Excellent review. It almost makes me want to go back to rewatch this episode, but I've mostly sworn off Voyager. Perhaps I shall anyway.
In some ways I know Oppenheimer best through the mirror of the work of his brother Frank, who was also blacklisted thanks to HUAC--he founded The Exploratorium in San Francisco to try to bring people and children back to a love of science and science education. It's a marvelous place and a far better legacy than the atomic bomb.
One footnote from a Japanese history PhD: minutes from the meeting of the imperial cabinet on the morning of 9 August 1945 show that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, which had kicked off earlier that day at local midnight, was the impetus for the government deciding to surrender. They learned of the destruction of Nagasaki during the meeting, but neither that nor Hiroshima factored into the decision. ETA: in that respect it's worth nothing that the firebombings of most Japanese cities, particularly Tokyo, in the spring and summer of 1945 had been far more destructive of life and property--in Tokyo 100,000 people died in one night in March, for example; by August most of the major cities lay in ruins, which actually made it difficult for the Americans to pick targets. (I'm sure you're aware that Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing deliberately to provide good experimental results for the atomic bombing.) Putting the atomic bombings on a different scale than 'conventional' warfare is in some ways a mental habit of the nuclear age. Obviously nuclear weapons aren't the same, but the different effects were immediately visible only to people on the ground, and it took many years for public awareness that they were different and worse to become widespread.
no subject
In some ways I know Oppenheimer best through the mirror of the work of his brother Frank, who was also blacklisted thanks to HUAC--he founded The Exploratorium in San Francisco to try to bring people and children back to a love of science and science education. It's a marvelous place and a far better legacy than the atomic bomb.
One footnote from a Japanese history PhD: minutes from the meeting of the imperial cabinet on the morning of 9 August 1945 show that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, which had kicked off earlier that day at local midnight, was the impetus for the government deciding to surrender. They learned of the destruction of Nagasaki during the meeting, but neither that nor Hiroshima factored into the decision. ETA: in that respect it's worth nothing that the firebombings of most Japanese cities, particularly Tokyo, in the spring and summer of 1945 had been far more destructive of life and property--in Tokyo 100,000 people died in one night in March, for example; by August most of the major cities lay in ruins, which actually made it difficult for the Americans to pick targets. (I'm sure you're aware that Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing deliberately to provide good experimental results for the atomic bombing.) Putting the atomic bombings on a different scale than 'conventional' warfare is in some ways a mental habit of the nuclear age. Obviously nuclear weapons aren't the same, but the different effects were immediately visible only to people on the ground, and it took many years for public awareness that they were different and worse to become widespread.