Oppenheimer, according to his biographers Kai Bird and Martin J Sherwin, celebrated the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. A 1995 report in The Atlantic says that the room was filled with ‘whistling, cheering, foot-stomping scientists and technicians that he was sorry only that the bomb had not been ready in time for use on Germany’. He even advised the military on how to correctly deploy the warheads. “Don’t let them bomb through clouds or through an overcast. Got to see the target. No radar bombing; it must be dropped visually… Of course, they must not drop it in rain or fog. Don’t let them detonate it too high. The figure fixed on is just right. Don’t let it go up or the target won’t get as much damage,” he said.
In October, Oppenheimer visited President Harry S Truman, and reportedly told him, “Mr. President, I have blood on my hands.” Truman replied, “The blood was on my hands, let me worry about that.” According to author Paul Ham’s Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath, Truman kicked Oppenheimer out of the Oval Office, while The Atlantic said that the President was ‘disgusted by this cry-baby attitude’. According to an article by Steven Shapin published in the London Review of Books in 2000, President Truman even told his lieutenants, “Don’t let that crybaby in here again.” many of his biographers compared that exchange to that between Krishna and Arjuna in the Gita, minus Truman’s derision.
According to the paper The Gita of J Robert Oppenheimer by James A Hijiya, Krishna gives Arjuna three reasons why he shouldn’t back down from his duty. He tells Arjuna that as a soldier, it is duty to fight; that Krishna, not Arjuna, will determine who lives and who dies; and that Arjuna must detach himself from the repercussions of his actions, and that his only duty is to remain faithful to him, Krishna. As Arjuna ‘begins to see the light’, Krishna tells him, “Death am I, and my present task Destruction.”
Oppenheimer understood the gravity of what he had done, and seemed to have resigned himself to his role in the entire operation. “If you are a scientist,” he told his fellow workers at Los Alamos in November 1945, “You cannot stop such a thing… If you are a scientist you believe… that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values.”
After being shut down by Truman, Oppenheimer devoted his life to the regulation of nuclear power. He is played by actor Cillian Murphy in the film, which is due out in theatres on Friday. Oscar-winner Gary Oldman, who collaborated with Nolan on the Dark Knight trilogy, plays Truman.