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... he Manhattan Project. Keeping the project's work a secret was an obsession with him. A small army of security guards stood watch over all the plants and laboratories.
Although more than a hundred thousand men and women took part in the project, only a handful of them knew they were making an atomic bomb. The few who did know the goal of the project were careful to call the bomb a "gadget" or a "gizmo" in casual conversation. The war in Europe took a dramatic turn in June 1944, when allied armies stormed the beaches of France and began a long march to Germany. Traveling with the frontline forces was a top-secret unit code named ALSOS. The ALSOS team investigated research sites in Europe where American scientists believed Germans were making nuclear weapons. The ALSOS investigation discovered shocking evidence that Germany was not actively working on a bomb at all.
Early in the war Germany had shown interest in nuclear bombs, but it later shifted its goals toward making rockets and jet aircraft. Hitler himself led his country away from atomic weaponry by denouncing nuclear physics as a "Jewish Science. " Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 8, 1945. A week earlier, Hitler had committed suicide in a Berlin bunker. With the war in Europe over, Japan stood as America's only enemy.
Since Japan was a nation near defeat in 1945 many Manhattan Project scientists thought it would be inhumane to drop the bomb on a helpless nation. Leo Szilard wrote a letter to now president Truman, begging him not to use the weapon he helped create on Japan. Truman rejected his pleas by pointing out that the battle at Okinawa cost the U. S.
fifty thousand men killed or wounded. Military experts estimated that an invasion of Japan would result in a million United States casualties. Dropping the bomb would most likely force a Japanese surrender and prevent such an invasion. The Desert Test By July, 1945 the Manhattan Project work was almost completed; they had developed a working nuclear bomb. The only obstacle that stood in their way is the actual testing of the bomb. The test, code name "Trinity" occurred on July 16, 1945 in the New Mexico desert town of Alamogordo.
In a concrete bunker, a group of scientists and high-ranking military officials waited tensely. Many of them glanced at the clock, which was almost toward five in the morning. It was still to dark to see the hundred foot tall steel tower that housed the world's first atomic bomb nicknamed "Fat Man. " Scientist Isidor Rabi wrote as the countdown came to a close and the bomb exploded. "[It was] the brightest light I have ever seen or that I think anyone has ever seen. It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way right through you. It was a vision, which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last forever.
You wished it would stop... There was an enormous ball of fire, which grew, and it rolled as it grew: it went up in the air in yellow flashes and into scarlet green. It looked menacing. I seemed to come toward me. " Finally, the tremendous ball of fire reached its height and diminished to reveal a mushroom-shaped cloud rising from the desert floor. In the bunker the men displayed mixed reactions. Some congratulated each other with slaps on the back and others sat in silence.
Robert Oppenheimer spoke a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita an ancient book of Hindu scripture: "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" After receiving a full report of the test, President Truman decided that dropping the bomb would be the only way to save American blood. Although some historians believe that an ulterior motive was to impress the Soviets; Truman claimed he was looking out for the future of the United States. The Bombing Before dawn on August 6, 1945, a single B- 29 named Enola Gay took off from Tinian Island, about fifteen hundred miles south of Japan. The bomber was loaded with one whale-shaped bomb that weighed about nine-thousand pounds and nicknamed "little boy. " Far ahead of the Enola Gay, a scout plane reported that there was little cloud cover over the primary target, the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
In the city men and women jammed the streets for work and school children scampered to school. At precisely 8: 15 A. M. the B- 29 dropped its bomb.
Seven hundred yards above Hiroshima, the bomb exploded like a huge flashlight. The blast killed seventy thousand residents, many of whom were instantly incinerated. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing forty thousand more people. In the months following the deaths tolls from the two cities continued to climb. The bombs released poisonous radiation that caused leukemia and other diseases. Not even the Manhattan Project scientists could have foreseen that their creation would have deadly- long-term effects.
Even today Hiroshima and Nagasaki residents are dying of sickness caused from the blasts of 1945. On August 14, 1945, just five days after the Nagasaki blast, Japan agrees to American terms of surrender. The atomic bombs manufactured by the crash program called the Manhattan Project had helped to win World War II. However, the bombs ushered the world into a nuclear age. Since the first test millions of people have wondered whether nuclear weapons will spell the end of life on our planet. That question was first raised on the New Mexico desert in 1945 when a scientist remarked, " Am sure that at the end of the world- at the last millisecond of the world's existence-the last man will see something very familiar to what we have seen today. " Bibliography Giovannitti, Len The Decision To Drop The Bomb, 1956, Coward-McCann, Inc.
New York, New York. Here, Gregg, The Winning Weapon, 1980, Alfred A. Know, Inc. New York, New York. Stein, R. Conrad, Cornerstones of Freedom: The Manhattan Project, 1993, Children Press, Chicago Illinois.
Wyden, Peter, Day One: Before Hiroshima and After, 1984, Simon and Schuster, New York, New York.
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