The Szilárd petition, drafted and circulated in July 1945 by scientist Leo Szilard, was signed by 70 scientists working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois. It asked President Harry S. Truman to inform Japan of the terms of surrender demanded by the allies, and allow Japan to either accept or refuse these terms, before America used atomic weapons. However, the petition never made it through the chain of command to President Truman. It was not declassified and made public until 1961. Later, in 1946, Szilárd jointly with Albert Einstein, created the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists that counted among its board, Linus Pauling (Nobel Peace Prize in 1962).
Background
The petition was preceded by the Franck Report, written by the Committee on the Social and Political Implications of the Atomic Bomb, of which James Franck was the chair. Szilárd and Met Lab colleague Glenn T. Seaborg co-wrote the report, which argued that political security in a post-nuclear world would rely upon international exchange and ownership of atomic information, and that in order to avoid a nuclear arms race and preserve goodwill towards the United States, Japan must be given proper warning ahead of the dropping of the bomb. Unlike the Franck Report, which by and large focused on the politics of using the atomic bomb and the possibility of international collaboration, the Szilárd Petition was a moral plea. Its signatories, foreseeing an age of rapid nuclear expansion, warned that, should the United States drop the bomb to end the war in the Pacific theater, they would "bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale." They feared that, in using the bomb, the United States would lose moral authority to bring the subsequent nuclear arms race under control. More than 50 of the initial signatories worked in the Chicago branch of the Manhattan Project. After much disagreement among the other scientists in Chicago, lab director Farrington Daniels took a survey of 150 scientists as to what they believed the best course of action would be, regarding the bomb. The results were as follows:
15% - the bomb should be used as a weapon by the military in order to bring about Japanese surrender with the fewest possible Allied casualties. 46% - the bomb should be demonstrated by the military in Japan, with the hope that surrender would follow; if not, the bomb should be used as a weapon. 26% - the bomb should be part of an experimental demonstration in the United States, with a Japanese delegation present as witnesses in the hope that they would bring their observations back to the government and advocate for surrender. 11% - the bomb should be used only as part of a public demonstration. 2% - the bomb should not be used in combat and total secrecy should be maintained afterwards. Szilárd asked his friend and fellow physicist, Edward Teller, to help circulate the petition at Los Alamos in the hopes of recruiting more signatures. However, Teller first brought Szilárd's request to Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer, who told Teller that politicians in Washington were already weighing the issue and that the lab scientists would do better to stay out of it. Thus, no new signatures for the petition were collected at Los Alamos.
Summary The petition was addressed to President Truman and stated that the original intention of the Manhattan Project was to defend the United States against a possible nuclear attack by Germany, a threat that had by then been eradicated. They then pleaded with Truman to make public the full terms of surrender and to await a Japanese response before dropping the atom bomb, and to consider his "obligation of restraint":"If after this war a situation is allowed to develop in the world which permits rival powers to be in uncontrolled possession of these new means of destruction, the cities of the United States as well as the cities of other nations will be in continuous danger of sudden annihilation [...] The added material strength which this lead gives to the United States brings with it the obligation of restraint and if we were to violate this obligation our moral position would be weakened in the eyes of the world and in our own eyes. It would then be more difficult for us to live up to our responsibility of bringing the unloosened forces of destruction under control. We, the undersigned, respectfully petition: first, that you exercise your power as Commander-in-Chief, to rule that the United States shall not resort to the use of atomic bombs in this war unless the terms which will be imposed upon Japan have been made public in detail and Japan knowing these terms has refused to surrender; second, that in such an event the question whether or not to use atomic bombs be decided by you in the light of the considerations presented in this petition as well as all the other moral responsibilities which are involved."
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