8 18 25 12 46 PM Factiva Opinion The bomb through its creator's eyes Colby Cosh National Post 740 words 9 August 2025 National Post FINP National A16 English © 2025 National Post All Rights Reserved Can it really be two years since Christopher Nolan's film Oppenheimer became the old-school box-office sensation of summer 2023 Well there you go it must have been two years even a journalist can do that much math Oppenheimer which is reasonably scrupulous in its accuracy by cinema standards continues to be fertile ground for discussion and memes People will go on talking about the war and the command decision to bomb but the drama of Los Alamos N M is a distinctive important historical phenomenon a little nugget of uncanny magic rearranging human history at the outset of the Jet Age A cult of wizards was assembled on a mountaintop loosely speaking by a great empire it was told to come up with a method to drop a sun on its enemies and they succeeded As Nolan's movie implies almost every other thing that happened in the 20th century including the actual use of the weapon might be a footnote If you are suitably mesmerized by these events one thing to remember is that the record of them is still incomplete Oppenheimer was made even though documentary material about and by J Robert Oppenheimer is still becoming available to the public as a new National Security Archive NSA release reminded us on Tuesday The NSA maintains a briefing book of primary sources on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it makes periodic updates with newly declassified or rediscovered materials The briefing book itself built up over 20 years is extensive enough to fertilize graduate-level papers on the decisions surrounding construction and use of the bomb There are some fascinating new declassified documents in the 2025 update One is a letter written in September 1944 by William S Parsons the navy officer who headed the ordnance group at Los Alamos Parsons led the creation of the gun design used for Little Boy the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and he would fly on the mission that delivered it But he also had an administrative role as a voice of and pair of eyes for the professional military among the civilian boffins at Los Alamos Parsons' letter is addressed to Maj -Gen Leslie Groves overall boss of the Manhattan Project and was delivered by Oppenheimer which is why it sits in a file folder among the Oppenheimer Papers at the Library of Congress The letter is Parsons' rambling argument extraordinary in historical retrospect against any mere testing of a nuclear weapon Plans for what became the Trinity test in the New Mexico desert were already coming into view and the American high command was then still wondering whether to invite representatives of the Axis governments Parsons points out morbidly that the most impressive test the most convincing demonstration would be to detonate the bomb one thousand feet over Times Square Short of that he did not see the point of setting one off in the desert amid a few unoccupied temporary structures when it could just be dropped on an enemy Even the crater would be disappointing There is actual Oppenheimer material amidst the new documents as opposed to stuff that passed through Oppenheimer's hands One intriguing document is a news release written by Oppenheimer on Aug 9 1945 the very date of the Nagasaki bombing The world was just receiving news of the first bomb dropped Aug 6 and a press agency had solicited a statement from Oppenheimer https global-factiva-com us1 proxy openathens net hp printsavews aspx ppstype Article pp Print hc Publication 1 2 8 18 25 12 46 PM Factiva At that moment he was still somewhat optimistic about the political effects of nuclear weapons and he prepared a few hundred words expressing hope that peaceful international co-operation would be accelerated now that it had become a desperate necessity The bomb itself he thought could help to provide a mechanism for bringing peoples together Oppenheimer wrote the news release in the plural third person speaking on behalf of all the Los Alamos scientists and he took the trouble to run it by a few of them Atom-history buffs will notice the handwritten list of names at the top left of the PDF copy it includes Louis Slotin the Winnipeg physicist who would be killed at Los Alamos in a plutonium-criticality accident in May 1946 One minor Washington newspaper did print Oppenheimer's statement but for some reason it received no further exposure and history books have ignored it almost entirely National Post Postmedia Network Inc Document FINP000020250809el890000m Search Summary Text National Security Archive Date In the last 3 months Source All Sources Author All Authors Company All Companies Subject All Subjects Industry All Industries Region All Regions Language All Languages Results Found 164 Timestamp 18 August 2025 4 34 PM GMT © 2025 Factiva Inc All rights reserved   https global-factiva-com us1 proxy openathens net hp 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