"We must not be the most hated and feared people in the world," a physicist wrote, urging President Truman not to use the atomic bombs that would kill some 150,000 mostly civilian Japanese.
Rumors that the Nazis might develop an atomic bomb spurred American and British efforts to build one. Scientist Albert Einstein wrote President Roosevelt urging
That a major research program begin at once so that the nation would be the first with the bomb.
The secret project, later called the Manhattan Project, was carried out primarily at facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and, later, at Los Alamos, New Mexico. American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director, and he persuaded many top physicists to join the project. On July 16, 1945, the bomb was tested atop a steel tower in a lonely desert track at Alamogordo, New Mexico, called Jornada del Muerto, Journey of Death.
President Truman did not know the bomb existed until a few weeks before his decision to use it. Truman, who had taken office after President Roosevelt's death on April 12, received word of the test results in Potsdam, Germany, where he was in conference with Churchill, Stalin, and their top advisers. Roosevelt had told Churchill about the bomb. Although some historians disagree about why atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and about the ethical issues involved, President Truman believed the bombing was justified: "The dropping of the bombs stopped the war, saved millions of lives."
A The devastation at Hiroshima
Making the Science Connection
1. Why did the United States start the Manhattan Project?
2. Given the present concerns about the dangers of nuclear war, do you think the United States was right to develop nuclear weapons? Why or why not?
3. Research information on nuclear testing. Present findings in a written report about how current testing regulations differ from the 1940s and 1950s.
World History
