- [Narrator] Things change in time. In a moment in time in
1945, everything changed. The desert of central New Mexico, an area called the Jornada del
Muerto, the journey of death, named by Spanish conquistadors because if you ran out of water
here, you did not survive. This place is now known as Trinity Site. In a moment in time at this spot in July 1945 things changed. In the instant of what
happened here, the length of a war changed, along
with the course of history. It began years before and
thousands of miles away. (military drumming) For years, Adolf Hitler
had forced the influence of Nazi rule on Europe. To the rest of the free
world, his intentions were war and brutality was his method. Populations were set in motion. - I came from Hungary in Germany. I have seen many things firsthand. I was dreadfully worried about
my family and all my friends. And I do not believe
that people today realize how tremendous those dangers had been, because Hitler indeed could
have taken over the world, and with a hair's breath, he could do so. Those of us who came from
Europe were more aware of that than native American friends. - It came in stages, and from very early on, Jews were arrested and put in concentration camps. Certainly the loss of
jobs, was documented, and it kept getting worse, so
I think there was no question that I should immigrate. - [Narrator] There were other
scientists from the best universities and scientific
institutions in Europe seeking also to get away. When they fled the Nazis,
they brought with them an international
relationship of friendships and acquaintances, along
with research they had been doing on a relatively new
field, that of nuclear fission. It had been discovered in Germany in 1938, and was an emerging field
that promised massive amounts of energy. But there was also the
thought that it could deliver that energy as a bomb. A single massive amount of energy that could destroy a city. - And we knew that there
were a number of competent physicists and chemists available, so that made us concerned that we might be too late. - World war just began
four months earlier, so we knew it was gonna develop
into a terrible world war. And this coming at that time
seemed a fateful proof it was, and we immediately saw, no
one's mind was on anything but how can this be used for war? It gradually became clearer. It's quite possible to make
an explosion from this. - [Narrator] It was this
concern that led refugee German physicist Leo Szilard
to reveal that possibility to the US government. Together with Albert
Einstein and Edward Teller he composed a letter to
President Franklin Roosevelt. It told of a terrible possibility. Germany had the talent and the knowledge to research and develop an atomic weapon. Delivering the letter to
Roosevelt on their behalf was economist Alexander
Sachs, a friend of Szilard and economic advisor to the president. Roosevelt said, "Alex what
you are after is to see "that the Nazis don't blow us up." "Precisely," Sachs said. "This requires action,"
Roosevelt told an aide. Intelligence reports from Europe indicated the Nazis were working on such a weapon, but no one knew how much effort
they were devoting to it. The one certainty was that
if Hitler developed the bomb he would win the war. The letter to Roosevelt paved the way for the creation of a top
secret military project, one that would have the highest priority and tightest security. It would be named the Manhattan Military
Engineering District. - When finally we began to do something in participating in the war effort it was a relief. - [Narrator] The project was massive. To design and build a device
that existed only in theory from material that didn't
exist in any quantity under unprecedented secrecy
by people, many of whom, were not even US citizens. It was known that the nucleus
of one form of uranium isotope 235 would split
when it absorbed a neutron. When this happened, energy was released, and more neutrons were created that struck and split other nuclei. When it happens continuously, it's known as a chain reaction. No one knew at the start how
much fissionable material was needed to support an
explosive chain reaction. That volume would be known
as the critical mass. Another element only
discovered in late 1941 by Berkeley nuclear chemist Glenn Seaborg also had the properties to
explode in a chain reaction under the right conditions. Seaborg named it for the ninth planet from the sun, plutonium. - The isotope we produced
was plutonium-238, produced by the deuteron
bombardment of uranium. Then a month later,
joined by Emilio Segre, we identified in this room
the isotope of importance, plutonium-239, and isolated
it so that it could have its fission properties measured at the 37 inch cyclotron. - [Narrator] General Leslie
Groves of the US Army Corps of Engineers had just
completed a major project, the construction of the Pentagon. It had been his desire to accept a combat assignment overseas. His superior officer told
Groves the secretary of war had selected him for an important
assignment in Washington. He was appointed as the head
of the Manhattan Project. - General Groves was a very
difficult man to sum up, but again the same thing appealed
to me about General Groves that I think appealed to
Groves about Oppenheimer. His enormous devotion,
determination to get the war over. To do what he could. - [Narrator] Italian
physicist Enrico Fermi working with Leo Szilard
in a space underneath the University of Chicago Stadium assembled a large pile of graphite blocks with lumps of natural uranium in it. In December 1942, he
succeeded in bringing about the first man-made controlled
nuclear chain reaction. Now that controlled fission
had been accomplished, it could be studied, and the
next steps could proceed. Robert Oppenheimer was a
highly respected 38-year-old theoretical physicist in 1942. He had been closely
examining the development of fission science. In October of that year, he was
at the University of Chicago when Groves came through on
his first inspection tour. In conversations with
Groves, Oppenheimer discussed the need for a central
facility, and other details. Groves saw something in him, a leadership, and an understanding of
what needed to be done. - I first saw Robert
Oppenheimer when I became a graduate student at Berkeley. His reputation for brilliance
and for clear explication and the rest, was already
strong, but he had a reputation for being very quick, and easily able to quash
a question or an objective of anyone with anything of that sort, and he was very difficult
to interact with. - Oppenheimer was a difficult human being. He was extremely
intelligent, extremely quick. He understood everything. When I had just a glimpse of
what was being talked about. - [Narrator] Groves selected
Oppenheimer as the leader to bring the elements of the
Manhattan Project together in one place. Oppenheimer came to the project with an immediate controversy. His security was questioned
because of college acquaintances with communism. - In the time before the war, he had been very leftist. - [Narrator] Groves
overrode all objections and stayed with his selection. - Everyone was surprised. No one thought he would
undertake such a task, and it was amazing that General
Groves would have done that. When I met Groves I began realizing they were very different persons. Very different views of the world. But they both had an
intensity of determination, and that's what I think went over Groves. Oppenheimer, at once you could
see, Oppenheimer was a man who understood every part of the job, and who was determined to
get it done as best he could. - [Narrator] Groves
wanted to compartmentalize each of the different divisions. Oppenheimer immediately disagreed. To him, progress was
made through interaction. Science was discovered
through collaboration. He held weekly colloquiums,
scientific meetings among the different
science groups, to exchange information to solve problems. - And Oppenheimer insisted
that everybody should be interested, and should
know, and should contribute. - [Narrator] The new lab would be devoted to experiment and engineering. Oppenheimer was a theorist. - To me, the theory is the explanation of the observations. Putting them in a
framework that convinces us yes, we do know how a star works. We do know how a supernova explodes. But every single bit of physics that goes into understanding our universe has first been tested out
right here on planet Earth, and that's what an experimentalist does. He tests whether those
laws really hold up. And they're not laws that
Congress can repeal, I assure you. - [Narrator] The best scientific
talent in the country, and even from outside the
country, would be working at what would be known as Site Y. But where? It would have to be in a remote and sparsely populated locale, at least 200 miles from a coastline or international boundary
for safety from attack, room for explosives
testing, weather good enough for construction to proceed year-round, and enough housing to
immediately accommodate the first group of scientists. Major John Dudley of the
Manhattan Engineering District found an ideal location in Oak
City in south central Utah, but there were too many
residents, and too much farm land that would be evicted. Oppenheimer was no
stranger to the southwest. His family had a vacation
cabin in the Pecos wilderness of northern New Mexico. The next prospect was
Jemez Springs, New Mexico. Oppenheimer and Groves
drove there to have a look. Both had the same opinion. The narrow canyon walls
were too deep for comfort, space, and security. Oppenheimer remembered
a place he had been by while on a pack trip,
and had returned often as a visitor. It was a boys' school at
a place called Los Alamos. in the late afternoon, they drove there. The students and their masters were out on the playing fields, and
a light snow was falling. "This is it," Groves said. Located on the eastern
slope of the Hemas mountains on the Pajarito plateau, Los Alamos had as its occupants some homesteaders, and the
Los Alamos ranch school. It was the dream of an
ex-Roosevelt roughrider named Ashley Pond. It was a school for the
sons of wealthy families that was based on a vigorous life. Students wore shorts year-round, and slept in unheated sleeping porches. Each student was assigned
a horse to care for, and pack trips into the
mountains were common. The school had spent its time quietly since the late 1920s, but now
its time was coming to an end. School officials started
noticing low-flying planes studying the area, cars and
military vehicles appeared on the crest of the road
that led up from the valley. On December fourth, 1942,
the school received notice from Henry Stimson, secretary of war, that the school was being taken over. Condemnation proceedings were used, and it was decreed all
records of the acquisition be sealed from public view almost 54,000 acres were acquired. Almost 9,000 acres were public land. Cost of acquisition, $440,000. - After Pearl Harbor,
we all knew that we were kind of playing an end game. We get out of school, we're off to war. And so in the beginning
of the fall of '42, already surveyors were around
here from the government. Then they took it over, and they ran kind of a mega-bulldozer
through the place. Absolutely fantastic construction in a very short length of time. We knew the school would be taken over, didn't know just when, didn't know what was really happening. - [Narrator] Construction
crews started throwing up buildings for administration,
laboratories, housing, schools, and everything else a
community needed to function. It looked more like a boom
town than a wartime army camp, all mushrooming around the ranch school. - So towards the end of
this, just before Christmas, these two dudes show up here
calling themselves Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, first one wearing a porkpie and the second one a fedora. I mean, no way on Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones. Who were they and what's the problem? Well it took just two hours, two hours, to know that this was
Oppenheimer and Lawrence. And we called them by those
names among us kids right then. Because we knew of them so
well from our physics courses and things like that. Recognized their pictures
in our physics book. - [Narrator] Classwork was accelerated, and in February 1943, the
last graduation was held. New roads of unpaved
streets that snow and rain turned to mud started to
define the new community. In January of 1943, the
University of California was selected to operate
the new laboratory. Recruiting scientists was difficult because prospective
employees are already doing important work and needed good
reason to change their jobs. Because of security,
only scientific personnel could be told anything about
the nature of the work. But they were to tell no
one about what they did, not even their families. Lamy, New Mexico. 15 miles southeast of Santa Fe. In the spring of 1943,
they started to arrive at the small railroad
station that looked like it was in the middle of nowhere. Arriving from all parts of
the country, and Europe, were the best scientific
minds in the world. Emilio Segre, Niels Bohr, Hans Betha, Edward Teller, Otto Frisch, Stanislaw Ulam, George Kistiakowsky, Richard Feynman, Edward McMillan. Some came as consultants, and
the rest as permanent staff. Santa Fe, New Mexico. To those who came into town en route from across the country, it
was hard to see the small town as the state's capital. First stop was an office
at 109 East Palace Avenue, run by Dorothy McKibbin, it
was the welcome and check-in for all those who came to disappear up on the Pajarito plateau. She arranged for transportation, housing, and hundreds of other little things that took away some of the apprehension of things to come. One wife said-- - [Woman] "I felt akin
to the pioneer women "accompanying their husbands
across uncharted plains "westward, alert to dangers,
resigned to the fact "that they journeyed, for wheel or woe, "into the unknown." - [Narrator] After leaving
Santa Fe, the dirt road up to the site was
rough, even for that day. Once they crossed the Otowi bridge across the Rio Grande, they
climbed up a steep road to the top of the mesa. There they were met by
the first security gate. Once they made it in, it
was a different world. - It was a pretty desolate place. The buildings, both for the tech area, and for the living quarters
were just being built, and the one thing that was beautiful was the view of the sun with the crystal on the other side, but
everything on the Los Alamos plateau was in the mist. - And my wife and son came
too three weeks later. I stayed in the big house, and it was sort of a mess. It wasn't easy to sleep. Feynman was beating his
drum, which I did not like. But apart from that, of course the surroundings, I knew it was magnificent. - It was war time. It struck me as being a military camp with an influx of university people, many of whom I knew, so
I felt right at home. And of course, famous European physicists who I'd never met, were quite
common and walked about. - [Narrator] The British
were part of the project. They arrived as part of a
mission to help work on the bomb. Rows of four-family apartment
houses spread to the west and north, named Sunt
homes, for the builder. Barracks and dormitories,
Quonset huts, and trailers, everyone was a transplant
from somewhere else. Because of the mission,
because of everything else on the hill, it became
a tight-knit community of scientists, spouses,
children, and military personnel. Most people were in their
twenties or thirties. The average age was 25. They were healthy and middle class. There was no unemployment. What you did at the lab
dictated your social standing, as well as the quality of your housing. - From our point of
view, it was wonderful. We really had a better place to live. First place there were
plenty of food, meat, this was the days of rationing. A lot of people there had
pretty miserable times in their apartments, which were very cheap and rather shoddy construction, to the disappointment
of many of the Europeans they also did not have bathtubs. But they were also though
the acoustic separation of adjacent houses was pretty feeble. I mean you always knew when your neighbors were having a party. - [Narrator] Some senior lab officials lived in homes previously
used by the schoolmasters. It became known as Bathtub
Row, since they were the only places that had them. In the beginning of April
1943, Oppenheimer assembled the staff, then about 30,
for a series of introductory lectures by his
collaborator, Robert Serber. To sum up the studies of
the weapon from the previous summer in Berkeley. It also incorporated
research done on fission over the past year. It was determined that
explosive means would do the job by taking a subcritical
mass and making it critical so the radioactive
material would detonate. Two methods to do that had been devised. One was a gun method where two halves of subcritical material were shot together to form the critical mass,
starting the nuclear detonation. It was discovered the gun
method would work with uranium but not with plutonium. - With plutonium there
is spontaneous fission, and that produced neutrons all the time. And at a sufficiently
high rate, that if you had a gun assembly in shooting
two pieces together before they got together big enough to have a big explosion, they
would so-called pre-detonate. - General Groves had proposed
a very stupid way of assembly, which we all made fun of. He gave Neddermeyer the
idea of the implosions, which in the end turned
out to be the way to do it. - Suddenly the top priority really shifted over to the plutonium bottle. - [Narrator] The gun
method was the easiest, but the science of implosion would have to be developed also. It required science and
engineering that would enable simultaneous and uniform
compression of plutonium. Because nothing like this
had ever been created, the plutonium weapon would
also have to be tested. It would be months before
the first significant amounts of nuclear material would be delivered. Before that could happen,
there were many questions which came down to the central problem, how to make the fissionable
material, the uranium-235 or the plutonium-239, release
their energy efficiently, at the right time, in a casing
an airplane could deliver? One of the biggest problems
was extracting U-235 from U-238. That was the job of the
plant at Oak Ridge Tennessee. A gas diffusion method was
used where thousands of stages of the operation, thousands
of miles of piping, and hundreds of acres
of barriers were used to produce the metal from
the uranium enriched gas. Also used were an
electromagnetic separation, and thermal diffusion method, to produce and refine the material. Oak Ridge employed thousands of workers. A team had also been assembled
in Chicago by Glenn Seaborg to devise a method for
extracting plutonium. Hanford Washington was
selected as the location to build reactors for its extraction, but Hanford depended as
much on chemical separation as it did on the reactors. The chemistry was Glenn Seaborg's, massively scaled up from his
University of Chicago team's ultra microchemical work. - We had been working with
what's called tracer amounts, invisible amounts, detected
by its radioactivity, but we couldn't deduce
the chemical properties with certainty that way. We needed to work with actual
ponderable weighable amounts and that's why we produced
weighable amounts of plutonium in this way. This meant that we had to work, I say we, the chemists working with me, on what they call an
ultra microchemical scale. - [Narrator] Slowly, the
material started coming to Los Alamos in September 1944. For those in Los Alamos who
were not part of the project life also continued. All mail to Los Alamos came
to PO box 1663 in Santa Fe. Everyone had the same address. Babies born at the lab had
it as their place of birth. It was the address on drivers' licenses, auto registrations, bank
accounts, ration coupons, income tax returns,
and insurance policies. Los Alamos was an army post, one that had more civilians
than military personnel. In the first year, 80 babies were born. By 1945, there were over
300 infants at the site. The births got to be so much of a concern to General Groves, he
almost literally ordered Oppenheimer to stop the
population explosion. The population doubled every nine months. Housing would always
be short, water scarce, and electricity intermittent. The threat of structure
fire was always in the back of everyone's mind. Then there was security. Residents could not
travel more than 100 miles from Los Alamos. If you ran into a friend on
the outside of the project, you had to give a detailed
report to security. Famous names were disguised. Occupations were never mentioned. Everyone was an engineer. The word physicist was forbidden. All mail was censored,
all long-distance calls were monitored, which
was easy, since there was only one phone line in 1943. By 1945, there were three. The entire project was surrounded by high barbed-wire fences, and patrolled by mounted guards. Work weeks were six days, 12
to 14 hour days were normal. Saturday nights, they partied. They were big and small,
and were an integral part of life on the mesa. - I remember the young people
had many parties, and so on. We would tend to go to a
dinner with six people. What would you would do
in any university town. - [Narrator] Several affairs
were usually scheduled every Saturday night. Single men and women
scheduled dorm parties that were fueled by
mixtures of mixed liquors and tech area grain alcohol. The furniture was pushed back for dancing, and parties often lasted
well into the night. - My wife and I both
enjoyed square dancing, so usually in fuller launch
they had a square dance once every, once a month,
maybe twice a month. - Sundays were our picnics. Went to the mountains,
went to the Indian pueblo, went to the ruins, sometimes
went even to Santa Fe if we could afford the gas. And so on. It was a good time. It was an intense time. We all worked, I think it'd
be fair to say 60 hour weeks. And we worked on Saturday
by rule, so to speak, by routine, Sunday was the only day off. - [Narrator] The work,
governed by the urgency of events waged on the
battlefields in Europe and in the Pacific, never got easier. But those working on the bomb felt that they had the science. It was the engineering
that created the problems. - I think that a myth has
arisen, partly just through the circumstances, which
is how difficult it was. What a feat, what an intellectual
feat it was, and so on. Some of that is self-serving,
the scientists liked to say it was difficult. And it looked difficult, but
it wasn't very difficult. - I entirely agree with
Phillip Morrison on this one. It was engineering. - [Narrator] Work on the
gun type weapon moved ahead, but work on the implosion
weapon was slow, frustrating, and at times, seemingly hopeless detailed quantitative data on the effects of such a new weapon was needed. No one knew exactly how
powerful the weapon would be. In late 1943, planning
for the test was begun. The site that was selected
was on the Alamogordo bombing range in central New Mexico on the Jornada del Muerto. It was 210 miles south of Los Alamos, 27 miles from the nearest town, and 12 miles from the nearest inhabitant. In November 1944, construction
of the base camp began. The test was initially
scheduled for July 4th. The activity at the test site increased, despite things like snakes,
scorpions, heat, and dust. Herds of antelope and some range beef started to disappear,
showing up on the menu. Hunting often took place with
the aid of sub machine guns. On April 12th, 1945, President
Franklin Roosevelt died. Flags across the country
and around the world flew at half-staff, including the flag at the test site named
Trinity by Oppenheimer. Sworn in to take up
leadership of the country was then vice president Harry Truman. Less than a month later, on May 8th, the war in Europe, which
had been raging since 1939, ended with the surrender
of the German forces. The race to beat Hitler
in building an atom bomb was at an end. As worried as the US
government was about the Nazis developing a nuclear bomb, there had been no major intelligence
effort to try and find out the extent of their
progress during the war. But as the Allies advanced into Germany, a team of paramilitary operatives working for General Groves
searched for evidence of a German nuclear effort. Among their finds, Germany
did not have an atomic bomb, and was not likely to
have had one anytime soon. But there was still the war in the Pacific against the Japanese. The work at Los Alamos continued. Seth Neddermeyer and
other explosives experts had been laboring to discover the nature of creating a symmetrical implosion. Lenses were created, explosive
lenses that would focus the shockwave inward to
compress the subcritical mass to critical. At S Site, near Los Alamos,
high explosives were mixed to form the cocoon the fissionable
material would rest in. The molds for the lenses
were the biggest problems. The molten explosive had
to be cooled just right to prevent air bubbles,
which would interfere with the detonation. The lenses required precision casting with machine finishing. Tolerances for the hundred or so pieces had to fit together within a
few thousandths of an inch. Things still fell behind schedule. The test date was moved back. In order to accurately
calibrate the instrumentation for the test, another test, one using only high explosives, was needed. A dress rehearsal of 100
tons of TNT was planned for. Hundreds of crates of high
explosives were stacked on the platform of a 20 foot tower. Tubes of low level nuclear
material were scattered throughout the explosives to simulate the radioactive product
of a nuclear blast. Everything was set to a
scale to match the expected effects of the nuclear test shot. On May 7th, the high
explosive was detonated. The orange fire ball
was seen 60 miles away. But what if the real
test was unsuccessful? The fissionable material might be lost from the detonation of the
high explosives surrounding it. The decision was made early
on to contain any misfire inside a huge steel vessel. It was 25 feet long, 12 feet in diameter, 14 inches thick, and weighed 214 tons. It was called Jumbo. By the time it was delivered, though, production of the fissionable
material had increased and there was greater
confidence in the success of the bomb. Use of Jumbo was canceled. Instead, it was hung
from a tower 800 yards from ground zero. Senior scientists started a betting pool on the bomb's yield. - I bet on the number that
our leader had predicted, namely eight kilotons. - [Narrator] Edward Teller bet high. 45,000 tons. - I bet, I was the only
one, who lost the pool, because I bet too high. Practically everybody else bet too low. - [Narrator] Norman Ramsay bet low. - And I bet zero, and I think
that was the most intelligent bet of any because zero
included not only zero, but it also included the first
25 generations of neutrons. I mean, this is an
exponentially growing thing, so it's probably the first
35 generations of neutrons, and it stopped anywhere
along there, it would be zero in the scale that they had. So I had the biggest
number of, statistically the best chance of winning. - I think that gives you a bit
of a quantitative estimate. How very doubtful we
had been at that time, and you know, I cannot see
into the souls of other people. I was very much interested, if not worried what would happen. - [Narrator] Los Alamos
started sending down those who needed to be at the test site, but as the test date drew
closer, there was a nagging uncertainty about whether the bomb would actually work at all. In a meeting before the
test, Hans Betha described all that was known about the bomb, and what wasn't. - Critchfield and I overruled Fermi in this very dangerous thing to do, because Fermi was almost always right, but we overruled him, and so I felt uncertain for that reason. - What was thought during
the war wasnn't very often we kept saying maybe we'll come
across something insuperable physical obstacle which
prevents it from working. You can easily imagine those things. For example, a little
delay in the emission of fast neutrons after fission. - [Narrator] They would know
only if the gadget detonated. Three areas were of prime importance. First, implosion studies. The release of nuclear energy
in the form of gamma rays. Second was damage measurement,
and third was blast effect, earth shock, and radiant heating. Reinforced shelters had
been built at 10,000 yards north, west, and south of ground zero for cameras to record and
scientists to observe the blast. One camera, rigged by Berlyn Brixner, would shoot color, the
rest black and white. Besides running at normal
speed, some would be running as fast as
8,000 frames per second. - It would take pictures,
and then it was fastened to a steel cable, and
that could be used to pull those cameras out of
that area, which would be too radioactive to go
in at all at that time. - [Narrator] On July 7th, Norris Bradbury, who was group leader for bomb assembly, began putting components
through loading tests and assembly dry runs in Los Alamos. By the following Thursday the 12th, assembly of the high explosives fear began at V site. The next day, the
preassembled explosives unit left for Trinity Site. 250 men from Los Alamos
were already there. They were now working against time, along with everyone else
still at Los Alamos. By now, plutonium delivered to Los Alamos had been shaped into hemispheres. On July 11th, they made
the trip to Trinity along with other
components in the backseat of a well-guarded sedan. - I remember being rather
afraid of the fast-driving young woman who drove us
down there with a convoy who was a really high
speed, pedal to the floor, all the way, driver. That was the scariest thing. - [Narrator] At ground zero, a 100 foot prefabricated steel tower had been built. It was braced for an electric winch to haul the gadget to an
oak platform at the top. On Friday July 13th,
starting at nine a.m., the pit, as the core would
be known, was assembled in a sealed and thoroughly cleaned room at the McDonald Ranch near Ground zero. Before assembly began,
a receipt was signed for the plutonium, value at least several hundred million dollars. At the moment the receipt was signed, the test shifted to military control. Though the number of parts were few, assembly took several hours. The core was then taken to the tower. Final assembly of the bomb
began in a canvas tent at the base of the tower. There were a few moments of concern when the core did not fit
in the center of the device, but once the temperature of the bomb shell and explosives equalized
to the ambient temperature the pit slipped smoothly into place. The next day, the tent was removed, and the gadget with its core was hoisted to the top of the tower. Only the detonators
had not been installed. The openings where they would be inserted gave the bomb a bandaged look. - We made measurements of that thing every few hours to see if it was behaving properly. Because it was the first one that had been left out of the laboratory
for any length of time, and so somebody was there,
somebody in my group had to climb up and measure something and come back down again every few hours. - [Narrator] The weather, still a concern, started to turn dark with
thunder and lightning as test day arrived. It started to rain. Would the test be able to go on? Midnight, July 16th. - Extraordinary, I mean
very hard to sleep, very hard to get your
minds off all the things that might have gone wrong,
very hard not to think about the implications. But you know, we were all
consumed with the job, especially this crucial
one, a test fire to see if this whole idea would work, and that was in everyone's mind I think. - Everybody was extremely excited to see if it actually would turn out to be that way, because no one really knew whether the thing would work or not. - [Narrator] By two
a.m., the weather started to look better. The shot, which was originally scheduled for four a.m., was postponed to 5:30. At four a.m., the rain stopped. At 4:45, an updated weather report came in showing improved conditions. The test was ago for 5:30. At 5:09:45, T-minus 20 minutes, the master switches were unlocked. The countdown had begun. At viewing sites around Trinity, everyone was told to lie face down with their feet towards the blast, and close and cover their eyes. - We were all given welder's glasses. Not to be blinded. I took dark glasses in
addition to welder's glasses. Then I put some ointment on my face and then I put on gloves to be protected against all eventuality. - They didn't allow many
people, but they did allow me, and I looked with, I
had one eye protected, I couldn't look with both eyes, and so I was looking with just one eye. - There were three of us, one of the other people who was with us at that time was Ken Greisen,
who later went to Cornell, who'd been in the explosive division. He'd done his work. And he was next to Robbie
on one side, I guess, or yeah, next to him, and I think Fermi was a couple over, and Robbie was really
getting quite excited, you know, what's gonna happen. And Greisen was very relaxed, and Robbie said gee aren't
you going to get excited? No, it's calm. If you've been doing a lot
of work with explosives you get fairly calm, I guess you have to, and he was fairly calm and Robbie said well you tell me when you get excited. - [Narrator] As the
final minute approached, General Groves had thoughts of his own. - [Man] "The quiet grew more intense. "As I lay there in the
final seconds, I thought "of what I would do if
the countdown got to zero "and nothing happened." - [Narrator] At the control
point, General Farrow Groves' depute wrote-- - [Man] "The scene inside the shelter "was dramatic beyond words. "It can be safely said that
most everyone was praying. "Oppenheimer grew tenser
as the seconds ticked off. "He scarcely breathed." - [Narrator] At 45 seconds, the
automatic timer was started. The test was now out of man's control. Physicist Kenneth Greisen who was normally the cool-headed one, changed his mind. - Minus 30 seconds, minus 15 seconds, at minus 15 seconds,
Greisen turned to Robbie and said I'm excited. - [Announcer] Five, four, three, two, one. (deep rumbling) - [Narrator] In the dead
silence of the morning, at 5:29:45 Mountain War Time, the Jornada del Muerto was
bathed in an intense flash of a light that man had
only seen from the stars. - [Man] "Most experiences
in life can be comprehended "by previous experience, but the atom bomb "did not fit into any preconception
possessed by anybody." Norris Bradbury. - [Narrator] The light from
the blast was the one place where theoretical
calculation had been way off. In the instrument bunker at 10,000 north, Berlyn Brixner was caught off guard. - But then I realized
that the ball of fire was moving up, so I grabbed the controls of the camera, and turned the camera up and so you see it abruptly,
it just suddenly jerks up. - I was looking straight at hot spot that appeared a very small point of light. And my first impression was,
I very distinctly remember, is that all? - Well you didn't look at the bomb, I'm looking in the other direction. The other mountains were really like the sun had just risen temporarily. - And when I started to see
the point rising and spreading, I did not take off the glasses, by that time I knew it was big. I twisted the glasses and look
down at the sand behind me. Well you know, the
whole thing was at dawn. Six a.m., barely light. As I look down at the
sand, it was like you were lifting the curtain in a darkened room. - Before I got my hand up to
start adjusting the goggles, I felt something that I didn't know, I hadn't been smart enough to interpret to figure out what's going to happen, and nobody had thought of it, I think. It was a cool desert morning. The sun had not quite come up. The air was still. It had that curious chill of a hot place which is its coolest hour of the day, and suddenly on that cool background the heat of the sun came
to me before the sun rose. It was the heat of the
bomb, not the light, but the heat was the first
thing that I could feel. - [Narrator] Physicist Frank Oppenheimer standing next to his
brother, Robert, wrote-- - [Man] "And there was this
sense of this ominous cloud "hanging over us. "It was so brilliant purple "with all the radioactive
glowing, and it just seemed "to hang there forever. "Of course it didn't. "It must have been a very
short time until it went up. "It was very terrifying. "And the thunder from the
blast, it bounced on the rocks "and then it went, I don't
know where else it bounced, "but it never seemed to stop, "not like an ordinary echo with thunder. "It just kept echoing back and forth. "it was a very scary
time when it went off. "And I wish I would remember
what my brother said "but I can't, but I think
we just said it worked. "I think that's what we
both said, both of us. "It worked." - [Narrator] At four
a.m up on Sandia Crest overlooking Albuquerque, groups of people who had driven there up
the winding dirt road thought the test a failure
when nothing happened. Those who stayed were
amazed by what they saw. - We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed. Few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line
from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes
on his multi-armed form and says now I am become
death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought
that, one way or another. - [Narrator] The explosion
caused excitement around the state. Wire services were swamped with inquiries, and the army was prepared. Three weeks before the test,
a release had been prepared and sent to the headquarters of the Alamogordo bombing range. It stated that an ammunition
dump in a remote part of the range filled with high explosives, gas shells, and
pyrotechnics, had exploded. Weather conditions affecting
the content of gas shells exploded by the blast
may make it desirable for the army to temporarily
evacuate some civilians from their homes. Not long after sunrise,
what was left of the cloud had started to dissipate. There was concern that the
irradiated dust and debris from the blast, fallout, would fall onto neighboring communities. At a few locations, detectors
showed rises in radioactivity, but they dropped quickly. Oppenheimer returned to
base camp from 10,000 south. - [Man] "When he came back,
there he was, you know, "with his hat. "You've seen pictures of Robert's hat. "And he came to where
we were in headquarters "so to speak, and his
walk was like high noon. "I think that's the best
I could describe it. "This kind of strut. "He'd done it." I.I. Rabi. - Oppenheimer looked very
relieved, as might be expected. After all, it had worked
and the tension was over. - [Narrator] Later in the
morning, Fermi and physicist Herbert Anderson donned
white surgical scrubs and rode in two lead lined
tanks to ground zero. Fermi's tank broke down after only a mile, and he had to walk back. Anderson went on and
surveyed the bomb's crater through a periscope. The 100 foot tower had been vaporized. All that remained were the
twisted stumps of the footings that were anchored 20
feet into the ground. Covering the ground was a
green glass-like substance made up of sand fused
by the bomb's energy. It would later be called Trinitite. Oppenheimer estimated
the blast at 21 kilotons, 21,000 tons of TNT. I.I. Rabi's bet in the
pool was 18,000 tons, mainly because all the
low numbers were taken. He won. The bomb's yield exceeded the
most optimistic predictions. There was still a great
deal of work to be done. This was only a rehearsal. - We went up back to Los Alamos, and the most interesting thing about that was the collapse of security in the dining halls that evening. Because everyone was
exchanging experiences about the explosion,
where they saw it from, what it was, and so on. A general, not just a
few people, but a roar of such discussion. - [Narrator] In Potsdam Yugoslavia, President Truman and British
Prime Minister Churchill were meeting with Josef Stalin to decide how to end the war in the Pacific. It was not their preference
to include Russia unless absolutely necessary. - We were very interested to hear whether Truman had told Stalin about our test, as we were told yes
Truman had mentioned it and Stalin had reacted in a non-committal way. - [Interviewer] Because he already knew? - He already knew. - [Narrator] After the
successful test at Trinity, Leo Szilard who began what
became the Manhattan Project was concerned that the
weapon, which was made to stop Hitler, should not be used. He and other scientists felt
it should be demonstrated to Japan to encourage them to surrender. He started a petition among the scientists to appeal to the president to
consider alternative plans. - Even before the test, sometime I believe end
of June, I got a letter from my very good friend Leo Szilard whom I had driven to
see Einstein at the time when he signed the letter
that got things going. And he had circulated a petition that the bomb should not be dropped before the Japanese were first notified. Would I please sign it, and circulate it in Los Alamos? Szilard was in Chicago. I wanted to sign it,
but I felt I could not circulate it without
showing it to Oppenheimer. That I did. And Oppenheimer got very excited that it's completely on real scientists have one job, to solve the technical problems. We don't know anything about the Japanese, we don't know anything about politics. We should shut up about all those things. Now I had strong feelings about it, and I wanted to sign it, and
I wanted to circulate it, but on the other hand, what
Oppenheimer said made sense, and he also had tremendous
prestige with everybody including me. I did not sign the letter. - Oppenheimer, Lawrence, Compton, maybe Fermi, came together in a meeting and decided they did not know any other way to use
the weapon effectively than to actually drop it, and I retrospectively,
I agreed at the time, that it should be dropped,
and I agree even more today. - We knew definitively one week later when Penney gave his famous lecture on the effects of the
bomb at the colloquium on the Thursday after the Monday. Again with the same which
is this clearly going to end the city and probably with it the war. - [Narrator] But by then the die was cast. The bomb was under
control of the military, and the targets had been selected. - We are now prepared
to destroy more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have in any city. We shall destroy their
docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake. We shall completely destroy
Japan's power to make war. It was to spare the Japanese
people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July the
26th was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly
rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain
of ruin from the air, the like of which has never
been seen on this earth. - [Narrator] A few hours
before dawn on July 16th, while the scientists
at Trinity Site waited for the test in the New Mexico desert, the primary components of
the gun type uranium weapon were being hoisted aboard
the cruiser Indianapolis. The ship set sail for the
Pacific Island of Tinian in the Marianas. A few weeks later on August 6th, 1945, a B-29 named Enola Gay took off in the early morning hours. Just after eight a.m.,
it dropped the weapon named Little Boy, which
exploded approximately 1000 feet over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. (intense dramatic music) (dark ominous music) Three days later, another mission carrying the plutonium implosion
weapon named Fat Man detonated over Nagasaki. (solemn music) A few weeks later, the war ended
with the Japanese surrender on the Battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. World War Two was over. - Let us pray that peace be
now restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always. These proceedings are closed. (slow somber music)
