Manhattan+Project+Main+Page

=Manhattan Project media type="youtube" key="L93f0ePO33E" height="344" width="425" = = = [|Albert Einstien] was a Jewish physicist that fled from German persecution to America. In August 1939, he wrote a letter to [|Franklin Roosevelt]informing him of a possible threat from nuclear weapons. The Germans were supposedly capable of creating an incredibly powerful new type of bomb. Roosevelt was determined to build the bomb before Germany did, so he set up the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb.

According to Einstein, the chain reaction of splitting uranium nuclei could result in a massive release of energy which could be harnessed in a bomb. Scientists had already succeeded in splitting a uranium atom, but they could not yet create a successful chain reaction. In 1942, Enrico Fermi became the first person to produce a controlled chain reaction in a laboratory in the University of Chicago. Soon after, scientists set to work designing a bomb that could harness this power.

Click photo for info about the atomic bomb.

Extra Link:[|Atomic Bomb]

[|On July 16, 1945,] Manhattan Project scientists field-tested the first ever atomic bomb in the desert of New Mexico. The huge [|explosion] gave off a blinding wall of light, while blowing a large crater in the ground and shattering windows some 125 miles away!

4. Accept less then unconditional surrender
In the spring of 1945, scientists, military leaders, and government officials gathered for the [|Interim Committee.] However, with the heavy casualties of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, the committee could not find any suitable solution other than to drop the bomb. In the end, the final decision rested in the lap of President [|Harry S Truman], who had been in office for only three months since the [|sudden death of Roosevelt] in April 1945. Truman had no regrets with his decision. He viewed the bomb as a military weapon as he planned on using it as such.

Later, when critics asked him about his choice, he replied "You should do your weeping at Pearl Harbor."

[|On August 6, 1945,] the Elona Gay dropped the first bomb, Fat Man, on the city in southern Japan, Hiroshima, which was the site of a large military base. The massive blast annihilated the city the city in an instant. Most buildings that survived the initial blast were burned to the ground from the fires. Nearly 80,000 Japanese died and at least as many were injured in the fire, radiation poising and debris.

Three days passed without Japanese surrender and the US dropped another bomb, the Little Boy, on[| Nagasaki]. On August 14, the Japanese government accepted the American terms for surrender. The next day, August 15, Americans celebrated [|V-J Day] (Victory in Japan Day). The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, 1945, aboard the [|USS Missouri]in Tokyo Bay. The signing of the final surrender agreement marked the end of the war.


 //**V-J Day **//

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