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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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The Bomb and Me
My Secret Pomona Life / By Brenton Stearns
’49
text In the fall of 1945 when I arrived on the Pomona College campus, I
was in the unusual position of knowing more about the atomic bomb than
probably anyone else at the College. My physicist father had been in the
midst of its development—something that came to me in a flash on the
tragic day in August when the bomb was first dropped.
Just weeks before arriving at Pomona, I was in Denver, riding the
streetcar home from a summer job, when I saw the headlines—and
immediately knew that the bomb was the product of the secret project in
which my father had been working. My feelings were a jumble of pride,
horror and regret. I believed I would be spared from combat—I had just
turned 17—but I wondered what kind of world I would live in with this
new power unleashed.
 Dad had rejoined the family in Denver on Aug. 17, 1945, for a short
vacation. He had accepted the position of dean of faculty at Washington
University in St. Louis, accompanying his longtime mentor, Nobel
prize-winning physicist Arthur H. Compton. I didn’t know then that his
Denver trip was planned to allow him to be with us when the attack on
Japan was announced.
Upon arriving at my aunt’s apartment, where we were staying, I found
newspaper reporters. Dad was on the phone trying to reach Compton to
find out just how much he could say. The reporters had already been
informed by the official releases that several of Dad’s former students
were part of the project. After talking with Compton, Dad proceeded to
fill in the reporters on the backgrounds of the people from Denver.
Other than that, he told the reporters he could not go beyond the
official statement.
After the reporters left, Dad took me out on the balcony and gave me a
quick education on the basics of uranium 235 and nuclear chain
reactions. He then said words which I have long treasured: “I want you
to know that I tried as hard as I could to get them to demonstrate it
first for the Japanese on some uninhabited island.” I never doubted
him—it was the kind of man I knew him to be.
In the years since, the details of what he meant by “trying hard” have
been released. A small group of scientists in the Chicago project
attempted to convince Washington to demonstrate the bomb to the world
before unleashing it on innocent civilians. I remembered a night when a
group of the men from “the project” had met in our living room for a
hushed discussion. I was introduced to Dr. James Franck and told that
they would be having a very serious private discussion, and that I
should go to my room and not try to listen. I did as I was told.
I started my first year at Pomona in the upbeat mood we all had at the
war’s end. I had great fun, but it didn’t last. Before spring exams, my
father was operated on for colon cancer. Mother and Dad came to visit me
the next fall, their only time at the College. In the spring, Dad had a
second operation.
We decided I would transfer to Oberlin College to be closer to home. My
Oberlin career lasted one semester. I got a tearful call from my mother
that the cancer had returned. For the second semester, I enrolled in
Washington University. Dad died during final exam week.
Following Dad’s guidance, I had been accepted at Los Alamos Laboratory
in New Mexico in a summer program for college students to participate in
research on non-weapons projects. At Los Alamos, I met the members of
the faculty that Dad had brought to Denver, who had then gone with him
to Chicago and finally to Los Alamos. I worked in the Fast Reactor Group
headed by old friends David and Jane Hall.
Most of the other summer students were from Caltech; they wondered why
anyone would go to Pomona to study physics. They were taken aback when
they learned that the laboratory director, Norris Bradbury, was a Pomona
graduate. It was a summer of relief and adventure for me. Afterward, I
returned to Pomona to finish my undergraduate study.
I still ponder how different our world might have become if our leaders
had heeded the wisdom of the Franck Committee—and of my father—and
allowed atomic energy to be born in an extraordinary show of good will,
rather than one of terror. As it is, fear will always be around the
corner. |
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