# How big a surprise was Hiroshima to the general public?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 22, 2010, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562 "2010-11-22T19:15:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 19
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2010, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/61 "2010-11-24T11:35:28Z")
> [@user\_hostile](#):
>
> It was tested on a small scale: two pieces of HEU were brought together briefly at criticality. (IRC, it was a slug that was dropped through a larger cylinder). A prompt burst of neutrons and some Joule heating gave the scientist some empirical numbers to match up to the theory.
>
> This is where Richard Feynman famously coined the phrase, “Tickling the tale of a sleeping dragon.”
The “technique” would shortly thereafter lead to the death of one of the physicists working at Los Alamos - Canadian expatriate [Louis Slotin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Los_Alamos).
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### Author:  [@willthekittensurvive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/willthekittensurvive)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2010, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/62 "2010-11-24T12:15:16Z")
nevermind
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2010, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/63 "2010-11-24T15:45:41Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#):
>
> Yeah, it’s not like he was important or anything.
Despite the fact that Harding had died in office a mere 20 years earlier, and McKinley 20 years before that, the vice presidency was still considered unimportant. It was an era when Wilson’s Vice President, Thomas Marshall told the story of two brothers, one of whom was elected Vice President and never heard from again, and FDR’s first VP, John Nance Garner, declared the office “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”
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### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2010, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/64 "2010-11-24T16:08:07Z")
> [@kunilou](#):
>
> Despite the fact that Harding had died in office a mere 20 years earlier, and McKinley 20 years before that, the vice presidency was still considered unimportant. It was an era when Wilson’s Vice President, Thomas Marshall told the story of two brothers, one of whom was elected Vice President and never heard from again, and FDR’s first VP, John Nance Garner, declared the office “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”
I hadn’t heard this before, but I was just reading that supposedly Roosevelt had told a few people in the final weeks of his life that he was thinking about resigning in 1946 due to his poor health and having Truman finish his term. He said he wanted to stay in office long enough to get the United Nations founded but it was still considered likely the war would still be going on. Of course, it’s always tough to tell what Roosevlet was really thinking.
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### Author:  [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2010, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/65 "2010-11-25T00:07:35Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#):
>
> My understanding is that there were discussions about how to best use the available bombs. One option was to use them for strategic city bombing. Another was to use them against built-up military targets like an invasion site.
>
> Strategic bombings against cities won out as the first plan for relatively pragmatic reasons - the bombs and the means to drop them on a city were ready but the invasion forces were not.
[QUOTE=GreasyJack]
The way I’ve interpreted this is that it was just a lot easier for the scientists working on the bomb to imagine it being used on the battlefield than on cities, especially earlier in the project when some of the German scientists’ home cities might have been on the target list. Groves and the others trying to corral the scientists didn’t know better than anyone else how they would be used, but they probably didn’t discourage the notion that they would be used on mainly military targets.
[/QUOTE]
[Both commenting on the same section of my previous post.]
It’s undoubtedly true that virtually all the scientists involved envisaged a nuclear weapon being used against a military target. But virtually none of them were involved in the actual targeting decisions.
Those who were, during the spring and summer of 1945, understood that the targets would be cities. But there was also the understanding at the time - justified or not, and extending to Truman - that those cities were military targets. The invasion was an irrelevance in these discussions. Offhand, I’m not even sure it was ever mentioned in the targeting discussions.
As I’ve already indicated, no one was going to object to such a suggestion of using nuclear weapons against the invasion beaches. It’s that discussions never really seriously reached that stage.
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### Author:  [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2010, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/66 "2010-11-25T00:25:36Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> Apparently Campbell also guessed that something must be going on in Los Alamos, since a significant number of his readers had sent in changes of address when they moved there.
We’ve discussed Campbell’s wartime knowledge of nuclear physics [before](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6436658). This version, while cute, doesn’t appear supported by the available evidence.
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### Author:  [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2010, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/67 "2010-11-25T00:30:32Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#):
>
> The “technique” would shortly thereafter lead to the death of one of the physicists working at Los Alamos - Canadian expatriate [Louis Slotin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Los_Alamos).
I was going to link Louis Slotin’s Wikipedia page to my post, but kind of felt guilty when I saw his [badge picture](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Louis_Slotin&diff=398578914&oldid=397804270#Slotin's_Los_Alamos_badge_photo). (I will admit to LOL when I saw this.)
I guess they’ve updated the page and removed the picture.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2010, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/68 "2010-11-25T03:16:36Z")
bonzer writes:
\> This version, while cute, doesn’t appear supported by the available evidence.
Is there any specific evidence against it, or is it merely that there’s no evidence for it? The only reason that I mentioned it is that it’s discussed in the Wikipedia article on “Deadline.” I have no further information about it.
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### Author:  [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2010, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/69 "2010-11-25T11:10:57Z")
> [@user\_hostile](#):
>
> I was going to link Louis Slotin’s Wikipedia page to my post, but kind of felt guilty when I saw his [badge picture](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Louis_Slotin&diff=398578914&oldid=397804270#Slotin's_Los_Alamos_badge_photo).
I guess we’re both evil. I laughed too! 😃
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### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2010, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/70 "2010-11-25T18:59:29Z")
I was only 8 at the time, but I recall that my father was utterly astonished. He truly felt that the world had entered a new age. He tried to explain the significance to me, but I didn’t appreciate it till later.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2010, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/71 "2010-11-25T19:19:54Z")
One data point. The Lab at MIT (in Building 20) that worked on radar was called the Radiation Lab to cover the war-critical research with a name of an area that cleary had no strategic value.
A biography of Feynman noted that the station master in Princeton Junction knew something was going on because a lot of Princeton profs and grad students bought tickets to a station in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. What he didn’t know.
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### Author:  [@Turble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Turble)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2010, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/72 "2010-11-27T03:34:16Z")
I just asked my dad about this. He was on a destroyer (USS Wedderburn DD-684) just off the coast of Japan at the time.
He said that several days before the bomb was dropped his ship and a couple others in the group had each picked up two civilian scientists from another ship. The scientists had a small amount of equipment. Sailors on board weren’t told anything else and there were no rumors.
Dad said the first time they knew anything was when they saw the mushroom cloud.
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### Author:  [@Green\_Cymbeline](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Cymbeline)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2010, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/73 "2010-11-27T05:46:40Z")
> [@KlondikeGeoff](#):
>
> The headline, as I remember it ran, “Atom Bomb Hits Japan” and that was the first inkling I, or anybody I knew, had regarding it. That headline meant nothing to me, so had to read the story, which was far from explaining it. In my HS physics course, we had studied atoms, molecules, etc, bt the concept of a bomb was a total surprise.
>
> And I had never heard of Hiroshima either.
[QUOTE=Hari Seldon]
I was only 8 at the time, but I recall that my father was utterly astonished. He truly felt that the world had entered a new age. He tried to explain the significance to me, but I didn’t appreciate it till later.
[/QUOTE]
Just wanted to say, this is why I love the Dope: the fact that there are people who actually lived through this who are willing to share their experiences with us. This is so valuable to me! (And thanks to **Turble’s** dad, too!)
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### Author:  [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2010, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/74 "2010-11-27T22:59:05Z")
> [@Disposable Hero](#):
>
> How big a surprise was Hiroshima to the general public?
>
> Before someone else says the obvious I mean to the general public of the allies, .
Not at all, it was not a surprise to anyone who went to the movies, or who took high school physics, or who read the daily newspaper. We didnt know exactly “when” or ""where it would be ready, but neither did the president know those specifics. The idea of the feasibility of an atom bomb was pretty well known by the general public, and everyone knew our government was working on it.
In 1944 Alfred Hitchcock knew about the atom bomb and used the atom bomb/uranium as a plot in his movie “ **Notorious** ”
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### Author:  [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2010, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/75 "2010-11-28T00:28:04Z")
> [@nyctea scandiaca](#):
>
> Just wanted to say, this is why I love the Dope: the fact that there are people who actually lived through this who are willing to share their experiences with us. This is so valuable to me! (And thanks to **Turble’s** dad, too!)
Agreed, didn’t really expect any ‘I was there!’ replies but its not actually _that_ long ago.
Thanks everyone!
btw finished the book, Operation Downfall by Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar, doesn’t really leave you in any doubt that dropping the bombs was definitely the lesser of two evils.
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### Author:  [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2010, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/76 "2010-11-28T06:09:16Z")
> [@Susanann](#):
>
> Not at all, it was not a surprise to anyone who went to the movies, or who took high school physics, or who read the daily newspaper. We didnt know exactly “when” or ""where it would be ready, but neither did the president know those specifics. The idea of the feasibility of an atom bomb was pretty well known by the general public, and everyone knew our government was working on it.
>
> In 1944 Alfred Hitchcock knew about the atom bomb and used the atom bomb/uranium as a plot in his movie “ **Notorious** ”
Notorious was filmed in late 1945, after the bombs were dropped, and released in 1946, so that’s not evidence of anything. See [wiki on Notorious](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notorious_(1946_film)):
> [@](#):
>
> **Notorious** is a 1946 American thriller film directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains as three people whose lives become intimately entangled during an espionage operation. It was shot in late 1945 and early 1946 and was released by RKO in August 1946.
Do you have a cite for any of the rest of your post?
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### Author:  [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2010, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/77 "2010-11-28T09:37:12Z")
But work on it started earlier than that. Further down in that entire Wiki article:
“Among the many changes to the original story was the introduction of a MacGuffin: a cache of uranium being held in Sebastian’s wine cellar by the Nazis. At the time, it was not common knowledge that uranium was being used in the development of the atomic bomb, and Selznick had trouble understanding its use as a plot device. Indeed, Hitchcock later claimed he was followed by the FBI for several months after he and Hecht discussed uranium with Robert Millikan at Caltech in mid-1945.[18] In the event, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and the release of details of the Manhattan Project, removed any doubts about its use.[19]”
Otara
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### Author:  [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2010, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/78 "2010-11-28T21:48:25Z")
> [@aceplace57](#):
>
> I’ve also heard (in the documentaries) that the German Physicists were not eager to give Hitler the A Bomb. They did everything possible to delay research without actually getting arrested. At the end of the war Germany sent a U Boat to Japan with their uranium, heavy water etc. Thankfully, the U Boat was intercepted
I read somewhere that one of the problems the Germans had was some sort of fundamental misunderstanding of how the fission process would work. It was something the Allies found out after snooping on some gathered physicists who had worked in Germany during the war. Any truth to that.
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### Author:  [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)
#### Post date: [November 29, 2010, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-big-a-surprise-was-hiroshima-to-the-general-public/561562/79 "2010-11-29T13:59:49Z")
> [@Snnipe\_70E](#):
>
> The Japaneese did not give up after the bombs were dropped. There was a large faction of the military that wanted to fight on. The day they did give it up was when the Army Air Force put 1000 planes over Tokeyo and planned on repeating it the next day.
A faction of the military did want to fight on – not so much in spite of the bombs _per se_ as “in spite of reality itself.” _Nothing_ would have made them want to stop.
But the rest of this is demonstrably wrong. The Army Air Force had _already_ [destroyed Tokyo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_tokyo#B-29_raids) months previously. In one raid in particular (although there were many) on the night of March 9-10, 1945, 16 square miles of the center of the city were destroyed, 100,000 people killed in a firestorm, and over a million made homeless. That’s more deaths and damage than either atomic bomb alone, and the B-29s would be back _ten more times_ for major raids.
On August 8th and 10th, the only two nights of raids “after the [atomic] bombs were dropped,” the AAF put 60 and 70 bombers over Tokyo, not anything like 1,000.
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