The Atomic Bomb

On December 21, 1938, German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman became the first people to successfully split, or fission, a uranium atom. This groundbreaking experiment sent shockwaves throughout the scientific community. On August 2, 1939, at the urging of scientist Leo Szilard, physicist Albert Einstein sent a letter to US President Franklin Roosevelt warning him that Nazi Germany may already be developing this strange and powerful new weapon. As a result, Roosevelt established the Advisory Committee on Uranium in 1939. In the spring of 1941, several British scientists implored Roosevelt to initiate development of an atomic weapons program in the United States, hoping to beat Nazi Germany in the race to develop this new technology.

On August 7, the day after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, Truman received a telegram from Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia, encouraging the president to use as many atomic bombs as possible on Japan, claiming the American people believed “that we should continue to strike the Japanese until they are brought groveling to their knees.” Truman responded, “I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare but I can't bring myself to believe that because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in that same manner. For myself I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the ‘pigheadedness’ of the leaders of a nation, and, for your information, I am not going to do it unless absolutely necessary.”

On August 9, the day the Nagasaki bomb was dropped, Truman received a telegram from Samuel McCrea Cavert, a Protestant clergyman, who pleaded with the president to stop the bombing “before any further devastation by atomic bomb is visited upon her [Japan’s] people.” Two days later, Truman replied, “The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.”

One week later, on August 14, 1945, after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered. World War II, the deadliest conflict in human history, with between 50 and 85 million fatalities, was finally over.

Looking back, President Truman never shirked personal responsibility for his decision, but neither did he apologize. He asserted that he would not use the bomb in later conflicts, such as Korea. Nevertheless, given the same circumstances and choices that confronted him in Japan in 1945, he said he would do exactly the same thing.

It was heavy burden to bear. Speaking of himself as president, Truman said, “And he alone, in all the world, must say Yes or No to that awesome, ultimate question, ‘Shall we drop the bomb on a living target?’” Every president since Harry Truman has had that power. None has exercised it.

Many National Park Service sites were either directly involved in the quest to create the bomb or to honor those who lost their lives to it.

Showing results 1-10 of 47

  • Color illustration of a white woman in blue coveralls holding a garden hoe and basket.

    Faced with having to feed an expanded military and a hungry population, the US government reintroduced the idea of War Gardens from World War I. They rebranded them as Victory Gardens for World War II. World War II Victory Gardens were grown on farms, in backyards, on city rooftops, in window-boxes, on public lands, and in vacant lots.

  • Manhattan Project National Historical Park

    Dayton, OH

    • Locations: Manhattan Project National Historical Park
    3 people work in large gymnasium that is empty except for metal drums. A fire burns in one of them

    Dayton, Ohio is known for cash registers, Cheez-It crackers, pop top cans, and being the Birthplace of Aviation. However, the city has another important but widely unknown accolade on its long list of innovations and inventions: the scientific work done during the top-secret Dayton Project. The work done throughout the city in the 1940s culminated in the polonium initiators used in the atomic bombs developed by the Manhattan Project during WWII.

  • Manhattan Project National Historical Park

    109 East Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, NM

    • Locations: Manhattan Project National Historical Park
    The entrance of a flat-roofed adobe building with a sign that reads Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory

    On March 26, 1943, Dorothy McKibbin reported to work at 109 East Palace in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and learned that their employer was the secret Los Alamos Laboratory in the nearby mountains, part of the covert Manhattan Project. From her modest office, Dorothy became “gatekeeper” to Los Alamos since all civilian employees and many of the military personnel checked in through her office.

  • Manhattan Project National Historical Park

    2024 Nobel Peace Prize Honors Atomic Bomb Survivors

    • Locations: Manhattan Project National Historical Park
    the destruction of Hiroshima Japan from the atomic bombing.

    The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, an organization of survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

  • Manhattan Project National Historical Park

    Marshall Islands

    • Locations: Manhattan Project National Historical Park
    Historic photo, five women work with palm fronds on sandy ground before thatched hut and palm trees.

    During World War II, the Marshall Islands were seen as a strategic location for Japan to base attacks elsewhere in the Pacific. The US gained control of the Islands in 1944. Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear tests on, in, and above the atolls and islands, contaminating the environment with radioactive fallout and displacing Indigenous Marshallese Islanders. Bikini Atoll, now a World Heritage Site, is still not environmentally safe for permanent residence.

  • Manhattan Project National Historical Park

    Latinas/os of 1940s Hanford

    • Locations: Manhattan Project National Historical Park
    A man and woman stand side by side facing a woman who is handing them an award.

    The Manhattan Project at Hanford and the Tri-Cities looked like many areas of the American South during the 1940s. Practices of segregation, discrimination, and racism were embedded into the fabric of workplace and community. Latinos/as who were recruited to Hanford for the Manhattan Project experienced prejudice and segregation. Their presence in the workforce and community demonstrates how race, ethnicity, and gender impact demographics across the Tri-Cities then and now.

  • Manhattan Project National Historical Park

    Grand Junction, CO

    • Locations: Manhattan Project National Historical Park
    Historic log cabin with angled roof, two chimneys, classic car parked in front outside picket fence.

    The Manhattan Engineer District needed uranium for the Manhattan Project to succeed. They relied heavily on Canada and Africa for raw uranium but recognized the risk in getting uranium from these places and sought a domestic source. Land in Western Colorado and Eastern Utah had the highest known uranium-ore concentrations in the country. The federal government chose Grand Junction, CO to become a uranium processing site, making it very important to the Manhattan Project.

  • Manhattan Project National Historical Park

    Oak Ridge Virtual Bell Ringing

    • Locations: Manhattan Project National Historical Park
    Park ranger faces a large bronze bell overhanging a courtyard about to be rung by a wooden striker.

    Each year from August 6th to August 9th, website visitors are encouraged to virtually ring the International Friendship Bell located in Oak Ridge, TN. The International Friendship Bell is a symbol of unity that carries the message of peace and friendship into the future. You may virtually ring the bell on these dates for whatever personal reason speaks to you.

  • Manhattan Project National Historical Park

    Virtual Lights for Peace

    • Locations: Manhattan Project National Historical Park
    Nighttime shore, city lights reflect on water in distance, illuminated square bags line closer bank.

    On August 9, 1945, the US Army Air Forces dropped the plutonium-fueled Fat Man atomic bomb over Nagasaki, Japan in the second, and so far the last, nuclear bombing. The Manhattan Project facility at Hanford produced plutonium used in the Trinity test and Fat Man bomb. We are offering this Lights for Peace virtual experience to commemorate the atomic bombings of Japan during the waning days of World War II and to recognize the historical and emotional traumas of these events.

    • Locations: Manhattan Project National Historical Park
    African American teenagers dance inside a building.

    This lesson plan explores the history of African American life in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a major site of the Manhattan Project. It is part of a series about Oak Ridge, designated an American World War II Heritage City in 2022 by the Secretary of the Interior.

Last updated: February 23, 2023

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