Memoirs: Post War
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As the European War came to and end in May and it seemed unlikely the Japanese would stand up for long agains the assault on their homeland the Allies were readying, there was increasingly little -- my project being an exception -- that new technology could contribute to the war effort and most people in the Lab were becoming restless. They wer anxious to get back to teaching and even more anxious to beging applying the exciting new microwave and high accuracy measurement techniques to a host of research problems which had appearred as the war work proceeded but had to be ignored because of the urgency of that work. While waiting impatiently for the demobilization, many of the scientist used their time authoring a set of books on the different aspects of radar, which became the Radiation Lab series, in twenty-eight volumes, which remains, to this day, the best refernce work on radar, despite the many advances in the specific component since that time. While most of the staff was thus preparing to leave or dreaming of what was to come next, my group's drive to ready the B-17's kept me totally occupied.
Then, suddenly, on August 6, President Truman made the announcement that an atomic bomb, with the explosive power of 20,000 tons of TNT, had been dropped on Hiroshima, leveling the city. Three days later another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, with the same effect. |
<--- Abruptly, the huge invasion plans, involving hundreds of thousands of men, thousands of aircraft and hundreds of ships, ground to a halt. The troops under preparation found themselves suddenly idle, while at the lab most people sped up work on their remaining commitments so they would be able to leave as quickly as possible. People like me, who had no place they could or wished to return to, lingered on. Personally, I was rather confused; one day I had the most urgent project in the country, the next I was worrying about how I was going to make a living. For awhile I spent my time closing down the program in as orderly a fashion as possible so the components would be available if they were needed for some other purpose. The design was, in fact, later used as the starting point for two further airborne detection and control planes; a B29, deployed on the seaward fence of the U.S. air defense system in the 1950's and, still later, in the general purpose airborne control plane, the AWAC. Thinking about my personal situation I was not at all clear what I wanted to do. I was, as well, concerned about what someone might be willing to employ me to do. Although I was a respected member of the RadLab staff, unlike most of my colleagues, who came from universities and intended to return to their pre-war teaching and research, the only thing I was certain of was that I did not want to go back to my previous job at the Library of Congress. My three years at RadLab had rekindled my interest in research and basic engineering and I wanted to find a post-war position where I could continue doing the tame kind of work. In fact, I realized that teaching in a university would be an ideal career path for me, but I was afraid my background didn't qualify me for SUCh a position. My worries were increased when I compared my experience to that of my closest colleagues. In my anxiety I failed to mate allowance for the fact that I was five to ten years younger than most of the people who were my role models Zacharias, Flit, Purcell, Rabi and Berkner, as well as many of the other people who I normally associated with. Unbeknownst to me, while I was busy directing the B-17 project, Al and Jerold had been thinking about my future. They were able to arrange a position for me that I would never have imagined possible, as an assistant professor in MlT's Electrical Engineering Department, which included responsibility For the E.E. Department's involvement in a new lab, the Research Laboratory of Electronics. |
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RLE was one of two new labs that MIT was planning to organize as successors to the Radiation Lab, to continue exploring the exciting scientific and engineering innovations that had resulted from the war work. The other one was the Laboratory of Nuclear Science and Engineering. Both were jointly organized by the departments of Physics and Electrical Engineering. RLE was to be headed by Julius Stratton, famous member of the Physics Department faculty, and the Nuclear lab was to be managed by Jerold. The RLE, though it was intended for nonmilitary research, would be sponsored by the three service branches, whose leaders recognized the need for continuing a high level of basic and applied technological work after the war as well as for providing returning GI's with the opportunity for graduate education. I was genuinely surprised when Harold Hazen, the chairman of the E.E. Department, invited me to his office and proposed that I join his department. I told him that I was intrigued by MIT'S post-war plans and especially excited about the part that I was being asked to play in the new electronics laboratory. However, a few days earlier, Berkner had invited me to Washington to explore the possibility of my becoming the Director of the Naval Research Laboratories, a proposal that was also enticing and I had agreed to go for an interview. Thus, I asked Hazen if I could wait a few days before giving him my decision. He was surprised by my response but agreed to give me the time. In truth, I was inclined to accept his offer immediately but I felt that Lloyd would be hurt if I didn't go with him after the effort he had made on my behalf, so I decided I should attend the meeting as planned. In Washington I was interviewed by the Admiral in charge of all Naval research and two of his aides. |
The meeting had gone well for more than an hour when the Admiral apparently detected some hesitancy on my part and told me that it was my patriotic duty to take the position because the United States and the Soviet Union were going to be at war within fifteen years and we had to be well prepared. I was shocked by this statement and by the gleam in his eye as he said it. Without thinking how he and his colleagues would react, I asked, it a war does occur, how will you know whether you predicted it or helped cause it? There was an awkward silence, after which the discussion quickly became more general and less animated and I realized that my naive question had eliminated me as a candidate. I was sorry because I had some interest in the position and I was also worried about Berkner's reaction, though when I explained what had happened he seemed not to mind. In addition, I was more than a little upset by the officer's lust for conflict. I was to learn later, as I continued to work with people in the Navy, that his was not a common attitude. One lesson I should have learned from this experience but didn't was to keep my opinion of such outlandish statements as the one this officer made to myself. This impulsive trait of mine to challenge things I didn't believe was to get me in trouble on a number of occasions in the future but I think it was my way of understanding things and situations. In fact, sometimes I simply talked too much, interrupting a speaker when I was impatient to make a point. My wife and my friends so often told me about this that I would be conscious of my breach of proper behavior while I was doing it. As I aged I learned to be a better listener but I never learned subtle means of correcting what I believed was a wrong statement if it could lead to a wrong conclusion and I never learned to just say nothing in such a circumstance. |
