I believe that the view, which I learned from many, but above all from General Marshall and from Colonel Stimson, the Secretary of War, the view that they had that we would have to fight our way to the main islands, and that it would involve a slaughter of Americans and Japanese on a massive scale, was arrived at by them in good faith, with regret, and on the best evidence that they then had.

私は、多くの人々から、とりわけマーシャル将軍と陸軍長官のスティムソン大佐から学んだのだが、彼らが抱いていた、主要な島々まで戦う必要があり、それには大規模なアメリカ人と日本人の虐殺が伴うという見解は、彼らが誠実に、遺憾に思いながら、その時点で持っていた最善の証拠に基づいてたどり着いたものだと信じている。

To that alternative, I think the bomb was an enormous relief. The war had started in 1939.

その代わり、原爆は非常に大きな救いだったと思う。戦争は1939年に始まっていた。

It had seen the death of tens of millions.

何千万人もの死者が出た。

It had seen brutality and degradation, which had no place in the middle of the 20th century.

20世紀半ばにはありえなかった残忍さと堕落を目の当たりにした。

The ending of the war by this means was certainly cruel, was not undertaken lightly, but I am not, as of today, confident that a better course was then open.

この手段による戦争の終結は確かに残酷であり、軽々しく引き受けられたものではなかった。

I have not a very good answer to this question.

この質問に対して、私はあまりいい答えを持っていない。

Dr. Oppenheimer, nevertheless, with all the rationalization, with all the inevitability of the decision that history demonstrates to us, you and many like you who brought the bomb into being still seem to suffer, may I say, from a bad conscience about it.

オッペンハイマー博士、それにもかかわらず、歴史が示しているように、あらゆる合理化、決断の必然性があるにもかかわらず、あなたや、原爆を誕生させたあなたのような多くの人は、いまだにそのことについての良心の呵責に苦しんでいるようだ。

Is that true, sir? Well, I don't want to speak for others because we're all different.

それは本当ですか？まあ、僕たちはみんな違うから、人のことを言いたくはないんだけどね。

I think when you play a meaningful part in bringing about the death of over 100,000 people and the injury of a comparable number, you naturally don't think of that as with ease.

10万人以上の死者を出し、それに匹敵する数の負傷者を出すという重大な役割を果たせば、当然、それを安易に考えることはないと思う。

I believe we had a great cause to do this, but I do not think that our consciences should be entirely easy at stepping out of the part of studying nature, learning the truth about it, to change the course of human history. Long ago I said once that in a crude sense, which no vulgarity and no humor could quite erase, the physicists had known sin, and I didn't mean by that the deaths that were caused as the result of our work.

しかし、人類史の流れを変えるために、自然を研究し、その真実を学ぶことから一歩踏み出すことに、私たちの良心がまったく安易であってはならないと思う。昔、私は、どんな下品なユーモアでも消し去ることのできない、粗野な意味で、物理学者は罪を知っていると言ったことがある。

I meant that we had known the sin of pride.

プライドという罪を知っていたという意味だ。

We had turned to affect, in what proved to be a major way, the course of man's history.

私たちは、人類の歴史に大きな影響を与えることになった。

We had the pride of thinking we knew what was good for man.

私たちは、何が人間にとって良いことなのかを知っているという自負があった。

And I do think it has left a mark on many of those who were responsibly engaged.

そして、責任を持って関与した人々の多くに爪痕を残したと思う。

This is not the natural business of a scientist. You know, in the first days after Hiroshima, you pointed out that the scientists who built the bomb had nurtured the hope, really, that nuclear weapons, as you put it, would lead to new patterns of behavior.

これは科学者の当然の仕事ではない。原爆を作った科学者たちは、核兵器が新たな行動パターンを生み出すという希望を抱いていた。

Why has that hope failed of realization? Well, I think I may have said that then.

その希望が実現しなかったのはなぜか？そう、あのとき私は言ったかもしれない。

I think I wrote it recently.

最近書いたと思う。

I said two things, new patterns of behavior and new institutions.

私は2つのことを言った。新しい行動パターンと新しい制度だ。

I think that when you remember the manifest causes of conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, which have bedeviled us for 20 years and which are by no means in any conventional sense solved, when you remember the ideological ferocity that animated the post-war communists that we see now in the Chinese unmuted form, you think of the anti-communist ferocity with which we met this, the notion that there is a telephone communication between the White House and the Kremlin to make sure that there are no misunderstandings is a damn new pattern of behavior. I think it's something that, almost without precedent, in wars and conflicts which have such a total character as that between the communists and the free world has tended to have, I think the notion that the United States should be fixing up its power to fight limited engagements on the ground and in the air with old-fashioned weapons that we hope are a little better than they used to be, not as a step in conquering the world, but as a step in giving a chance to think, to pause, to argue and to persuade before a holocaust, that's a pattern that I believe is not familiar either. When you think that for years the intellectuals of Russia were interested in France, the United Kingdom, the United States, have gotten together to talk to each other about the problems of armament and the problems of the application of science and the problems of maintaining the peace, this also is not quite something that is familiar.

戦後の共産主義者たちを動かしていたイデオロギー的な獰猛さを思い起こすと、それは現在、中国の無言の姿に見ることができる。共産主義者と自由世界の間のような総合的な性格を持つ戦争や紛争では、ほとんど前例がないことだが、米国は、地上と空中で、昔ながらの兵器を使って限定的な戦闘を行うために力を蓄えるべきだという考え方がある、世界を征服するための一歩としてではなく、ホロコーストの前に考え、立ち止まり、議論し、説得する機会を与えるための一歩として。何年もの間、ロシアの知識人たちがフランス、イギリス、アメリカに関心を持ち

The institutions are not there.

制度がない。

The patterns are faulty, frail, very vulnerable.

そのパターンは欠陥があり、脆弱で、非常に傷つきやすい。

But there is a wind blowing. Dr. Oppenheimer, from all that you have said, it seems that when you contemplate the future, it is more with hope than with pessimism.

しかし、風は吹いている。オッペンハイマー博士、あなたの話を聞いていると、将来を考えるとき、それは悲観的というよりは希望に満ちているように思えます。

Or is that an oversimplification? Yes, I've tried to talk about the hopeful things.

それとも、それは単純化しすぎですか？そう、私は希望に満ちたことを話そうとしてきた。

The unhopeful ones jump to everyone's mind.

希望が持てないものは誰の心にも飛び込んでくる。

Will the Chinese change their views of human destiny and of the relations between them and us before or after they have the power to make major nuclear war?

中国は、大規模な核戦争を起こす力を持つ前か後かで、人類の運命観や我々との関係観を変えるのだろうか？

It's anybody's guess.

それは誰の目にも明らかだ。

Will the detente between the Russians and the West survive the strains of this time?

ロシアと西側諸国との間のデタントは、この緊張に耐えられるだろうか？

Will they survive what's going on in Asia today?

彼らはアジアで今起こっていることに耐えられるだろうか？

We don't know.

わからない。

There are a hundred reasons for seeing no hope at all.

希望がまったく見えない理由はいくらでもある。

And I take it for granted that everybody can think of them without being reminded.

そして、誰もがそれを思い浮かべることができるのは当然のことだと思っている。

It's harder to think of anything on the other side.

反対側で何かを考える方が難しい。

And I have tried to say that however frail and however tentative and however limited, they do exist and they look to me like a bridgehead to a livable future, but not without work.

そして、どんなに脆弱で、どんなに暫定的で、どんなに限定的であっても、それらは存在し、住みやすい未来への橋頭堡のように私には見える。