Oppenheimer never seems to have grasped the nature of his relation to the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; nor is he the first explorer into the unknown who opens the door to atrocities. His relation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the same as the relationship of the atrocities of Columbus to the murder and starvation of millions of native Americans. The "pure researcher" evolves from the "explorer": their function is the same. [1] They are those who go into new territories to bring back knowledge to supply to the elite powers. Columbus sought the glory of "gold and God", for Ferdinand and Isabella, just as Oppenheimer sought world dominion and victory in war for the American President, the State Department and Big Business. So long as he was useful to the goals of the elites, he was retained. But when he started to equivocate, he was ruthlessly expelled, just as if a monk had questioned the rule of Christic mythology.

After the moment of the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and Nagasaki in many ways is the worse of the two-since Nagasaki was accomplished merely to see if a technology would work, and thus is probably the most destructive scientific experiment in history,- systems of knowledge can no longer be seen as representing the "truth"; nor can one on longer conceive of knowledge systems as independent entities, discretely bounded by their own internal coherence. There is no longer the possibility of abstract or "pure" knowledge; knowledge cannot be separated from its consequences, or its application in orchestrating social orders. The deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki bring all desire for transcendence through knowledge and power into question. It is no longer possible to grant to either religious mythologies or scientific inquiry and objectivity an unquestioned allegiance. These all ought to be circumscribed and questioned in relation to their usefulness or harmfulness to human rights. The images of Christ, Brahma or Allah as well as the belief in scientific truth are equally dubious.

The old gods and certainties are henceforth gone; the purpose and direction of history is unraveling: but the questioning of power and knowledge remains. The victims of Hiroshima, like the victims of Auschwitz and Treblinka or the victims in Vietnam and Siberia henceforth transcend the teachers of transcendence, transcend the masters of knowledge, the purveyors of power and the arrogance of history. History becomes the protest of the dead against the drive to knowledge and power among the living. Oppenheimer would die in 1967 of cancer, probably contracted from exposure to radiation. To the end he consistently maintained that "about the making of the bomb and of Trinity I have no remorse".[2] He could not question his faith that we cannot hold back science because of fear of what the world will do with its discoveries. We must hold back science for fear of its applications, if these applications violate human and natural rights. But Oppenheimer could not allow himself to think this thought. His own blind faith in science as a mode of transcendence and his refusal to question his faith is probably what led to the central part he played in the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If he was a victim, it was only because of his own desire for transcendence through total knowledge and power. He did not die as a martyr. His life and his evident suffering after 1953, if it is a symbol of anything, is a symbol of the need of protest against the power and knowledge he spent his life trying to acquire. There is a strange beauty in this. He did not die as a martyr to science, religion, the Hindu or Christian gods, but as a witness to the dangers of abstractions and belief systems and their ability to waste and destroy human life, as they wasted and destroyed his life. Oppenheimer was martyred, quite paradoxically, by himself and his own will to knowledge and power. A man who is martyr to himself is a man who is alienated from himself. His tragedy was that scientist in him killed the man who forgot his own humanity, and remembered it too late.

In contrast to Oppenheimer, John von Neumann, did not have many ambiguous feelings about the bomb, at least prior to his getting cancer from watching them explode, and converting to Catholicism, alledgedly, on his death bed, but this is not certain. What is certain is that von Nuemann was enthusiastic about nuclear weapons, power and science. So was William Laurence, a newspaper writer who was on the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. In what follows I will discuss these men in relation to knowledge and power and atrocity..

[1] The historical origin of the 'explorer' and 'pure researcher', seems to be the monk, the priest or the shaman. The shaman and monk were to attain intuitive state of consciousness which become the standard pattern of behavior for the rest of society. Plato's vision of the 'sovereign good' must be imposed through a political hierarchy. The replication of exalted spiritual states becomes a pattern through monastic orders and spiritual brotherhoods, which act as the explorers and knowledge-gatherers, who bring back their knowledge to the rest of mankind so that the Church and the Kings can continue on with implementation and bureaucracy. Researchers perform an analogous function, though the rationales and objects of legitimate knowledge have changed from Churches into governments and corporations.

[2] Lifton. pg. 224