"One millisecond after you read this, you and one billion other people could begin to perish. You probably think you know why. You don't, for the key elements in the chain of blunders that brought us to the brink of nuclear extinction remained to be disclosed." (p. 14)

Day One was written by Peter Wyden. Wyden was born in Berlin, Germany and moved to the United States in 1937 when he was 13-years old. He worked for Newsweek and was the Executive Editor of Ladies' Home Journal until his death in 1998.

Wyden wrote the bulk of Day One between 1980 and 1984. The fact that he was born in Germany does not seem to influence Wyden's writing, but the time period that the Day One was written was during the Cold War. The Cold War could have greatly influenced Wyden in his writing, as there was the constant threat of nuclear war hanging over everyone's heads.

By using first hand accounts Peter Wyden sets out to tell how the Atomic Bomb was created, deploy, and the results from its use on Hiroshima. Wyden continues to point out that many of the aspects of the bomb were results of guesswork that somehow worked without killing the creators. He also points out that many of the results of the bomb were totally unknown when it was first used. Huge risks were taken in order to get the Atomic Bomb out of theory and into working condition in the hope that it would help to end World War II quickly.

The author focuses mostly on the social aspects of the bomb. His main approach is to tell the firsthand experiences of people involved along the bomb's development and even some firsthand experiences on the aftermath of the dropping.

Up to, and even after the bomb was dropped, it was believed that anyone close enough to be harmed by the radiation would have been killed in the blast. At first the Japanese reports on the radiation aftereffects on Hiroshima where dismissed by US experts as simply propaganda. It was not until much later that the true effects of the radiation were discovered.

Peter Wyden cites many instances where the scientists did not even know how powerful the bomb's implosion would be. There was even a pool going about how strong the blast of the first test bomb would be. Bets in the pool ranged from the explosive force of the equivalent of 200 tons TNT clear to 45,000 tons. (p. 208)

On the Enola Gay, the B-29 plane used to drop the first atomic bomb, the bomb was armed in the air after take off. However, later on the second plane that was used to bomb Nagasaki the A-Bomb had to be armed before the plane took off. This was a huge risk because if the plane had crashed during takeoff, the result would have been "a very bad thing." On the night before the Enola Gay took off for its run, four planes were reported to have gone off that same runway and burned up. (p. 241)

Peter Wyden organized Day One into specific sections. "Book One" was entitled "Before the Bomb" and deals with the planning stages. It explains how Dr. Leo Szilard got the idea for the Atomic Bomb from a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells called The World Set Free. (p. 20) Included is a description of how Leo Szilard, with Albert Einstein's help, convinced President Roosevelt that the Atomic Bomb was an important enough project to receive government funding. Originally Szilard suggested $6000 in funding, but in the end "the A-bomb project would require the... sum of the two billion preinflation taxpayers' dollars." (p. 38)

There are also five chapters devoted to the experiences and reactions of the people in Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped. It also gives the reactions of some of the leaders, the scientists, and the reactions of others in charge after they learned about that first bomb drop.

The amount of sources used in Day One is incredible. In the back of the book there is an Acknowledgement section. (p. 393) In this section Wyden says he went through over 60 boxes of previously classified documents at the National Archives in Washington, as well as documents from four other main libraries/resource centers relating the bomb's devolvement and deployment.

For two years the author did research and interviewed eyewitnesses in Japan. In the Acknowledgements (p. 393) he lists and thanks, by name, over 120 people for helping with the book. These people included American and British scientists who worked at Los Alamos, historians in Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Tokyo, and former residents of Hiroshima. He also lists the people who helped with correct translations since many of the Hiroshima interviews where originally in Japanese. Much of this book was done with the help of other individuals who helped him analyzed and sort through all the information he was able to uncover.

Rather than crowding the footnotes onto the pages he provides "Source Notes" at the back of the book. Here he lists the page number, a few words of the quote, then the original source. Then you look up that source in the 12-page bibliography where he lists all of his document sources. His oral/interview sources just list the person's name and how the information was gathered. Then if you want to know who that person was you check in the Acknowledgements and find what category the person is listed under. This method makes the book look well organized, but it can be a 3-4-step process to trace his source from the original page until you know exactly who or what they are.

I think the author does a great job of proving that there was a huge amount of guesswork done when building the bombs and a huge amount of risks taken when deploying and testing them. I really like the Acknowledgements section in the book. It specifically tells who and where each of his sources came from. This is especially important since much of the book is from his interviews with people directly involved in the events. He was able to interview many people who were direct participants and eyewitnesses in the US and Japan. Wyden had access to some of the original accounts of the conception/building of the bomb.

The author is definitely against the use of atomic weapons. Nowhere does he acknowledge any of the positive aspects of nuclear energy (although that would be outside of the scope of the book). However, he does attempt to remain objective in his writing. Only in the Epilogue does he really pour on his anti-bomb sentiment and his position becomes very clear.

"Hiroshima tells us that the issue is reason versus extinction--not American deterrence versus Soviet deterrence; not progress versus technological standstill. The nuclear dawn brought false promise, but the day is not done." (p. 268)

Overall Peter Wyden has written a great book. In Day One you will find information and sources that are not available anywhere else. Wyden does a great job presenting firsthand accounts on the men who made the bomb, why the bomb was used, and some of the aftereffects.

works cited

Wyden, Peter. Day One. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

(412 pp. Illustrations, epilogue, notes, bibliography, acknowledgements, index.)