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DAWN OF THE ATOMIC ERA
(1945)
Events
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The War Enters Its Final Phase, 1945
-
Debate Over How to Use the Bomb, Late Spring
1945
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The Trinity Test, July 16, 1945
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Safety and the Trinity Test, July 1945
-
Evaluations of Trinity, July 1945
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Potsdam and the Final Decision to Bomb, July
1945
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The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, August 6,
1945
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The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9,
1945
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Japan Surrenders, August 10-15, 1945
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The Manhattan Project and the Second World War,
1939-1945
As
the war entered its final phase, the Manhattan Project became an increasingly important
and controversial element in American strategy.
Debate over how to use the bomb
began in earnest in early summer of 1945. The
Trinity atomic test
of July 16 (right) confirmed that the stakes for this
decision were very high. With a blast equivalent of
approximately 21 kilotons of TNT, the test explosion was
greater than had been predicted, and the dispersal of
radioactive fallout following the test made
safety
something of a near thing.
News of the success at Trinity
reached President Harry S. Truman at the Potsdam
Conference.
Following consultations with his advisers, Truman made
the
decision to use the bomb against Japan
as soon as the first weapon was ready. Little Boy,
the untested uranium bomb, was dropped first at
Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, while the plutonium weapon,
Fat Man, followed three days later at
Nagasaki on
August 9. Use of the bomb helped bring an end to the
war in the Pacific, with
Japan surrendering on August 14. The most destructive war in human
history was finally over.
The Manhattan Project had fulfilled its
mission.
To learn more about any of these events associated with
the dawn of the atomic era, choose a web page from the
menu below. To conclude your quick overview of the
Manhattan Project, jump ahead to the description of its
"Postscript, the Nuclear Age, 1945-present."
-
The War Enters Its Final Phase, 1945
-
Debate Over How to Use the Bomb, Late Spring
1945
-
The Trinity Test, July 16, 1945
-
Safety and the Trinity Test, July 1945
-
Evaluations of Trinity, July 1945
-
Potsdam and the Final Decision to Bomb, July
1945
-
The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, August 6,
1945
-
The Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki, August 9,
1945
-
Japan Surrenders, August 10-15, 1945
-
The Manhattan Project and the Second World War,
1939-1945
Previous Next
Sources and notes for this page.
Portions of the text for this page were adapted from,
and portions were taken directly from the
Office of History and Heritage Resources, publications:
F. G. Gosling,
The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb
(DOE/MA-0001; Washington: History Division, Department
of Energy, January 1999), 45, and
Terrence R. Fehner and F. G. Gosling,
Origins of the Nevada Test Site (DOE/MA-0518;
Washington: History Division, Department of Energy,
December 2000), 31-32. "Atomic" and "nuclear" are basically
synonymous; much as the term "pile" gradually gave way
to "reactor," "atomic" was gradually replaced by
"nuclear" during the later years of the Manhattan
Project and afterwards. Click
here for more information about the photograph of
the Trinity test. The photograph of the lone soldier walking
through an
almost-completely leveled
portion of Hiroshima is courtesy the
Department of the Navy (via the
National Archives).
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