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‘Were they aware of radiation and fallout?’ I said. ‘Or did it take them by surprise?’

‘They knew there were going to be fission products and that they had to go someplace. The wind was blowing, so they could trace it across the country, and they interviewed people who were in that path. There were cattle that died and some people got mild exposures, but nothing serious.’

Frank and Jack both looked in very good health, especially considering all their years of work on the project. A few weeks after the explosion, Jack was part of a group that dug up some of the radioactive remnants at the test site in search of new elements. In the debris they discovered a few new isotopes, including plutonium.

Then Frank told me something astonishing. ‘A friend of mine is the only person in the world who saw the first three atomic bombs. He not only went to Trinity, he also flew on the airplanes that dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He invented the trigger for the bomb so he was asked to go along in the airplanes to set it up when they got close. And then he dropped it. When he came back, I asked him, “How did you feel, killing so many people?” He said at first it was a very bad feeling, but then he prayed a lot about it and realised that many of our soldiers wouldn’t have to go there to continue fighting the Japanese. The war would end, so he saved a lot of lives. He was satisfied with what he did.’

‘Was anybody troubled with guilt?’

‘A large number were,’ said Jack. ‘They circulated a petition not to use the bomb aggressively but to demonstrate its power at a deserted island someplace. There were literally hundreds of signatures on that petition, but it never reached Roosevelt. Secretary Byrnes [James F. Byrnes, the US Secretary of State in 1945] blocked it. He didn’t want Roosevelt to see that.’

‘Really?’ I was amazed.

‘He had already decided with the military and all,’ said Jack. ‘They may have been correct, I’m not questioning that. But, yes, there was guilt. A lot of it.’

I was very glad to hear that. Not glad that people felt guilty exactly, but it would have been deeply disturbing if no one had even cared about it.

One of the lodges had been the home of Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project and is widely regarded as the architect of the bomb. He apparently served the best dirty martinis in town, but he never came to terms with being the person who unleashed the horrific power of the atom bomb. Immediately after the test, he admitted that he had ‘become the destroyer of worlds’.

Nevertheless, Jack said there ‘were a lot of fun sides to the pre-explosion bit. Working here was fun, a great deal of pleasure in finding things out. It was exciting looking for something very new. That question of how might it work and could we build one? And then: “Wow, we did it!” That kind of thing. But it wasn’t anybody’s idea to blow up people with it. They wanted to end the war, no question about that. Certainly a demonstration would have been possible, inviting everybody in, but that suggestion didn’t work. Nobody accepted that outside of the people who were concerned.’

Personally, I wish the ones who drew up the petition had won. America has been left in a very weak position because it has used an atomic weapon in anger. ‘How could America say to Iran, “You mustn’t do it” when they’ve done it twice?’ I asked.

‘Absolutely right,’ said Jack. ‘And it’s worse than that. We will not sign a non-first-use treaty with anybody.’

That made me shiver.

Frank and Jack clearly had misgivings about where the world had been led by the Manhattan Project. They’d both also been involved in the development of the hydrogen bomb. Frank was sent to New York State, where they assembled the outside steel case of the new, much bigger bomb, but it was so large that it wouldn’t fit under some of America’s railway bridges, so it was sent by ship to the Pacific. Frank wasn’t present at the detonation, but Jack took a picture of it.

‘I was in a health physics group that