Brandon Ambrossi
Ms. Murphy
World Literature
June 6, 2013
The Manhattan Project On August 6, 1945, warfare was forever changed. No longer did steel bathed in blood define warfare, instead, the fission of atoms became the weapon of choice during the Cold War. These weapons were never used after World War Two. Almost every nation agreed they were simply too dangerous. Following Albert Einstein’s immigration to the United States in 1939, he wrote an urgent letter addressed to President Roosevelt warning him of the research atom splitting, or fission, the Germans were conducting. If utilized correctly, the fission of an element specifically, Uranium and Plutonium, could be a weapon of mass destruction (Griffis). On December 7, 1941, the Hawaiian military base, Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese forces. In 1942, preliminary research for the atom bombs entered development stage. The project went under the name of “The Manhattan Project” (Brosnan). Though research and development mainly occurred in New York City’s Manhattan District, testing exclusively occurred in New Mexico before the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Lawton 10). After, two more well-known tests occurred; one in Bikini Atoll, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, and another in Nevada, Las Vegas (Griffis). The very first test, called the Trinity test, was conducted in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The bomb, whose concept design would later be known as the “Fat Man” due to its shape, was dropped from a 100 foot tall tower. The bomb caused a 100 feet deep, 1,100 feet wide crater (Griffis). After seeing this, the lead scientist of Los Alamos testing site, Robert Oppenheimer, was instantly reminded of a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture (Lawton 4): “If the power of a thousand Suns were to burst at once in the sky, I would be Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.”
An excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita

The atom bombs were to be originally used to attack Germany (Brosnan), but after their surrender on May 8, 1945, the United States redirected their plans on Japan (Brosnan). A few days before the attack, American planes dropped tons of leaflets warning Japanese citizens to evacuate the cities listed on the leaflet, wishing them no harm (Harry S. Truman Library, Miscellaneous historical document file, no. 258.)

“We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.” -The opening paragraph in the leaflet (Harry S. Truman Library, Miscellaneous historical document file, no. 258.)

On August 6, 1945, the Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The casualties are estimated to be 80,000