Rain of Ruin Writing Sample

Writing Sample from Rain of Ruin: The Atomic Bombing of Japan

Pearl Harbor

The Japanese sneak-attack on Pearl Harbor galvanizes the War Department’s budding atomic research program. The effort is assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers ‘Manhattan District’ in New York City, giving the new ‘Manhattan Project’ its name.

Gen. Groves and Oppenheimer Groves talking to reporters and CU head shot.

The Corps of Engineers assigns one of its most can-do officers to head up the program: Colonel Leslie Richard Groves.

Pentagon being built

Groves gets the job on the strength of his success managing another gigantic engineering challenge: the eighteen-month crash program to erect the War Department’s new Pentagon-shaped headquarters.

Gen. Leslie Groves still

Bucking for a promotion, Groves is eager for a European battle command. Instead, he’s ordered to shepherd a bunch of eggheads pursuing a pipedream. But he gets the promotion anyway: to Brigadier General.

Gen. Groves with Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer

General Groves combs the universities looking for a physicist to head up the scientific arm of the Manhattan Project. He selects Julius Robert Oppenheimer, a brilliant theoretical physicist then teaching at Berkeley.

See Gen. Leslie Groves

Oppenheimer and Groves could not be more different. Of the General, one admirer remarks, "Most impressive ego since Napoleon." Groves is a West Point graduate; pragmatic, driven, conservative, overweight – with two-pound boxes of chocolate always stashed in his office safe.

J. Robert Oppenheimer stills J. Robert Oppeheimer

Oppenheimer weighs barely 128 pounds – and dislikes fat people. He’s graduated cum laude from Harvard in three years, and is now a pie-in-the-sky theoretician. He reads Sanskrit for fun.
And Oppenheimer admits that he has been a member of "just about every Communist-front organization on the west coast" – end quote. Among his many Communist friends and relations are his brother, his wife, and his mistress.
Yet he displays keen insight into methods for organizing such a huge research effort. Groves is at last persuaded that J. Robert Oppenheimer is the man for the job.

Groves single

But Army opposition to the appointment of a ‘Communist sympathizer’ is stiff. Finally, Groves has to give a direct order to the security office for them to issue Oppenheimer’s clearance.