Blood on Our Hands

Harry S. Truman (Wikimedia Commons) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (Wikimedia Commons)

Everyone agrees that J. Robert Oppenheimer met with Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office on October 25, 1945. And everyone agrees that, at some point, Oppenheimer said something that annoyed Truman.

But what exactly did the physicist say? And how exactly did the president respond? Unlike some of his successors, Truman did not record his Oval Office conversations, so we’ll never know exactly what was said in that meeting. But we can follow the sources and make our best guess, which is often the best historians can do.

It was the first time that the man who created the atomic bomb met the man who decided to use it. By all accounts, it was a tense and awkward meeting. Oppenheimer was anxious about the postwar use of nuclear energy, including nuclear weapons, and he wanted to avoid an arms race with the Soviet Union. He believed that the community of nations should enter the nuclear age together and establish some form of international regulation.

Truman, however, saw the bomb purely in terms of national security. He asked Oppenheimer when the Soviet Union would develop its own atomic bomb, and when the scientist gave a cautious answer — he did not know — Truman supplied his own answer: “Never.”¹

It’s after this point that reconstructing the meeting becomes more difficult, probably because it’s the moment in the meeting that’s been retold the most. Memories are like that — the more someone recounts a memory, the more they distort it, like copying a copy of a copy.

One version of this much-retold moment went viral online in March 2023, when the historian Hannah Rose Woods tweeted this:

The tweet went viral, gaining 1.7 million views and more than 17,000 likes. The online consensus was that Oppenheimer was “cringe” while Truman was “based.” Even those who disagreed with Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb admired that “he owned his actions.”

I was more interested, though, in the citation. It was awfully strange! Did the quotation come from Science et Politique or History in Quotations, or both? Why would the quotation come from a French-language book? (Or was Science et Politique a journal?)

The screenshot seemed to come from an online source, perhaps a reply on a discussion board — hence the gray vertical line on the left. I googled the quote, including the odd asterisk before History in Quotations. The earliest thing that popped up was on the “Talk” page for Harry Truman’s WikiQuote article. In February 2021, the editors were discussing this passage, ultimately deciding not to include it as a legitimate quotation:

When we compare the quoted text with Woods’s screenshot, we see the same gray vertical line, the same asterisk, the same lack of a space after the colon, the same inconsistent placement of periods inside and outside quotation marks. The only difference is the font, though there are ways to change fonts on your browser. Anyhow, given how things spread and disappear online, we can’t say for sure that the WikiQuote editor originated this specific text. But we can say that the quotation began proliferating on the Internet by early 2021.

Of course, the quotation did not begin its life online. As its citation suggests, it can be found in a 2004 book called History in Quotations, on page 882.² There we find the same text (without the typos or weird asterisked citation) found on the WikiQuote page and the Woods screenshot:

History in Quotations lifted the quote from Science et Politique, a 1970 book by French historian Jean-Jacques Salomon. Science et Politique was written in French, and Salomon quoted the Truman-Oppenheimer exchange in French. It appears in a footnote on pages 293 and 294:

Voir aussi l’interview récente de Dean Acheson, qui fut secretaire d’Etat sous Truman: “J’accompagnais un jour Oppie (Oppenheimer) dans le bureau de Truman. Oppie tordait ses mains en disant: ‘J’ai du sang sur les mains.’ Plus tard, Truman me dit: ‘Ne me ramanez plus jamais ce f… crétin (that damn fool). Ce n’est pas lui qui a lancé la bombe. C’est moi. Cette sorte de pleurnicherie me rend malade.’”³

Fortunately, Salamon cited his source, so we can read the quotation in the original English. It comes from a New York Times profile of Dean Acheson, published on October 10, 1969.

Acheson had just published Present at the Creation, a memoir of his years as Undersecretary of State from 1941 to 1947 (under Roosevelt and Truman), and then as Truman’s Secretary of State from 1949 to 1953. The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History, cemented his reputation as a major architect of the postwar global order.

Acheson and his interviewer Israel Shenker enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation. The retired diplomat shared his opinions on Britain (“a bankrupt people conducting a banking business”), Italy (“hardly a country”), Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ego (it “got between him and his job”), and Washington society (“absolute bunkum of the worst sort … When I think of all the nights of going home to change at 7:30 and then sitting beside some theoretically brilliant women who are actually not, and getting home at 11:30 to argue with my wife about why I got into this. I’m just about ready to take the hemlock myself”).

Amidst this nonsequitur stream of quips, Acheson talked about Oppenheimer:

I accompanied Oppie into Truman’s office once. Oppie was wringing his hands, and said: “I have blood on my hands.”

“Don’t ever bring that damn fool in here again,” Truman told me afterward. “He didn’t set that bomb off. I did. This kind of sniveling makes me sick.” It made me slightly sick as well.⁴

It appears that, rather than consulting the original New York Times article, the editors of History in Quotations (or some intermediate source I haven’t found) translated Salomon’s French translation back into English, distorting the text. Oppenheimer’s words made it intact: “I have blood on my hands.” But look at what happened to Truman’s words.

New York Times (1969): “Don’t ever bring that damn fool in here again. He didn’t set that bomb off. I did. This kind of sniveling makes me sick.”

Science et Politique (1970): “Ne me ramanez plus jamais ce f… crétin (that damn fool). Ce n’est pas lui qui a lancé la bombe. C’est moi. Cette sorte de pleurnicherie me rend malade.”

History in Quotations (2004): “Never bring that fucking cretin in here again. He didn’t drop the bomb. I did. That kind of weepiness makes me sick.”

Instead of setting the bomb off, the re-translated Truman drops it. He’s no longer sickened by Oppenheimer’s “sniveling” but instead by his “weepiness.” And even though Salomon included the original “that damn fool” in parentheses, the English retranslation renders “f… crétin” as the un-Trumanesque “fucking cretin.” (The censored f-word was probably “foutu.”)

Now we have the original quotation from Dean Acheson. Except, well, what do we mean by “original”? The meeting happened in 1945, and Acheson was recounting it more than two decades later. Do we have any other sources, perhaps closer in time to the event?

At this point in my investigation, I turned to American Prometheus, the authoritative biography of Oppenheimer. It is a heavily-researched book, co-authored by a journalist (Kai Bird) and a professional historian (Martin Sherwin); it won a Pulitzer Prize and was the basis for Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer. Its account of the Truman-Oppenheimer meeting synthesizes multiple sources, which are cited in a lengthy footnote.⁵

We’ll focus on the following sources:

• • a 1946 memo from Harry Truman to Dean Acheson
  • a 1946 entry in David Lilienthal’s journal
  • Paul Boyer’s book By the Bomb’s Early Light
  • Peter Goodchild’s book J. Robert Oppenheimer (not cited by Bird and Sherwin, but cited by Boyer)
  • Nuel Davis’s Lawrence and Oppenheimer
  • Peter Michelmore’s The Swift Years

After we survey these sources, we’ll address these questions:

• • What did Oppenheimer say and do that irritated Truman?
  • How did Truman react to Oppenheimer in the Oval Office?
  • How did Truman describe the exchange to others afterwards?

Truman

Six months after his meeting with Oppenheimer, Truman wrote a memo to Dean Acheson. The context for the memo was that Oppenheimer had written Truman a letter on May 3, 1946, criticizing a proposal to test an atomic bomb on naval installations — testing which was ultimately done at Bikini Atoll in July. Oppenheimer argued that the test was unnecessary, since it was obvious that any ship, if struck by an atomic bomb, would sink. As for the impact of radiation on naval equipment, controlled experiments in a laboratory would reveal far more at much less expense. Finally, Oppenheimer wondered if a “military test of atomic weapons” was wise “at a time when our plans for effectively eliminating from national armaments are in their earliest beginnings.” In other words, the naval testing undermined his goal to demilitarize and internationally regulate nuclear energy.⁶

Truman forwarded the letter to Acheson and attached a memo — the earliest account we have of the Truman-Oppenheimer meeting. He wrote:

Attached is a letter from a “cry baby” scientist, which I wish you would read and discuss with me.

Mr. Byrnes placed him on the Commission to attend the Atomic Bomb tests. He came in my office some five or six months ago and spent most of his time ringing [sic] his hands and telling me they had blood on them because of the discovery of atomic energy.⁷

In Truman’s account, Oppenheimer wrung his hands and said there was blood on them. This is the core of the story as it has been passed down — after all, in Acheson’s 1969 account, he used the same phrase about Oppenheimer “wringing his hands.”⁸ However, in the memo, Truman did not share his immediate response to Oppenheimer — what he said to the physicist in the moment. All we have is his reaction some six months later, calling him a “cry baby” in a memo to his Under Secretary of State.

Lilienthal

On December 11, 1946, more than a year after the Oppenheimer meeting, Truman related the story again to the newly created Atomic Energy Commission. The members included David Lilienthal, the AEC’s chair, who had spent the last 13 years in charge of the Tennessee Valley Authority; Lewis Strauss, a businessman and philanthropist who later became AEC chair himself and orchestrated the removal of Oppenheimer’s security clearance in 1954; and Robert Bacher, a nuclear physicist who had worked with Oppenheimer at Los Alamos. Bacher was the only scientist on the commission.

Luckily for us, David Lilienthal kept a detailed journal, and when he got home that night, he wrote down an account of the meeting. Truman told the AEC members he had recently read an article by a scientist who celebrated nuclear energy as a “boon to mankind.” He then made a crack about scientists and told the Oppenheimer story:

[Truman said that] the other day he had read the “first sensible article by a scientist.” (He grinned at Bacher and said, “If you’ll excuse my saying so,” and then interpolated the story he had told me before about the scientist who sat there and wrung his hands — he motioned — and who had said, “I have blood on my hands” because he helped make the bomb. “I told him the blood was on my hands — to let me worry about that.”)⁹

If we compare this retelling to Truman’s memo to Dean Acheson, we see that in both versions, Oppenheimer wrings his hands and says he has blood on his hands. But we see a new detail this time: Truman’s immediate reaction to Oppenheimer. He claimed he told Oppenheimer the blood was on his hands — Truman’s, not Oppenheimer’s. In this context, the remark comes off as dismissive and belittling, as if Truman were comforting a child who’d broken a dish.

The Acheson memo and the Lilienthal journal are the two best sources we have on the “blood on my hands” exchange. There are, however, other sources worth looking at. These sources were written by historians or journalists who were paraphrasing people they had interviewed.

Boyer

Paul Boyer’s By the Bomb’s Early Light (1985) was a pioneering cultural history of the early “atomic age.” Here is his account of the Truman-Oppenheimer meeting:

When J. Robert Oppenheimer suggested to him that some atomic scientists felt they had blood on their hands, Truman contemptuously offered him a handkerchief and said: “Well, here, would you like to wipe off your hands?” After Oppenheimer left the Oval Office, Truman turned to Dean Acheson, who was also present, and said: “I don’t want to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again.”¹⁰

There are several interesting things about this account, including Truman’s handkerchief gesture, which we will discuss later. For now we’ll focus on sourcing. According to his footnote, Boyer’s main source was an interview he conducted with Ralph Lapp in 1982.¹¹

Lapp was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, though he worked in Chicago instead of Los Alamos, having helped Enrico Fermi build the first nuclear reactor. Lapp worked briefly in the Pentagon after the war but then resigned to become a writer. He emerged as a leading critic of nuclear weapons, highlighting the danger of radioactive fallout. His 1958 book The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon brought international attention to the plight of 23 Japanese fishermen who were exposed to fallout from the Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb test at Bikini Atoll.¹²

We have no recording or notes from Boyer’s interview, so we can only rely on Boyer’s summary. How did Lapp know what Oppenheimer and Truman said in the Oval Office? Who told him? There is a clue in something Boyer gets factually wrong, which Bird and Sherwin point out in American Prometheus — Boyer writes, “Truman turned to Dean Acheson, who was also present, and said,” etc.¹³ But Acheson was not there. According to Truman’s appointment calendar, only Oppenheimer and Secretary of War Robert Patterson met with the president. During his 1954 security clearance hearing, Oppenheimer recalled that he “went with Patterson to talk to President Truman” about international “regulation of the atom.” (Unfortunately for us, he did not describe the meeting beyond that.)¹⁴ Finally, when Truman wrote the “cry baby” memo to Acheson, he described his meeting with Oppenheimer as if Acheson hadn’t been there: “He came in my office some five or six months ago and spent most of his time…”¹⁵

So we can be pretty confident that Acheson wasn’t in the meeting — and we know for sure that Acheson later claimed to be in the meeting. In his 1969 interview with the New York Times, Acheson said he “accompanied Oppie into Truman’s office.”¹⁶ This is all to say that any account of the Truman-Oppenheimer meeting which features Acheson in the meeting probably originated from Acheson, at least if you go back far enough. Acheson spent most of his post–State Department years in Washington, D.C., holding court with journalists and “brilliant women.”¹⁷ He probably told this story to a lot of people. Even if Lapp didn’t hear it from Acheson himself, he may have heard it second- or third-hand.

Goodchild

After citing his interview with Ralph Lapp, Boyer wrote, “For another version of the Truman-Oppenheimer encounter see Peter Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Shatterer of Worlds (Boston, 1981), p. 180.”¹⁸ This is how a historian cites a source they did not really use but thinks the reader should know about anyway. In any event, Goodchild’s account makes even clearer how important Dean Acheson was to the story’s proliferation:

Acheson took Oppenheimer to see Truman…. At that meeting, Oppenheimer expressed his distress about the whole situation when suddenly he blurted out, “Mr President, I have blood on my hands.” It was a statement which offended Truman greatly. “Don’t you bring that fellow around again,” Truman said to Acheson later. “After all, all he did was make the bomb. I’m the guy who fired it off.”¹⁹

Unfortunately, Goodchild did not provide footnotes. At the end of the book, he wrote that he “interviewed very nearly fifty of Oppenheimer’s former colleagues and friends,” including Isidor Rabi, Edward Teller, and Frank Oppenheimer.²⁰ Who he heard this particular anecdote from is anyone’s guess. But given Acheson’s unlikely prominence in the story — not only was he in the meeting, but the meeting was his idea — it’s probably Acheson’s story filtered through other people’s retellings.

Indeed, compare Acheson’s account, as told to the New York Times in 1969, with Paul Boyer’s and Peter Goodchild’s accounts, as gleaned from (respectively) Ralph Lapp and an unknown source:

Acheson (1969): “‘Don’t ever bring that damn fool in here again,’ Truman told me afterward. ‘He didn’t set that bomb off. I did. This kind of sniveling makes me sick.’”

Boyer, citing Lapp (1985): “Truman turned to Dean Acheson, who was also present, and said: ‘I don’t want to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again.’”

Goodchild, citing an unknown source (1981): “‘Don’t you bring that fellow around again,’ Truman said to Acheson later. ‘After all, all he did was make the bomb. I’m the guy who fired it off.’”

In all three accounts, Truman tells Acheson he doesn’t want Oppenheimer in his office again. And in Acheson’s and Goodchild’s account, Truman insists that he, not Oppenheimer, was ultimately responsible for using the bomb.

If Acheson did not attend the meeting, where did he hear the story? He probably heard it from Truman himself. Truman apparently told the story often — remember that David Lilienthal had already heard it once before when Truman told it to the AEC. Perhaps, after Acheson received the “cry baby” memo, he asked Truman for more detail, or Truman provided it without any prompting.

Our last two sources are similar to Goodchild’s Oppenheimer biography. They are biographies as well, without any footnotes, which paraphrase the content of unrecorded interviews with uncertain individuals. These are Nuel Davis’s Lawrence and Oppenheimer (1968), a dual biography of Oppenheimer and Ernest Lawrence; and Peter Michelmore’s The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story (1969). 

Davis

Nuel Davis’s account has a rather different texture from the other accounts we’ve seen so far. Here is he how relates that moment in the meeting:

Oppenheimer got down to the business of trying to answer practical questions. Hesitant and cheerless, he seemed so different from his reputation that Truman wanted to know what was the matter.

“I feel we have blood on our hands,” Oppenheimer mumbled briefly and waited for the next question.

“Never mind,” said Truman. “It’ll all come out in the wash.”²¹

As Davis tells it, the exchange is more awkward than confrontational. Oppenheimer doesn’t just blurt out of the blue that he has blood on his hands; he is responding to Truman. He doesn’t say, “I have blood on my hands” — he says, “I feel we have blood on our hands.” (More on this later.) Truman doesn’t dangle a handkerchief in his face; in fact, he sounds more assuring than dismissive.

What was Davis’s source? Again, we have no footnotes, only a long list in the preface of who all he interviewed. But it’s worth noting that he was interviewing people in the 1960s, when Oppenheimer was still alive. In fact, he interviewed Oppenheimer!²² This could be, more or less, Oppenheimer’s version of the meeting. It’s certainly not Truman’s or Acheson’s.

Michelmore

For his 1969 biography The Swift Years, Peter Michelmore interviewed Oppenheimer’s brother (Frank) and widow (Kitty), as well as many other of his friends, colleagues, and family members.²³ His account of the meeting is much longer than Nuel Davis’s, and reads as if it were cobbled together from multiple sources and writerly imagination:

[Oppie] sat there, a picture of dejection, and began to work the palms of his hands together.

“Mr. President,” he said slowly, “I feel I have blood on my hands.”

Truman craned forward, the corners of his mouth turning down. Stunned for a second he reached into a top pocket, removed the neatly folded handkerchief and proffered it. “Would you like to wipe them?” he said in a hollow voice.

Embarrassed by his dramatics and by the President’s strange reaction, Oppie shifted about uneasily, allowing Truman to pick up the conversation. It was a relief when the President rose after a minute or two and held out his hand to signal the end of the talk. “Don’t worry,” he heard Truman saying, “we’re going to work something out, and you’re going to help us.”

Truman remained standing in his office after Oppie had gone. His lower lip was thrust forward. “Blood on his hands,” he snapped. “Dammit, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don’t go around bellyaching about it.”²⁴

Remember that, in his December 1946 meeting with David Lilienthal, Truman said, “I told [Oppenheimer] the blood was on my hands — to let me worry about that.”²⁵ In Michelmore’s version, Truman says something similar (“he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have”) but after Oppenheimer has left rather than to his face.

Of course, Truman probably didn’t say, “He hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have.” That sounds more like the Australian Peter Michelmore than the Missourian Harry Truman.

The time has come to read all of these sources synoptically. I have prepared a spreadsheet below:

Looking over these various accounts, what can we conclude actually happened?

We can safely say that Oppenheimer wrung his hands, though perhaps not as dramatically as Truman did when re-enacting it. Oppenheimer also said something about blood on hands. But whose hands? In most versions of the story, Oppenheimer says he has blood on his hands. But in one version, Oppenheimer says the scientists feel they have blood on their hands.²⁶ Oppenheimer did sometimes distance himself from his own thoughts by attributing them to a third party. For example, at the end of his May 1946 memo to Truman (the one that prompted Truman’s “cry baby” memo to Acheson), Oppenheimer wrote:

In what I have said above, I have left out of account, since I am not competent to evaluate it, the concern that has been expressed as to the appropriateness of a purely military test of atomic weapons, at a time when our plans for effectively eliminating them from national armaments are in their earliest beginnings.²⁷

My italics. It is easy to imagine that Oppenheimer said that “some of the scientists feel they have blood on their hands,” and Truman heard this as a personal confession.

Another, subtly different version can be found in Nuel Davis’s book — and remember, Davis actually interviewed Oppenheimer. In Davis’s account, Oppenheimer says, “I feel we have blood on our hands.”²⁸ What’s unclear is who “we” would’ve included. Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists? Truman and the military brass as well? All of America? And of course, whichever “we” Oppenheimer meant, Truman may have heard it differently.

In any case, Oppenheimer’s remark took Truman by surprise. How did the president respond?

I do not think he offered Oppenheimer a handkerchief and asked if he’d like to wipe his hands. It is a bit too cinematic — who would actually do that? Truman did not claim to have done so in his 1946 memo to Acheson, or in his 1946 meeting with the AEC. In their biography American Prometheus, Bird and Sherwin suggest this anecdote was invented by Truman as he “embellished the story.”²⁹ The handkerchief gesture may have been a bit of staircase wit.

If we remove the handkerchief moment, we are left with three versions of what Truman said to Oppenheimer:

David Lilienthal, citing Truman (1946): “I told him the blood was on my hands — to let me worry about that.”

Nuel Davis, citing an unknown source, possibly Oppenheimer (1968): “Never mind. It’ll all come out in the wash.”

Peter Michelmore, citing an unknown source (1969): “Don’t worry, we’re going to work something out, and you’re going to help us.”

What’s interesting about all three quotes is that they are not necessarily hostile. They can be read as trying to assuage Oppenheimer’s guilt, or at least as politely defusing an awkward moment. It is possible that Truman was so taken aback by Oppenheimer’s comment that he wasn’t sure how to react — that he was too surprised to be outraged. Instead his instinct may have been to cut the conversation short, to change the subject.

I suspect we’ve all had conversations that we only later become angry about — where it takes us a few hours or a few days to process and decide we are outraged. This may have been the case for Truman. If so, then when he told others about the meeting, it would’ve been only natural for him to retroject his current anger onto his past self. After telling the story enough times, his own memory would have changed, so that he was always angered by Oppenheimer’s comment.

What did Truman say after the meeting?

We know that he called Oppenheimer a “cry baby” in a memo to Dean Acheson. We know that, a few months later, he recounted the moment to the AEC, mimicking the physicist’s hand-wringing and mocking him as an irrational worrywort.

It also seems that he had another face-to-face conversation with Acheson, in which he said something like the following excerpts:

Dean Acheson, according to the New York Times (1969): “Don’t ever bring that damn fool in here again… He didn’t set that bomb off. I did. This kind of sniveling makes me sick.”

Peter Goodchild, citing an unknown source (1981): “Don’t you bring that fellow around again.… After all, all he did was make the bomb. I’m the guy who fired it off.”

Paul Boyer, citing Ralph Lapp (1985): “I don’t want to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again.”

Peter Michelmore, citing an unknown source (1969): “Blood on his hands. Dammit, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have. You just don’t go around bellyaching about it.”

The first quotation, of course, comes from Dean Acheson’s own testimony. The second and third quotations are said to have been what Truman told Acheson — in the case of the third quote, what Truman told Acheson in the Oval Office immediately after Oppenheimer left. (Again, Acheson did not actually attend the meeting.) As for the fourth quotation, Michelmore doesn’t mention Acheson, but he does claim Truman said it as soon as Oppenheimer left. The gist of all four quotations is the same, and they probably all stemmed from Acheson’s own retelling of the story.

Here’s what probably happened. Months after his meeting with the physicist, Truman told Acheson something along the lines of the four quotations above. Acheson now had a story with two acts for his D.C. socialite friends: first, Truman’s meeting with Oppenheimer; and second, what Truman said later to Acheson. Over the years, Acheson streamlined the story and combined these two meetings into one, even in his own memory.

The Boyer and Michelmore accounts share something else in common, which is they include the handkerchief moment. Perhaps both of these unlikely moments — Truman offering the handkerchief, then cursing out Oppenheimer as soon as he walked out the door — were part of the same mythic account circulating in D.C. during the mid-20th century, with Dean Acheson being the major reteller.

Christopher Nolan reconstructs the Oval Office meeting in his blockbuster film Oppenheimer. The physicist meets with Truman and, for some reason, Secretary of State James Byrnes (instead of Secretary of War Robert Patterson). Oppenheimer expresses his desire for international regulation of nuclear energy, while Truman prods him about the Soviet Union’s ability to build the bomb. Truman asks him what should be done with Los Alamos now that Oppenheimer is leaving the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer replies they should “give it back to the Indians,” at which point Truman’s expression sours. Byrnes tells Oppenheimer that, due to the Soviet threat, “we have to build up Los Alamos, not shut it down.”

It’s at this moment, cinematically, that Oppenheimer realizes his dream of a peaceful nuclear future is doomed. The camera, which up to this point has watched the men at eye-level, now hovers over the visibly shaken Oppenheimer. After staring at nothing for a second or two, the physicist turns to Truman and says, “Mr. President, I feel that I have blood on my hands.” As he says this, the camera pulls closer onto Oppenheimer’s face, the rest of his body and the room going out of focus. The abstract musical score also kicks in, with an echoing sound — like knocking?

It’s Truman’s turn to respond. He delicately pulls the handkerchief from his breast pocket, leans forward, and waves the handkerchief back and forth. But he doesn’t make a wisecrack. Instead he says:

You think anyone in Hiroshima or Nagasaki gives a shit who built the bomb? They care who dropped it. I did. Hiroshima isn’t about you.

Truman sits back in his chair while Byrnes leads Oppenheimer out the door. As the door closes, we hear Truman say, “Don’t let that crybaby back in here.”

Nolan couldn’t resist using the more implausible moments in the Truman-Oppenheimer story. But he finds a way to soften them and make them more plausible. Truman lets the handkerchief gesture speak for itself, and when the door is closing, Truman simply calls Oppenheimer a “crybaby,” which we know he did later in a memo to Acheson.

Nolan also takes the longer tirade which Truman probably gave to Acheson months later and instead has him say a version of it to Oppenheimer’s face. He, the president, dropped the bomb, not Oppenheimer. How dare this scientist — this government employee — assume the guilt for the greatest weapon ever used in human history? How dare he make himself the hero, albeit a tragic one?

I think Nolan got this right — this was what really annoyed Truman about Oppenheimer’s comment. By assuming guilt for the bomb, Oppenheimer was taking credit for it. And Truman resented this. He wanted the credit for dropping the bomb and saving American lives, whatever bloodguilt that may have entailed.

This might help explain why many people today will take Truman’s side in this anecdote. They, too, want Truman to assume all the credit and the blame. If the man who merely built the bomb shares responsibility for the thousands dead, where does complicity end? What have we built?

Internet Archive

1. For the best-sourced account of this meeting, see Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 331–32.
2. M. J. Cohen and John Major, History in Quotations: Reflecting 5000 Years of World History (London: Cassell, 2004), 882.
3. Jean-Jacques Salomon, Science et Politique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970), 293–94.
4. Israel Shenker, “Acheson Sees Danger in Attempts to ‘Destroy’ Nixon,” New York Times, October 10, 1969, p. 8.
5. Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 649.
6. J. Robert Oppenheimer to Harry S. Truman, May 3, 1946, attached to memorandum from Harry S. Truman to Dean Acheson, May 7, 1945, President’s Secretary’s Files (Truman Administration), National Archives, NAID: 310989226.
7. Truman to Acheson, May 7, 1945.
8. Shenker, “Acheson Sees Danger in Attempts to ‘Destroy’ Nixon.”
9. David E. Lilienthal, journal, December 11, 1946, in The Journals of David E. Lilienthal (3 vols.; New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 2:117–18, esp. 118.
10. Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 193.
11. Ibid., 396n28.
12. Ralph E. Lapp, The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon (New York: Harper, 1958).
13. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 193; Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 649.
14. Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 649; United States Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: Transcript of Hearing before Personnel Security Board (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1954), 35.
15. Truman to Acheson, May 7, 1945.
16. Shenker, “Acheson Sees Danger in Attempts to ‘Destroy’ Nixon.”
17. Ibid.
18. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 396n28.
19. Peter Goodchild, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Shatterer of Worlds (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), 180.
20. Ibid., 293.
21. Nuel Pharr Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968), 257–58.
22. Ibid., 7–8.
23. Peter Michelmore, The Swift Years: The Robert Oppenheimer Story (New York: Dodd Mead, 1969), v.
24. Ibid., 121–22.
25. Journals of David E. Lilienthal, 2:118.
26. Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 193.
27. Oppenheimer to Truman, May 3, 1946.
28. Davis, Lawrence and Oppenheimer, 257–58.
29. Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 331–32.