How we cite our quotes: Chapter name.(Chapter Number).Paragraph
Quote #7
Political leaders were open to the idea of accepting the Potsdam demand. Military leaders urged immediate rejection. They especially feared unconditional surrender, which would allow foreign soldiers to take over their country with no conditions. This, they felt, was too disgraceful to even consider. (Little Boy.(32).27)
Sometimes patriotism and pride in one's country can be harmful. The world might be a very different place today if Japan had accepted the Potsdam proposal, but the military leaders just couldn't shelve their patriotism long enough to see the sense in surrender. In their defense, however, they had no idea what was in store for them.
Quote #8
"We all felt that, like the soldiers, we had done our duty," said Hans Bethe, "and that we deserved to return to the type of work that we had chosen as our life's career, the pursuit of pure science and teaching." (Father of the Bomb.(36).14)
The soldiers got to go home and resume their lives, for the most part, so this was a fair assumption for the scientists to make. Their duty to their country was done; the need for more atomic bombs was diminished when Japan surrendered. Was it unpatriotic to not want to continue?
Quote #9
Strauss argued that Oppenheimer's opposition to the H-bomb was an act of disloyalty to America. He suggested that maybe Oppenheimer had always been disloyal. As evidence, he dug up those flimsy charges the army and FBI had investigated ten years before: that Oppenheimer was secretly a Communist and maybe even a Soviet spy. (Epilogue.54)
Oppenheimer sacrificed years of his life in order to help produce a weapon that would almost single-handedly win the war with Japan, and yet his loyalty was still being questioned. We just wish Strauss could have seen that Oppenheimer's opposition to building an H-bomb was in fact proof of his patriotism. He knew that by building such a weapon Americans wouldn't be safer and was trying to prevent catastrophe.