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The Manhattan Project

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On the morning of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay flew over the industrial city of Hiroshima, Japan and dropped the first atomic bomb ever. The city went up in flames caused by the immense power equal to about 20,000 tons of TNT. The project was a success. They were an unprecedented assemblage of civilian, and military scientific brain power-brilliant, intense, and young, the people that helped develop the bomb. Unknowingly they came to an isolated mountain setting, known as Los Alamos, New Mexico, to design and build the bomb that would end World War 2, but begin serious controversies concerning its sheer power and destruction. I became interested in this topic because of my interest in science and history. It seemed an …show more content…

There were serious issues of security of documents, due to failure to lock up (Wood 4). <br><br>The one serious incident was the hiring of Klaus Fuchs. He was later found, and convicted of obtaining secret documents and sending them to the Soviet Union. A competent and hardworking scientist himself, Fuchs enabled the Soviet Union to create their own atomic bomb (Beyer 45). <br><br>Names were not allowed to be mentioned outside of the laboratory. Everybody was a "sir" or "mister" instead of their own name (Wood 4). Unless they worked at the lab themselves, wives knew nothing of their husbands' research (Wood 4).<br><br>Decisions to drop the atomic bomb went through several personalities, yet ultimately rested upon president Truman. The man whose decisions created the Manhattan Project, never lived to see the results of his labor. FDR died on April 12, three months before the first successful Trinity test (Beyer 56). The responsibilities were soon placed upon Truman, the next president. Truman knew nothing about the bomb and its effects yet hastily decided that the bomb be used on Japan, considering Germany was no longer a target with the war in Europe over. Initiated by Szilard, a petition was made to offer the opinion that the bomb should be used only if Japan refused to surrender, even after being informed of the bomb's destructive capabilities

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