Interviewer: DR.
Interviewer: BRADBURY, IF I CAN START BY ASKING YOU TO DESCRIBE FOR ME THE SITUATION AT LOS ALAMOS IN THE '46-47 PERIOD?
Bradbury: Well, war had come to an end at the close of 1945 and crashed the atomic bombs...
Interviewer: DR.
Interviewer: BRADBURY, IF YOU CAN WATCH YOUR FEET.
Interviewer: OK.
Interviewer: IF YOU CAN DESCRIBE FOR ME THE SITUATION AT LOS ALAMOS.
Bradbury: The War had come to an end of course in the latter part of 1945, and a great many people at Los Alamos were looking forward to getting back to their prior academic or industrial positions.
Bradbury: In any case, the younger people were looking forward to going back to school and getting a Masters degree or PhD.
Bradbury: And of course some were looking for new and better jobs.
Bradbury: There was...
Bradbury: recognize the number of things that had to be done, still had to be done.
Bradbury: Nevertheless many people, in fact, a great many people, were looking after their own problems first, quite naturally.
Bradbury: So there was a spirit of concern, which of course I reflected since I'd been asked to take over the laboratory.
Bradbury: What is the laboratory going to do, what is it going to be, and what are you Norris, what to do about it.
Bradbury: And how do you propose to get that done? And so for course the actions that I took reflected these various concerns from Washington, which did not yet have an atomic energy act.
Bradbury: And concern by many people...
Bradbury: would the military continue to run it and what would happen with that.
Bradbury: So there were various concerns that I had to navigate my way through, and start building a laboratory for the peacetime period.
Interviewer: ...THE ATOMIC ENERGY ACT, WHAT DIFFERENCE DID THAT MAKE, AND AGAIN, IF YOU CAN DESCRIBE THE SITUATION AT LOS ALAMOS IN TERMS OF YOUR HAVING TO RECRUIT PEOPLE.
Bradbury: Yes, well the Atomic Energy Act spelled out very clearly the existence of an administrative organization in Washington, a Congressional operation, the congressional atomic energy committee, military liaison committee, and a joint advisory committee, a number of watch-dog committees, and gave us a frame of operations which one could believe meant that the atomic energy project, was here to stay.
Bradbury: There was an air of permanency about the Atomic Energy Act.
Bradbury: True, it changed and was modified as time went on.
Bradbury: But it was a permanent start, a real start for a laboratory trying to build itself.
Interviewer: WAS IT HARD TO RECRUIT PEOPLE? AND WHAT WAS MORALE LIKE AT THIS TIME?
Bradbury: Well, at the close of the war, a great many people, of course, wanted to get back to their original jobs or get back to better jobs.
Bradbury: A number of the younger people had not received— had not got their PhDs, they wanted to get PhDs.
Bradbury: Some wanted to get Masters degrees.
Bradbury: A great many people were jockeying for new positions, better positions and wanted to get out in the real world, and were a little tired of living in a closed community like Los Alamos.
Bradbury: And while in almost all cases, they shared the general program of the laboratory, the atomic...
Bradbury: couldn't come to a close in 1945-46, it would have to go on.
Bradbury: There were many things to be done.
Bradbury: Nevertheless, they themselves wanted to do something else.
Bradbury: So in general there was an exodus of people to other academic positions, to industrial positions.
Bradbury: It was helped, I was helped in part by the fact that the military, the Navy particularly, decided to ...the Bikini operations, ...
Bradbury: Bikini operations in the Spring of '46.
Bradbury: And I managed to persuade plenty of people, enough people, to stay through that with me by postponing their departure for academia until September of that year.
Bradbury: And so we got through then.
Bradbury: But about by September, I had to face the problem of building a permanent staff.
Bradbury: And so I had to be a little bit cruel I suppose is the word, and ask people either stay with me and help build Los Alamos to be the sort of laboratory we all want, and we'd have to determine what we all want is, or maybe now is a good time to find your, you mentioned a science society.
Bradbury: And I called that process shaking the tree.
Bradbury: That was very effective.
Bradbury: By the end of, well, by the end of that year, by let's say October, November, I was down to about 1,400 people, from somewhere around 4,000.
Bradbury: And from that time on we grew steadily.
Bradbury: What it is now I guess around seven thousand or something.
Interviewer: LET'S GO TO A WIDE SHOT.
Interviewer: NOW, I KNOW WHEN WE TALKED TO YOU BEFORE, YOU TALKED ABOUT HOW YOU FELT THAT THE JOB, YOU HAD TO SORT OF CONVINCE THEM THAT THE JOB WAS HALF DONE AS REGARDS THE ATOMIC PROGRAM.
Interviewer: I WONDER IF YOU COULD TELL US THAT?
Bradbury: Well, people were well aware that the fission process, which was the basis of the first two military used bombs was only partially developed in terms of its efficiency.
Bradbury: They were also aware that the fission process produced the type of energy and levels of magnitude that at least had a chance of initiating a thermonuclear reaction, and that if we didn't think of that, somebody else certainly would.
Bradbury: So those two things were very much in my mind and very much in the mind of the people who stayed here.
Bradbury: First of all, you had to let's say perfect ordinary fission bombs; and second, you better get to work on hydrogen bombs.
Bradbury: And I should add to that all of us were also aware that if you, that's all you do, you've failed.
Bradbury: You have to have a broad background of basic research: physics, chemistry, mathematics, computers, and all the things that are tools to the laboratory.
Bradbury: And the things that tools produce...
Bradbury: military...
Bradbury: but the tools themselves have got to be perfection.
Bradbury: Otherwise you'll be slow.
Interviewer: ARE WE OK ON SOUND? LET ME ASK YOU TO EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT KIND OF WORK LOS ALAMOS WAS DOING AT THIS TIME AND WHAT WERE YOUR PRIORITIES.
Interviewer: I REALIZE WE'RE GOING OVER THINGS A LITTLE BIT, BUT I'D LIKE YOU JUST TO EXPLAIN — AND WHEN YOU SAY "FISSION," COULD YOU SAY ATOMIC, ...
Interviewer: EXPLAIN FISSION BY SAYING ATOMIC BOMB OR FISSION BOMBS.
Bradbury: Well, the first atomic bombs used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and also the ones tested at Alamogordo down in southern New Mexico, were straight fission bombs.
Bradbury: In other words, their release of energy depended entirely upon the fission process.
Bradbury: The problem was to get that fission process going under circumstances that a respectable amount of energy would be released.
Bradbury: As I have said, as everybody was then aware, there was another basic source of nuclear energy, namely energy which comes from...
Bradbury: reactions, hydrogen reactions, deuterium reactions, and deuterium-tritium reactions.
Bradbury: And those reactions had been known for many years.
Bradbury: Nevertheless, there'd been no easy way of bringing out a set of boundary conditions high enough, strong enough, energetic enough to make such rec such reactions a useful source of energy.
Bradbury: You could do it in the laboratory and cyclotron and places like that.
Bradbury: But you couldn't see your way clear to make them be useful.
Bradbury: I use useful both primarily the military sense, but also in any other sense.
Bradbury: Useful source of energy.
Bradbury: And the atomic bomb did provide the possibility, not certainty, but the possibility of providing a large enough, high enough, hot enough source of energy to put it in simple-minded terms, to initiate a progressive, perpetual...
Bradbury: thermonuclear reaction.
Bradbury: So that was clearly a essential thing to do, because by that time everybody in the world knew about fission, everybody in the world, I use the term loosely, but I'm talking about the Europeans and the Russians and the Germans and the Italians, lots of people, French.
Bradbury: They knew about all this.
Bradbury: And clearly some of them had made progress in the fission weapon business and would be looking toward these other sources of energy.
Interviewer: THE REAL EMPHASIS THOUGH ON THE FISSION SIDE WAS TO MAKE THESE BOMBS SMALLER, RIGHT, FOR DELIVERY PURPOSES? IF YOU COULD JUST EXPLAIN THAT.
Bradbury: Well, perfectly correct.
Bradbury: The bomb that you want carry around in a ten-ton truck isn't much good in a military sense.
Bradbury: And so there was a practical military operation that has to take place: design improvement.
Bradbury: It doesn't involve necessarily new ideas.
Interviewer: LET ME JUST SAY— ASK YOU ANOTHER WAY.
Interviewer: WHEN YOU SAID PRIORITIES, IF YOU COULD JUST SAY, ONE OF OUR PRIORITIES WAS TO MAKE SMALLER AND THEN CONTINUE FROM THERE.
Bradbury: Well, one of the, priorities was certainly to make bombs smaller and more deliverable.
Bradbury: Shapes let us say, without being specific about it, more adaptable to the delivery methods that one could foresee coming up in the future.
Bradbury: And fairly apparent in those days that you wouldn't spend much more time dropping bombs out of a B-29 of that size and shape.
Bradbury: And it was pretty clear what direction things had to go as aircraft and other vehicles began to appear on the potential horizon.
Interviewer: OK NOW, LET'S GO TO A CLOSE UP FOR THE NEXT ONE.
Interviewer: AND I'M INTERESTED TO KNOW WHAT YOUR DEALINGS WERE WITH THE AEC AND GAC AT THIS TIME AND WHAT DIFFERENCE IT MADE TO YOU HAVING CIVILIAN BOSSES?
Bradbury: Well, it's generally speaking more acceptable to people to have civilian bosses.
Bradbury: The Atomic Energy, the Atomic Energy Program...
Interviewer: LET'S JUST START THAT AGAIN.
Interviewer: IF YOU CAN EXPLAIN TO ME THE DIFFERENCE IT MADE HAVING THE AEC?
Bradbury: Well, the difference it made in having the AEC was that you had essentially civilian bosses, not military bosses.
Bradbury: You could expect that the civilian people involved would be responsive to civilian concerns and not strictly to military concerns.
Bradbury: And the military was represented in the MLC very strongly.
Bradbury: But I think all of us hoped that the, that the military would— use, would not be the only way atomic buttons, atomic devices would be used.
Bradbury: And it was I think reassuring to have civilian input in this program, and not just a pure military input.
Bradbury: And I thought it was equally, reassuring in a specialized sense to have operations like the MLC, to make sure that the military needs were represented, and clearly and strongly.
Interviewer: NOW, BUT SOMETIMES THE MLC GOT IN THE WAY.
Interviewer: CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THAT?
Bradbury: Well, I'm afraid I wouldn't agree that they got in the way.
Interviewer: OK.
Bradbury: The MLC clearly had their own...
Bradbury: of interest, but they, in my dealings with them, they were very receptive, very understanding that there were other demands upon atomic energy, and that the laboratory was involved in it as well...
Bradbury: just making bigger and better or smaller and longer bombs and whatever.
Interviewer: CAN YOU COMPARE FOR ME THE NEEDS OF THE GAC VERSUS THE DEMANDS OF THE MILITARY AT THAT TIME?
Bradbury: I don't like your use of the word, to be frank with you, "needs" of the GAC
Interviewer: OK.
Interviewer: THEN THE RECOMMENDATIONS...
Bradbury: The GAC, was the General Advisory Committee.
Bradbury: They didn't need anything.
Interviewer: OK.
Interviewer: THEIR ADVICE THEN.
Interviewer: DID THAT DIFFER FROM THE MILITARY IN ANY WAY AT THAT TIME?
Bradbury: Well, the military's concerns, The military concerns were primarily military.
Bradbury: I mean clearly they had a, their civilian duties and their civilian national responsibility.
Bradbury: But their primary ware, way of making ...
Bradbury: effective was through their military use.
Bradbury: And they clearly were concerned about how the bombs would be delivered, what the yields would be, how they would get from where you had them to where you wanted them to go, the accuracy of delivery and the type of targets they would be used for.
Bradbury: The military concerns in that area, of course, were, had to be met.
Bradbury: I wouldn't consider them paramount.
Bradbury: But the civilian interest in the atomic bomb was primarily in the interest of civilian safety, you want to win the war, you don't want to lose it.
Interviewer: WHAT ABOUT THE QUESTION OF CUSTODY? BECAUSE THAT KEPT COMING UP AT THIS PERIOD AS WELL.
Interviewer: THAT SORT OF GOT IN THE WAY SOMETIMES I UNDERSTAND.
Bradbury: Well, to my mind, it was ...
Bradbury: it was an argument very greatly over rated in intensity.
Bradbury: Some people believe that if the military had custody quote-unquote, without some supervisory control, that they would determine how, when and if atomic weapons would be used; and the civilians would be over-ruled.
Interviewer: BUT WHAT DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT? DID YOU WANT THE MILITARY TO TAKE OVER AGAIN?
Bradbury: No, no.
Bradbury: I thought it was much more important that it be under civilian control.
Bradbury: The, I've always thought, and still think, the Atomic Energy Act was set up, the Military Liaison Committee for advice, the General Advisory Committee for general advice, was a very good way of bringing both military and civilian interests into the program.
Bradbury: And it was very successful.
Bradbury: Both sides were represented.
Bradbury: And the Commission itself and the general manager were very shrewd and thoughtful.
Bradbury: And the people put on these— invited to become members of these committees, were people of broad civic interests and broad concerns, and that didn't confine themselves to tunnel vision on what they themselves were interested in.
Interviewer: WERE THERE SOME THINGS THAT THE MILITARY COULDN'T HAVE HANDLED? IF ONE HAD SWITCHED BACK TO MILITARY CUSTODY, WERE THERE SOME THINGS IN YOUR OPINION?
Bradbury: Custody, custody means who has the key.
Bradbury: And I don't think that's very important question in that sense.
Bradbury: Certainly the military could handle custody, they could turn keys and open locks and so on.
Bradbury: Whether you as a civilian would have liked to have bombs only in military custody, I leave to your own point of view.
Bradbury: I think it gave people some degree of reassurance that bombs were really in civilian custody, with military representation at least ...
Bradbury: MLC
Interviewer: CAN YOU TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT THE KIND OF PEOPLE THAT GENERAL GROVES, AND PERHAPS YOU COULD TELL ME ABOUT GENERAL NICHOLS, WHAT KIND OF PEOPLE WERE DEALING ON THE MILITARY WITH IT?
Bradbury: Well, they were, General Nichols, to start there, was a very remarkable man.
Bradbury: He asked to stay on as general manager for some time and did a very beautiful job.
Bradbury: A man of...typical I would say of the very best in the regular military setup.
Bradbury: Intelligent, smart, dedicated, clever, nice personality, all the virtues.
Bradbury: You couldn't ask for a better officer.
Bradbury: General Groves wasn't always viewed with that same enthusiasm, although he and I got along beautifully.
Bradbury: Oppenheimer found him somewhat difficult.
Bradbury: General Groves had some difficulty in talking to civilians.
Bradbury: I was in uniform at least in the early part of the war, toward the end of the war.
Bradbury: And General Groves and I got along fine.
Bradbury: I think he liked me, and I kind of liked, him to.
Interviewer: WE WERE TALKING ABOUT THE "CUSTODY BATTLE," AS IT'S SOMETIMES CALLED.
Interviewer: AND YOU WERE SAYING THAT IT WAS MORE OF A NATIONAL POSITION.
Bradbury: Well, nuclear weapons are of such importance, and would be of such importance in any war you might get involved in, that having it strictly under the control of military seemed to most people to be wrong.
Bradbury: It was— it would be a national problem.
Bradbury: Their use, as they were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was almost strictly military.
Bradbury: There was very little civilian input of course, there was little civilian input to get.
Bradbury: .
Bradbury: But I think again, one at that time and still we'd like to make sure that there was civilian input at all levels.
Bradbury: And the advisability of this course of action, because once you start using them, you can't stop, and you will probably — probably, I think certainly — invoke a military nuclear response.
Bradbury: And so if ______starts using nuclear bombs it doesn't have the – what will this do to Nagasaki or what will this do to Hiroshima – what will this do to me?
Interviewer: AND LET'S JUST CONTINUE THIS THOUGHT ABOUT THE MILITARY.
Interviewer: BEFORE, YOU SAID THAT THEY WERE RATHER IMPATIENT ABOUT THE RATE OF PRODUCTION AND ALSO THE...
Bradbury: Well, yes, General Groves was somewhat impatient about the rate at which Hanford could manufacture material, and at that time we were the sole processors and______ we could keep up with Hanford, but we couldn't do that forever.
Bradbury: And I was also impatient.
Bradbury: I was not in the bomb production business, I wanted to get out of the bomb production business, that can be done by factories — quote-unquote, factories.
Bradbury: And and I was happy to wanted that to come on as soon as poss— I had people who wanted to get on with both research and with future developments of nuclear weaponry.
Bradbury: And we didn't want to spend our time manufacturing 1945 bombs.
Bradbury: And neither did the University of California ______ _____ they were running a— wanting to run a research laboratory, not a production laboratory.
Interviewer: LET'S GO TO A CLOSE UP.
Interviewer: YOUR HEART WAS NOT IN MANUFACTURING BOMBS FOR MILITARY --
Bradbury: By no means.
Bradbury: I don't mean to say this is wrong.
Bradbury: It was not my heart.
Bradbury: Plenty of other people manufacture bombs.
Bradbury: And plenty of other places that can do it as well or better than we could.
Bradbury: And I wasn't about to build a factory.
Bradbury: I wanted to build a laboratory.
Interviewer: DR.
Interviewer: BRADBURY, HOW DID THE DECISION TO GO AHEAD WITH OPERATION SANDSTONE COME ABOUT? WHY WAS IT NECESSARY, AND WHAT EFFECTS DID IT HAVE ON PRODUCTION AT LOS ALAMOS?
Bradbury: Well, of course Los Alamos was never in production______—
Interviewer: OK.
Bradbury: You can say the activities at Los Alamos, but not production.
Interviewer: OK.
Interviewer: HOW DID THE DECISION TO GO AHEAD WITH OPERATION SANDSTONE COME ABOUT, AND WHY WAS IT NECESSARY?
Bradbury: Well, the decision came about by the -- through the usual Washington channels.
Bradbury: It was necessary because at that time, no one was sure that it hydrogen, a large mass of hydrogen, could be made to burn in a fashion which would gen— generate a large explosion.
Bradbury: You could believe and be quite sure that it probably would.
Bradbury: But you would hate to commit the national security to a belief.
Bradbury: So you were sort of driven to testing it, testing something that will, that at the time only tested the problem of burning hydrogen, and leaves the exercise for the technician and the scientist the job of making it into a deliverable weapon.
Interviewer: BUT WASN'T IT REALLY THAT YOU WERE TRYING TO INCREASE THE YIELD? IS THAT REALLY WHAT YOU'RE SAYING? OPERATION SANDSTONE WAS AN ATTEMPT TO INCREASE THE YIELD AND MAKE SMALLER BOMBS?
Bradbury: Well, in the long run, yes.
Interviewer: IF YOU COULD JUST EXPLAIN THAT.
Bradbury: Well, one is always caught in the weapon design and research business, in trying to make weapons that are deliverable with large yields in vehicles, whether it be airplanes or missiles or whatever, that get steadily smaller.
Bradbury: And the day of the B-50 and B-29 of course were disappearing if they hadn't disappeared.
Bradbury: And—
Interviewer: OK.
Bradbury: The vehicles which followed on behind them in the military arsenal were clearly smaller.
Bradbury: Or you would like to have them smaller because they are then more effective and they can easy to make and you can make more of them and they go farther and faster.
Interviewer: NOW HOW IS OPERATION SANDSTONE RELEVANT TO THIS POINT?
Bradbury: Well, all-— not going into the details, all the test to do one of several things, or maybe several of several things.
Bradbury: First of all, you might be testing out new Ideas.
Bradbury: Frequently you were testing out new ways of more efficiently using fissionable material.
Bradbury: Thirdly, you may be testing how to get fissionable mete – fissionable material used _________ to cause a thermonuclear _____ ignition.
Bradbury: And so that you can burn not only fissionable material, which is relatively hard to make and expensive, and thermonuclear material, deuterium, hydrogen, which is relatively cheap to make and infinitely abundant.
Bradbury: So you're always caught in this ________________ development.
Bradbury: You keep one eye on what the military is developing in the way of vehicles, that is, getting it from here to there; and you keep an eye on the source of explosive materials if you wish, and try to find your way among these two ______ competing problems.
Interviewer: WHAT SPECIFICALLY— WHAT WERE THE EFFECTS OF OPERATION SANDSTONE ON WORK AT LOS ALAMOS?
Bradbury: Well, it was a ...
Bradbury: it was a success.
Bradbury: Uh—
Interviewer: IF YOU COULD START BY SAYING OPERATION SANDSTONE,
Bradbury: Beg your pardon?
Interviewer: IF YOU COULD SAY OPERATION SANDSTONE-JUST A MINUTE.
Interviewer: OK.
Bradbury: Operation Sandstone was a success in the sense that the way things behaved were very much as we had calculated and expected.
Bradbury: Well, expected is perhaps too strong a word --had hoped.
Bradbury: But it meant that we— _____ laboratory ____ computational technology and techniques, we appeared to know what we were doing.
Bradbury: We were using the right inputs, the right cross-sections, the right "this" and "thats", and that we were not making any serious mistakes of omission or commission.
Interviewer: OK.
Interviewer: GOOD.
Interviewer: NOW I JUST HAPPENED TO READ THAT DAVID LILIENTHAL WAS RATHER CONCERNED AT THIS TIME WHEN HE HEARD THE RESULTS OF OPERATION SANDSTONE FROM YOU AND DANIEL FROMAN.
Interviewer: HE WAS CONCERNED THAT YOU WERE A LITTLE ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT BIGGER AND BETTER WEAPONS.
Interviewer: DO YOU THINK— DO YOU FEEL— WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENT ON THAT?
Bradbury: Well we — bigger and better weapons yes, of course.
Bradbury: In the nuclear weapons business one does not live by himself alone.
Bradbury: I could be sure, you could be sure, I think anyone could be sure, that while we were doing it, other people —: without identifying them — would be also doing it.
Bradbury: And it didn't— didn't seem to logical ______ in the sense, if we don't do it they won't.
Bradbury: The best you can hope for, unfortunately is to be one jump ahead.
Bradbury: Now somebody behind the scenes or in front of the scenes or somewhere, always a question of you trying to bring this race to a close, and people hadn't come to a close quite yet.
Bradbury: It's always a--as I say, if they do it, we do it; we do it, they do it; but if we stop, will they stop?
Interviewer: GO TO A CLOSE UP.
Interviewer: WAS THE PRESSURE ON?
Bradbury: Oh of course.
Bradbury: Of course there was pressure on, but there was pressure on—
Interviewer: IF YOU WOULD JUST HOLD IN ONE PLACE—
Interviewer: (MISC.) ALL RIGHT.
Bradbury: There was pressure on both outside and inside.
Bradbury: One shouldn't underestimate one's antagonists.
Bradbury: They are smart people, too.
Bradbury: And what we can think of they can think of.
Bradbury: What you like to do is be the first to think of it and then be copied -
Interviewer: LET'S TRY ONE MORE TIME.
Interviewer: YES.
Interviewer: THE PRESSURE WAS ON?
Bradbury: The pressure was on, as I say, both internally and externally.
Bradbury: The day had long gone when – well, there always I suppose were some people, not here I think, but some people: if we don't do it, no adversary will do it.
Bradbury: Yes.
Bradbury: It's just not true.
Bradbury: Your adversary would like to get ahead of you; you'd like to get ahead of your adversary.
Bradbury: The— there's always sort of continual jockeying for _____ position.
Bradbury: At the same time, people, and(?) with great credibility (?), try to talk to potential adversaries, and see if you can't find some way to bring ______ sort of a international arms race to some sort of a close.
Bradbury: The only thing you can say in its, quote-unquote, favor is that you've been doing this now for 40 years, and you haven't had a war, and you've never used them.
Bradbury: Now that's a thin ray of hope, perhaps, but it's a ray of hope.
Interviewer: LET'S GO TO A WIDE SHOT.
Interviewer: LET'S STICK WITH THE PERIOD, 1948-'49, THOUGH, AND WOULD IT BE FAIR TO SAY THAT THE TECHNOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE WAS AT WORK AT THIS PARTICULAR POINT?
Bradbury: Well what do you mean by technological imperative? I mean ...
Bradbury: Had the— had it not become clear that atomic weapons were becoming known around the world – if that's what you mean by –
Interviewer: HMM.
Bradbury: —technological imperative — and the United States did not wish to be number two or three or x in such a situation, it's clear there was a technological imperative to get busy and do your very best to make sure that you know all that there is to be known and do all that can possibly be done.
Bradbury: Now that is the technological imperative as I would describe it.
Bradbury: And it's not a very satisfying point of view, but you don't want to come to a conference table on the small end of the stick.
Bradbury: A mixture of metaphors.
Interviewer: WHAT—
Interviewer: YES.
Interviewer: HOW DID THE GCA — THE JOINT COMMITTEE FOR ATOMIC ENERGY EXERT PRESSURE ON THE AEC AND WORK AT LOS ALAMOS?
Bradbury: The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, JCAE?
Interviewer: YES.
Bradbury: Well, by the usual methods of coming around and saying, won't you boys hurry faster? What's holding you up? Do you need money? Do you need this, do you need that, anything we can do to help?
Interviewer: IF YOU COULD START BY SAYING THE JOINT COMMITTEE WOULD COME ROUND AND, IF THAT'S THE CASE...
Bradbury: Well, they would come around to be briefed—
Interviewer: IF YOU COULD JUST SAY THE JOINT COMMITTEE?
Interviewer: THE JOINT COMMITTEE AND HOW MUCH THEY— THAT YOU FELT THEY EXERTED PRESSURE ON YOU.
Bradbury: Well, they took their responsibilities extremely seriously.
Bradbury: I never felt their pressure was unwarranted or unwise or unkind.
Bradbury: But I never knew a Congressional committee — I have_________ — that took their job, as I say, with more seriousness.
Bradbury: Moreover (mostly?) they were trying to be helpful: what can we do to assist? How are things going? Keep us up to date.
Bradbury: Anything we can do? Do you need money?
Interviewer: LET'S GO TO A CLOSE UP.
Interviewer: HOW ABOUT BRIEN MCMAHON SPECIFICALLY?
Bradbury: Well, what about him?
Interviewer: OK.
Interviewer: I JUST WONDERED IF HE HAD…
Bradbury: Well, look—
Interviewer: IF WE CAN PICK UP ON THE NEWS OF THE SOVIET BOMB.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS THE REACTION? WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION OF THE NEWS? AND WHAT WERE THE EFFECTS ON THE LABORATORY?
Bradbury: Well, the first reaction I think that all of us here had was that the speed of the Russians in accomplishing this was very remarkable.
Bradbury: All of us had, of course, expected or really knew that in due course the Russians would have a bomb.
Bradbury: But that they had made one so rapidly, starting after, well, after let me say Stalingrad.
Bradbury: With(?) the country almost in a state of collapse, the scientific institutions in a state of collapse, no plants to make fissionable material.
Bradbury: They did all this in two or three years.
Bradbury: And they did it almost as fast as th— this country did it, with all the resources that we had at our disposal.
Bradbury: And plus this was quite surprising if anything it simply showed how much effort they must have devoted in their scientific and engineering establishment to, quote-unquote, catching up.
Interviewer: CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT SOME OF THE LOBBYING EFFORTS OF PEOPLE LIKE ALVAREZ AND LAWRENCE?
Bradbury: Not directly, because I wasn't, wasn't there.
Bradbury: When you say lobbying, I'm curious as to what you have in mind.
Interviewer: OH, THE LOBBYING FOR THE H-BOMB, WHEN THEY CAME TO LOS ALAMOS.
Bradbury: Oh, that particular problem.
Interviewer: YES.
Bradbury: We were all, of course on one side of the fence, with the exception perhaps of Oppenheimer, who was on the other side of the fence, I think Oppenheimer was only reluctantly convinced to where (?) it should go on.
Bradbury: He hoped it couldn't be done.
Bradbury: It was proofed (?) up to be feasible.
Bradbury: And of course, Edward Teller was about as opposed to that point of view as he could possibly get.
Bradbury: And most of us I think felt that we simply had to explore that problem.
Bradbury: If, if we didn't, the rest of the world would be anyway.
Bradbury: And while you couldn't guarantee that success was right around the corner.
Bradbury: Nevertheless, you had better know.
Interviewer: LET'S GO TO A CLOSE UP.
Interviewer: AS DIRECTOR, DID YOU HAVE PROBLEMS TRYING TO— HOW DID YOU COORDINATE PEOPLE SO THAT IF THERE WAS THIS SORT OF DIVISION IN OPINION ABOUT PROCEEDING WITH THE THERMONUCLEAR WEAPON--?
Bradbury: Well, after the laboratory settled down the people who were here for the duration of the war had gone home, and the laboratory was working out its program in '46, after the _______ situation, the ______ situation could stop and think for a minute, it turned out there was really great unanimity among the people who were here.
Bradbury: First of all, we needed more people.
Bradbury: But there was a lot of great ______ as to what the laboratory should do, how it should split itself up between basic, so-called pure research in physics and chemistry and mathematics, and how much of its efforts should go into programmatic activities specifically improving the characteristics, from the point of view of the user, of fission bombs and secondly from the point of view of — well, now you have a fission bomb, can you make a fusion bomb that will look something better than the inside of a freight car.
Interviewer: WE'LL GO BACK TO THE PERIOD OF THE H BOMB.
Interviewer: LET'S GO TO A WIDE SHOT — I'M SORRY.
Interviewer: STAY WITH THAT.
Interviewer: I'M SORRY.
Interviewer: CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT THE STATUS OF THERMONUCLEAR WORK AT LOS ALAMOS IN THE FALL OF '49?
Bradbury: In '49?
Interviewer: YES, THIS IS AFTER THE SOVIET BOMB.
Interviewer: WHAT WAS THE STATUS?
Bradbury: Well, it was very _____ -- most of our effort of course had been devoted to improving the deliverability of fission bombs.
Bradbury: But with the emergence of Russia as another nuclear power, it became, as I said, imperative that we see what can be done in the way of using fission bombs to start _____ some nuclear reaction to make an effective weapon.
Bradbury: The possibility of thermonuclear reactions had been known for ten years.
Bradbury: It was nothing— not new, but that was known when we first discovered deuterium and the neutron and things like that.
Bradbury: We knew that there were energetic, highly energetic, deteriorated deuterium reactions.
Bradbury: They did not seem at all feasible for practical development during the course of the war, whose end was getting close pretty fast.
Bradbury: But that bomb would have to be explored was obvious, because the Russians certainly have known all that (?), ______ what we knew via(?) Fuchs(?).
Bradbury: And a good deal of what we were thinking via Fuchs, if they hadn't been thinking of it themselves.
Bradbury: So it was, as I say, it didn't take any great genius of planning to say, well, all right, we know how to make fission bombs(?), we know there's a perfectly standard program how to improve them and make them adaptable to various types of delivery, to various _____ types of weapons, say fusion weapons, nuclear weapons so the thing we have to undertake is ______how do you set a usable thermonuclear device.