When truman finally met with robert oppenheimer in October 1945, he asked him to guess when the russians would develop their own atomic bomb. Oppenheimer did not know. Truman responded that he knew the answer: "never." Clearly surprised by the president's truculent ignorance and frustrated that he did not understand the seriousness of the evolving crisis, Oppenheimer blurted out, "mr. President, I feel I have blood on my hands." Truman responded with anger. Truman: I told him the blood was on my hands and to let me worry about that. Afterwards, Truman told dean acheson... Truman: I don't want to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again. Oppenheimer was later attacked by right-wing conservatives as an agent of the Soviet Union, and subjected to numerous investigations by the f. B. I. in 1954, his security clearance was revoked. His real crime in the eyes of american authorities was opposing building the new hydrogen bomb, which he considered a weapon of genocide.
Even president truman's bigotry Long antedated reports of japanese savagery. As a young man courting his future wife, he wrote: I think one man is as good as another, So long as he's honest and decent and not a nigger or a chinaman. Uncle will says that the lord made a white man of dust, a nigger from mud, then threw up what was left and it came down a chinaman.
This racism prevailed when president roosevelt in February 1942 signed an executive order calling for the evacuation of over 110,000 Japanese and japanese-americans from california oregon and washington on the grounds that they "represented a threat to national security." 70% of them were american citizens.
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