The Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project

Nuclear research all started when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States entered into World War II. When the United States realized that Germany attempted to build an atomic bomb, Americans began to concentrate on their research about creating an atomic bomb more heavily. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Manhattan Project, which included a group of top scientists, under General Leslie R. Groves, who worked around the clock to try to develop an atomic bomb within three years (Bondi 493). The Americans and the British combined their efforts to research the development of the bomb and created plants and factories to work in ("The Atomic BombÐ'..." 257). They created plants for three separate processes: electromagnetic, gaseous diffusion, and thermal diffusion. These plants helped create the plutonium and uranium 235 needed to manufacture the atomic bomb (Gerdes 142). The secrecy of the Manhattan Project was essential in order to develop the atomic bombs to end World War II.

The United States and Great Britain kept the development of the atomic bomb a secret (Bondi 493). In order to keep the secret, Groves spread the work out between laboratories so that the people working on the bomb could not figure out they were manufacturing. The members of the Manhattan Project asked the scientists questions about the bomb, and they gave answers back, but they did not know what the responses were for. The project consisted of so many restrictions for the employees in order to keep the secrecy of the project. They could not hold private conversations about the material they were working on because after awhile, people might have been able to put it together and determine that they were creating a bomb. Employees worked on tasks that had nothing to do with what the others around them were doing. Even the officials on the War Production Board remained unaware of the bomb ("The Atomic BombÐ'..." 258).

As with everything, problems occurred during the development process. The plutonium needed for the bombs was only in microscopic sizes, which was very difficult to handle. Plutonium's properties were unknown, and scientists knew very little about uranium 235. The plants needed to be run by machinery because the materials were "radioactive, poisonous, violently corrosive, or all three" (Gerdes 143).

After scientists studied and became familiar with plutonium and uranium 235, they were able to begin the manufacturing process (Gerdes 91). One of the first things that the scientists needed to do was determine what the plutonium and uranium 235 would do when the bomb was dropped (Bondi 494). The bomb used approximately 10,000 to 20,000 tons of trinitrotoluene, TNT (Gerdes 144). The plutonium and other high explosives were put together to form an implosion bomb (Bondi 494).

President Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, and Vice President Harry S. Truman took office (Uschan 54). When Truman took office, he did not know anything about the Manhattan Project, which showed the top secrecy of it. He finally found out about the project one week after in office (Uschan 103). On April 25, 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and General Leslie Groves informed Truman of the bombs that were created (Moser 144). Roosevelt left Truman with a significant amount of duties to step up to, and Truman had to make the extremely tough decision about the use of the bombs. His decision to use the bomb was justified by his thought that the war would finally come to an end, and many lives would be saved on both sides (Uschan 54). On June 1, 1945, the committee told Truman to use to bomb against Japan without a warning. Secretary of State James Byrnes stated Truman's reaction by saying, "with reluctance he had to agree that he could think of no other alternative" ("The Atomic BombÐ'..." 256).

Tested on July 16, 1945, the plutonium bomb formed a "spherically symmetrical shock wave traveling towards the center of the bomb" (Gerdes 144; Bondi 494). The testing took place in Los Alamos, New Mexico (Uschan 52). Scientists did not test the uranium bomb because there was great confidence in its abilities. The plutonium bomb was more powerful than the uranium bomb (Gerdes 144). After perfecting the bombs, scientists dropped them as soon as possible (Gerdes 145). The whole project cost about $2 billion (Uschan 52). The Manhattan Project is said to be "the product of the greatest research and development project in history" (Gerdes 141).

At the Potsdam Conference in July of 1945, the United States told Japan to surrender, or they will face the consequences (Gerdes 91). Japan responded by saying mokusatsu, which means "to ignore or to kill with contempt" (Moser 145). The Japanese refused to surrender, which lead to the bombings (Gerdes 91). Truman reacted to Japan's failure to surrender by saying, "They [Japan] may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the life of which has never been seen on this earth" ("The Atomic BombÐ'..." 257).

After the Japanese refused to surrender, the United States established a committee to determine the place to drop the bombs. The committee searched for places that were not already damaged, were important military wise, and would affect Japan's ability to continue fighting. Some key places that the United States focused on included Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Kyoto, all located on mainland Japan. After reviewing the choices, the United States removed Kyoto from the list because of the cultural significance. They replaced Kyoto with Nagasaki. Hiroshima became the first choice of