“A brigadier general then in OPD [Operations Division of the General Staff, United States Army] told the author that, after some extracurricular scientific reflection in the early spring of 1945, he conceived the idea that the release of atomic energy for military purposes might be practical. He said he innocently aired the suggestion in the War Department that the Japanese might be working on such a weapon and wondered if the United States should not be doing something about it. He was considerably surprised at the intensive security check to which he was suddenly subjected. The fact that OPD officers in general had no idea of what was in the immediate future is indicated by their consternation when a project for construction of an artificial harbor for use in the March 1946 attack on Japan was approved with ‘priority above all military and naval programs except MANHATTAN project.’ OPD officers told the author that they could not guess nor discover what the mysterious MANHATTAN was and doubted that it could be more important than the harbor for 1946. One S&P [Strategy & Policy Group] officer said he received oral orders from General Hull [Director of Operations Division] to quit trying to find out anything about MANHATTAN.” – Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division, United States Army in World War Two (internal citations omitted)
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