Scientists and engineers worked for several years to create an atomic bomb. The test was to show whether they succeeded or not. Looking into the past from the heights of past years, we expect repentant tirades from the participants in those events about the terrible consequences of what they did, but most of them do not say anything like that. Awareness of moral and political responsibility came later - and even then not to everyone. Oppenheimer indulged in public self-flagellation more than anyone else. I especially remember his statement: “Physicists have known sin. This knowledge cannot be erased.” But repentance came later... When the question of using the atomic bomb against the civilian population of Japan was being decided, he, unlike some of his colleagues, not only did not object, but insisted on it, and only a few months after Hiroshima and Nagasaki told President Truman: " I think we have blood on our hands." Truman replied: “No problem. Everything will be washed off,” and strictly punished his assistants: “So that this whiner will not be here anymore!” Oppenheimer continued to suffer from remorse until the end of his days. Among other things, he was haunted by the question: why were there almost no remorse then, at that time?