The liberation of the atomic power which has been achieved places atomic bombs in the hands of the Army. The Manhattan Project petition asking President Truman not to bomb JapanĪ PETITION TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATESĭiscoveries of which the people of the United States are not aware may affect the welfare of this nation in the near future. Read the full petition from the Manhattan Project scientists and their names (provided by Szilard biographer Gene Dannen) below. Those doubts, even if they do not appear in official reports, were discussed in many private conversations." "Now that the bomb could not be used against the Nazis, doubts arose. "For me, Hitler was the personification of evil and the primary justification for the atomic bomb work," Los Alamos physicist Emilio Segrè later wrote. Some were conflicted, especially after Adolf Hitler's death in April 1945. Though Oppenheimer said years later in 1961 that he didn't carry the dropping of the bombs on his conscience, not everyone who worked at Los Alamos felt that way. "I personally feel that it would be a matter of importance if a large number of scientists who have worked in this field went clearly and unmistakably on record as to their opposition on moral grounds to the use of these bombs in the present phase of the war," Szilard wrote in the petition's cover letter. Seventy scientists, mostly from the Chicago Met Lab and Tennessee Oak Ridge project sites, added their signatures. While the bombs would likely end the war, they felt "that such attacks on Japan could not be justified" until Japan was told about the weapon and given a chance to surrender. Three weeks earlier, Leo Szilard and dozens of other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project signed a petition to President Harry Truman, pleading with him to reconsider dropping the bombs they had helped create. On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, killing at least 100,000 people instantly and thousands more from radiation illnesses and injuries, according to the National Archives Museum. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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