. It is a real and present danger to the world. As J. Robert Oppenheimer said, 'The people of this world,' meaning entire humanity, 'must unite or they will perish.'"

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