In spite of the bustle, the weekend at Rosebank was most pleasant. As the reports of our arrival began to appear, friends sought us out and telegrams and letters of congratulation poured in.
We had an overflow crowd as we set out on Monday for the momentous trip across the bay. It was a sparkling day and lower Manhattan was a spectacular sight, especially as seen from the deck of the Phoenix. We were under both power and sail, but the breeze was too light to do us much good and it took four hours to inch our way up the Hudson, against the outgoing tide, to the small-boat basin at West 79th Street. On the way we tried to stay on the fringe of the busy harbor traffic and did not forget to make our bow to the Statue of Liberty, as we passed her very close on the port hand.
At the commercial dock we settled down to ten days or so of combined business and pleasure in Manhattan. The dockage fee was higher than in any other port we had visited—5 cents a foot per day—but we had Riverside Park at our bow, a view of the Palisades across the river, and fast connections to midtown within a few minutes’ walk. There was no need to remind ourselves that a cheap hotel room would have cost even one of us several times what we were paying for all seven.
It was a hot and hectic time. Just a list of the things we did would be exhausting, but they included many of the rubbernecking activities that Barbara and I had experienced before, but which were new and exciting to Ted, Jessica, and the three M’s. In addition we had a good deal of business to attend to, including a series of conferences with Lurton Blassingame, our indefatigable agent, and a number of radio and TV interviews.
One of these—a half-hour interview-type program called “Night Beat” on which I was interviewed alone—was particularly interesting to me and, in retrospect, perhaps crucial, as it served to crystallize some hitherto rather amorphous thinking. I had no idea which of the many subjects we had discussed before going on the air would be emphasized, and was completely surprised when John Wingate, the interviewer, chose to ignore the yachting and travel aspect entirely and concentrated instead on my scientific work in Hiroshima and on the problem of radioactivity and our government’s foreign policy as a whole.
The program was well known for its controversial nature but Barbara, watching with friends, was as unprepared as I was for the series of very direct questions regarding my attitude toward nuclear testing and disarmament. She told me later that she actually had not the slightest idea what my answer would be when Mr. Wingate brought up the issue of the recently announced “clean bomb” and asked what I thought of it.
My first remark was almost instinctive. “A ‘clean bomb’ is like an antiseptic bullet. It kills you just as dead.” I went on to amplify my feelings, pointing out that even the “ideal” clean bomb described by Mr. Eisenhower, 96 per cent “clean,” would be twice as radioactive as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, from which victims were still dying of long-term effects of radioactivity.
Questions followed in quick succession. I didn’t resent the fact that they were “loaded,” since I had come on the program of my own free will and was intent only on answering as honestly and frankly as possible.
“Dr. Reynolds, would you unilaterally stop the testing of nuclear weapons?”
A host of thoughts crowded into my mind. To have given the audience a fair and comprehensible survey of the thinking and knowledge that determined my answer would have taken at least an hour. Anything less than that would have seemed equivocating. I simply answered, “Yes.”