From Tennessee to New Mexico

 

On this date in 1945, the Trinity Site, Alamogordo, New Mexico, became the location for the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. The Manhattan Project was the codename for the American effort to develop and test nuclear weapons during World War II. Run by General Leslie Groves, the construction of the actual bomb was overseen by Robert Oppenheimer, who was head of the Los Alamos Laboratory where it was developed. In 1939 a letter written by Leo Szilard and signed by Albert Einstein was delivered to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The letter urged the United States to develop uranium stockpiles and commence research efforts, especially as Nazi Germany might do the same.

The work was carried out with extreme secrecy with many of those working on the project having no idea what they were working towards. Despite the security, Soviet spies managed to penetrate the project and were aware that the US had developed the bomb. Less than a month later, President Harry Truman authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Unwilling to surrender, Japan did not acknowledge the singular bomb. However, the second bomb brought about a swift end to World War II without the need for a catastrophic invasion of Japan.

Note: The "Calutron Girls" are shown monitoring a mass spectrometer, used for separating the isotopes of uranium, during the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The women were mostly high school graduates. In the foreground is Gladys Owens. Almost difficult to comprehend, she did not know what she was involved with until seeing this picture on a tour fifty years later.