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History > WW2 (1939-1945) > USA, World

USA > Manhattan Project 1942-1946

The Manhattan Project

had a cumulative work force of some 600,000,

which included women and people of color.

Photograph: National Archives

A Secret City With a Secret African American History

The U.S. government built Oak Ridge in 1942

to develop the world’s first atomic weapon.

NYT

June 11, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/11/
us/oak-ridge-tennessee-manhattan-project.html

Oak Ridge historians have been fighting

for the stories of African Americans

who supported the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tenn.,

to be more widely shared.

Photograph: National Archives

A Secret City With a Secret African American History

The U.S. government built Oak Ridge in 1942

to develop the world’s first atomic weapon.

NYT

June 11, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/11/
us/oak-ridge-tennessee-manhattan-project.html

Manhattan Project 1942-1946

highly confidential government program

charged with building

the world's first atomic bomb.

https://www.npr.org/local/309/2019/06/17/
732849972/did-city-officials-know-about-the-manhattan-project-s-work-in-chicago

In 1933,

as Adolf Hitler was ascending

to power in Germany,

Hungarian physicist Leó Szilárd

proposed the notion

of a nuclear chain reaction,

whereby neutrons released

from radioactive atomic nuclei

would hit other heavy nuclei

causing them to split (fission)

into smaller nuclei.

Every time this splitting happened,

a little bit of energy was released.

Do it

for a huge number of atoms

and you get a chain reaction,

with a related huge amount

of released energy.

In 1939,

together with Enrico Fermi,

Szilárd showed that a multiplication

of released neutrons was possible.

Szilárd knew

that the possibility of a chain reaction

represented a shift in world history.

An explosive device

with an uncontrolled chain reaction

would have devastating consequences.

Szilárd convinced Albert Einstein,

at the time the world's

most famous scientist,

to write a letter to Franklin Roosevelt

urging the U.S. to embark

on a serious bomb-making effort,

lest the Nazis did it first.

The result, in late 1941,

was the Manhattan Project,

a massive effort led in Los Alamos

by J. Robert Oppenheimer

and overseen

by Major General Leslie Groves.

On July 16, 1945,

the first bomb was detonated

in the desert of Alamogordo

in New Mexico.

The mushroom cloud raised 40,000 feet

and broke windows 100 miles away.

Upon seeing the effects of their invention,

Oppenheimer pronounced

the now famous words

from the Bhagavad Gita

"Now I am become Death,

the destroyer of worlds."

On August 6 and 9,

the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs

in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

so far the only use of atomic weapons

on a civilian population.

In a few months,

between 90,000 and 146,000 people

died in Hiroshima

and between 39,000 and 80,000 in Nagasaki,

with an estimated half

during the first day after the bombing.

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/07/13/
485819334/the-madness-of-humanity-nuclear-weapons-and-m-a-d

When a reported 7,000 African Americans

from the Deep South were recruited to work

on the Manhattan Project starting in 1942,

they knew little except

that the positions were well-paid.

Drawn by newspaper ads,

word of mouth and recruiters

subcontracted by the military,

the workers arrived by train or bus

in a heavily patrolled town

outside Knoxville, Tenn.

Signage around the plants commanded:

“See nothing. Hear nothing. Say nothing.”

What exactly

their blue-collar work was supporting,

and the profound ways

it would alter the course of history,

would remain a secret until

after the United States

unleashed atomic bombs on Japan

at the end of World War II,

killing approximately

100,000 to 200,000 people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/11/
us/oak-ridge-tennessee-manhattan-project.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/
us/politics/atomic-bomb-secret-funding-congress.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/
books/oppenheimer-american-prometheus-sherwin-bird.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/11/
us/oak-ridge-tennessee-manhattan-project.html

https://www.npr.org/local/309/2019/06/17/
732849972/did-city-officials-know-about-the-manhattan-project-s-work-in-chicago

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/03/
off-the-map-the-secret-cities-behind-the-atom-bomb-manhattan-project

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/28/
566980515/75-years-ago-scientists-conducted-an-unprecedented-nuclear-experiment

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/07/13/
485819334/the-madness-of-humanity-nuclear-weapons-and-m-a-d

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/gallery/2015/nov/11/
manhattan-project-life-inside-america-secret-nuclear-past-in-pictures

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/aug/05/
hiroshima-nuclear-guide-anniversary-atomic-bomb

https://www.npr.org/2015/07/17/
423740547/seven-decades-ago-a-new-enormous-kind-of-explosion

https://www.npr.org/2014/12/16/
371253668/national-park-would-memoralize-manhattan-project

https://www.theguardian.com/world/picture/2013/aug/13/
manhattan-project-photography#img-42

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/
science/donald-hornig-a-bomb-scientist-and-brown-president-dies-at-92.html

https://www.npr.org/2012/12/04/
166402093/manhattan-project-sites-part-of-proposed-park

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/
science/3manharchive.html

https://www.npr.org/2005/07/15/
4756266/photographing-the-dawn-of-the-nuclear-age

https://www.npr.org/2003/02/27/1176693/revisiting-the-birth-of-the-bomb

https://www.nytimes.com/1961/07/16/
archives/columbia-shows-manhattan-project-documents-papers-once-classified.html

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/sept9_1945.pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/oct4_1945.pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/oct3_1945.pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/oct1_1945.pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/sept29_1945.pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/sept28_1945.pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/sept27_1945.pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/sept26_1945.pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/sept12_1945.pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/aug7_1945.pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/
science/20071030_MANHATTAN_GRAPHIC/apr27_1940.pdf

Julius Robert Oppenheimer USA 1904-1967

American theoretical physicist

He was the director

of the Los Alamos Laboratory

during World War II,

and is often credited

as the "father of the atomic bomb"

for his role in the Manhattan Project,

the research and development undertaking

that created the first nuclear weapons.

Source: Wikipedia, 13 July 2023

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
J._Robert_Oppenheimer

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/
books/oppenheimer-american-prometheus-sherwin-bird.html

Related > Anglonautes > History > 20th century >

WW2 (1939-1945) > USA, World

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