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DAWN OF THE ATOMIC ERA
(1945)
Events
- 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
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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