The Washington, D.C. conference room's air was thick with a strange mixture of reverence and fear. Just days after the successful completion of the Trinity test, the Interim Committee, recently formed, convened in a closed, highest-security meeting to consult the new President, Harry S. Truman, on an issue of virtual theological significance: how to use their new, man-made sun.
The committee consisted of the most prominent men in the nation. There was Secretary of War Henry Stimson, the elder statesman of irreproachable reputation; James F. Byrnes, the new Secretary of State and veteran politician; General George Marshall, the quiet and honored Army Chief of Staff; and General Leslie Groves, the visage of the project's raw muscle, even now basking in the afterglow of the seemingly miraculous achievement.
Then there was Ezra Prentice.
He was not a member. His employment was a duly evasively-sounding "Special Consultant to the Committee." His presence, however, was an unstated, non-negotiable condition of the project's continued smooth operation. He sat somewhat to the side of the principal table, a silent, impeccable man whose very calm made the other men intensely uncomfortable. They were soldiers and politicians who had been provided a new kind of fire from the gods; Ezra was the man who had, they assumed, played the Titan who stole it for them.
The deliberations began, cautiously, as the men grappled with the huge scale of the power they now commanded. Secretary Stimson, a man of high moral principle, called for a demonstration that would not be military in character.
"Our weapon is of a novel and terrible type," Stimson announced, his voice grave. "Could we not have a demonstration on an uninhabited isle, or even on a remote part of Japan? International witnesses could be present. The sheer might of the device, before their eyes, might be enough to cause them to surrender, but for the terrible loss of civilian life."
A seconding of the plan was provided by a naval admiral. "Or we could try for a purely military target. A naval base, a massive arsenal. A demonstration of force, but a contained one."
Ezra listened, while the currents of opinion flowed around him. He heard the good men struggle with an exigency that fell beyond the compass of ordinary morality. When they had, he sat forward, forcing all eyes to himself. His voice, when he employed it, was not elevated, but it cut the room's skepticism with the cold, clear edge of a diamond cutting wine glass.
"A demonstration shot," he stated, not opined, but declared, as fact, "is a fool's errand. A dangerous one."
He surveyed the table, eyeing the men. "First, what if the second device is a dud? The physics is solid, but the engineering is experimental. We send the world a heads up that we will give them a demonstration, and the device fails to go off, we will have given away our trump card and been found bluffing fools. The war will be delayed months, if not years. The advantage will be sacrificed."
He continued, his argument inexorable. "Second, to whom is the demonstration being made? The Japanese ruling clique is not a group of cautious scientists to be awed with a demonstration of physics. They are a military clique, a death cult, ruled by a code of honor for whom surrender is the ultimate shame. They have sat back and done nothing while hundreds of thousands of their own people are being burned to death in General LeMay's firebombing campaigns without blinking an eyelid. A gigantic flash of light in an empty bay will not impress them. Only a demonstration of unimaginable, city-destroying power that shatters their will to resist and affords their Emperor the political cover he needed in order to surrender."
His cold, harsh assessment hung in the room, suppressing the sanguine, more sympathetic alternatives. The discussion turned, macabrely, to the choice of target. A man of shrewd intellect spread out a map of Japan, pinpointing several of the cities that had been deliberately excluded from the ordinary bombers in hopes of preserving them for use as locations for the new weapon.
The location included the old city of Kyoto.
"Kyoto is a key centre of industry," the officer noted, "with aircraft and munition factories."
Secretary Stimson, a man himself who had honeymooned in Kyoto, protested vigorously. "Gentlemen, Kyoto is a treasure. It is the old imperial capital, a city of vast cultural and religious significance to the people of Japan. Its destruction would be an act of wanton vandalism that would leave the honor of our own country forever tarnished."
Ezra saw his moment. He interrupted, not to support Stimson's argument on the moral high ground, but to seize on it in favor of his own Machiavellian aims. "The Secretary is correct," Ezra interrupted, taking everyone by surprise. "But for reasons that transcend sentiment. Kyoto is the cultural and spiritual heart of Japan. To destroy it would be like the Japanese destroying the Vatican. It would give us a sacrificial mentality, a fountain of resentment that would make the needed post-war occupation of Japan politically impossible for generations. We not only must win the war, but we must also be able to win the peace that follows."
He walked to the map. "A target that is an undisputed combination of military and industrial significance, a location the destruction of which will neutralize their warring energies and shock their leadership into subjection, but not destroy their national will."
He pointed towards a coast city. "Hiroshima. It is a major port, military headquarters, and primary industrial center. It is a viable military target. Its terrain, a low-lying delta surrounded by mountains, will operate to condense and maximize the blast, presenting a clear demonstration of the weapon's power." He moved them gently toward the historically correct targets, in an argument so cold and practical that it could not be refuted.
He won out in his arguments. The committee's recommendation to the President would then be to use the bomb on a city, and the first in line would be Hiroshima.
Ezra, however, realized that the work was not nearly done. The crucial negotiation was not with this group of advisors, but with the new President himself. He subsequently set up a private meeting with Truman and his new Secretary of State, James Byrnes, in the Oval Office later in the week.
"Mr. President," stated Ezra, "the committee's made their recommendations, and they're good ones from a military perspective. But you're not here for that. You're here because the true mission of the weapon isn't in Tokyo."
Truman, awaiting the forthcoming Potsdam Conference with Churchill and Stalin, gazed at him intently. "Go on, Prentice."
"The war in Japan is won," announced Ezra positively. "Their fleet is at the bottom of the sea, and their cities are in rubble. They starve. It is only a matter of time. The bomb will certainly hasten the end and save American lives, and for that bare reason its employment is right. But its ultimate strategic significance is not in ending this war. It is in prevention of the next."
He leaned forward, his tone firm and intense. "When you bargain with Joseph Stalin in Potsdam, Mr. President, you will be choosing the face of the post-war world. He knows but one thing, power. His Red Army already occupies all of Eastern Europe. He will try to use that leverage to expand his own sphere, to export his communist principles throughout a battered continent. Diplomatic niceties will not sway him."
"The use of this bomb," declared Ezra, the substance of hisgrand strategy now revealed, "does not represent the end of the Second World War. It represents the beginning of the Cold War. The demonstration of its power is not to theJapanese Emperor but to the man in the Kremlin. It is a message to Stalin that the new world will be built on the terms of America, and that it will be protected by an absolute power that he cannot match, that he cannot even grasp. It would be the origin of the American hegemony of the world for the next half-century."
Truman, the blunt-talking man of Missouri, already so fundamentally skeptical of his purported Soviet partner, listened, face set in a scowl. A new president, he was dealing with decisions of an enormous scale that no leader had ever confronted. Ezra had presented him, in the most bare, terrifying, and compellingly frank of geopolitical terms, a geopolitical argument. He had framed the most pivotal event of the twentieth century not as a horrific military necessity, but as a conscious, foundational act of a new American empire. The age of the atom had been unveiled, and Ezra Prentice had just become its chief strategist.