Bomb. O create the this includes interviews from some of the key Manhattan Project scientist and technicians. Things change in time. In a moment in time in 1945, everything changed. The deserts of central new mexico, an area called the journey of death, named by the spanish conquistadors, because if you ran out of water, you would not survive here. This place is now known as the trinity site. In a moment in time in this spot in july, 1945, things changed. In the instant of what happened here, the life of a war changed, along with the course of history. It began years before thousands , of miles away. [drumbeats] narrator for years, adolf hitler had forced not to rule on nazirced the influence of rule on europe. The rest of the free world saw his intentions were war and brutality was his message. I came from hungary and germany. I have seen many things firsthand. I was dreadfully worried about my family and all of my friends, and i do not believe that people today realize how tremendous those things have been, because hitler indeed could have taken over the world. He had the power to do so. Those of us who came from europe, we saw it came in stages. Dr. Bethe from very early on, the jewish people were put in concentration camps. The loss of jobs was welldocumented and kept getting worse. There was no question that i should emigrate. Narrator there were other scientists from the best universities and scientific institutions in europe seeking also to get away. Theythey fled the nazis, brought with them and International Relationship of friendships and acquaintances, along with research they had been doing on a relatively new field of nuclear fission. It had been discovered in germany in 1938, and was an emerging field that promised massive amounts of energy. There was also the thought that it could deliver energy in a bomb. A single, massive amount of energy that could destroy a city. Dr. Bethe we knew that there were a number of enemies that were available, and so that made us concerned. That we might be too late. The war had begun four months earlier. At that time, this seemed fateful. Mindmediately saw no ones was on anything. How could it be used for war . Concern led the physicist to reveal the possibility to the government. Together with Albert Einstein and edward teller, this doctor composed a letter to Franklin Roosevelt, telling of the terrible possibility that germany had the talent and the knowledge to research and develop an atomic weapon. Delivering the letter to roosevelt on the scientists behalf was dr. Sachs. An economic adviser to the president. Roosevelt said, alex, your goal the nazis dont blow us up. Action, roosevelt said. Intelligence reports from europe indicated that the nazis were working on such a weapon, but no one knew how much effort they were devoting to it. The one certainty was that if hitler developed the bomb, he would win the war. The letter to roosevelt paved the way for the creation of a topsecret military project, one that would have the highest priority and tightest security. It would be named the manhattan military engineering district. Dr. Teller finally we became a we began to participate in the war effort. It was a relief. Narrator the project was massive, it designed and built a design that existed in theory from material that didnt exist in any quantity, under unprecedenteds secrecy, many of who were not even u. S. Citizens. It was known that the nucleus of one form of uranium would split when it absorbed a neutron. When this happens, energy is released and more neutrons were created that struck and split the nuclei. When it happens continuously, it is known as a Chain Reaction. No one knew at the start how much fissionable material would be needed to start an explosive Chain Reaction. That volume would be known as the Critical Mass. Another element only discovered in 1941, by a berkeley chemist, properties to explode in a Chain Reaction under the right conditions. He named it for the ninth planet, plutonium. The isotope was plutonium 238. Produced by a bombardment of uranium. One month later i was joined by another researcher and we identified in this room the isotope of importance and isolated it so that it could be, have its fission properties measured. Measured at the 37 inch. Narrator general leslie grove of the u. S. Army corps of engineers had just completed a major project, the construction of the pentagon. Was his decision to combat accept an assignment overseas. The superior officer to hold grove that the secretary of war had selected him for an important assignment in washington. He was appointed the head of the Manhattan Project. General grove was a very difficult man to sum up. But i can, the same thing appealed to me and him that appealed to oppenheimer. Enormous devotion, determination to get the war over, to do what he could. Physicist,nd italian working underneath chicago stadium, assembled a large pile of graphite blocks with natural uranium in them. In 1942, they succeeded in bringing about the first manmade controlled nuclear Chain Reaction. Now that controlled fission had been accomplished, it could be studied and the next steps could proceed. Robert oppenheimer was a highly respected 38 year old theoretical physicist in 1942. He had been closely examining the development of fission science. In october, he was at the university of chicago when grove came through on his first inspection tour. They discussed the need for a central facility. Grove saw something in oppenheimer, a leadership, and an understanding of what needed to be done. I first met oppenheimer when i became a graduate student at berkeley. His reputation for clear explication was already strong. He had a reputation for being very quick, and easily able to quash a questioner or objectioner. Dr. Bethe oppenheimer was a difficult human being. Extremely intelligent, extremely quick. He understood everything when i had just a glimpse of what was being talked about. Narrator grove selected oppenheimer for the leader of the Manhattan Project to be brought together into one place. Oppenheimer came to the project with an immediate controversy. His security was questioned because of college acquaintances within communism. Dr. Bethe by the time of the start of the war, he had become very leftist. Narrator groves overrode objections and stayed with his selection. No one would undertake such a task, and when i met grove i realized they were very different persons. Very different views. But they both had an intensity and determination and that is won over groves. He could see oppenheimer was a man who understood the job and could get it done. Narrator groves what into compartment julys compartmentalize the department. Oppenheimer immediately disagreed. To him, progress was made through interaction. Science was discovered through collaboration. He held weekly colloquiums, scientific meetings among the different groups to Exchange Information and solve problems. Dr. Bethe oppenheimer insisted that everyone should know and contribute. Narrator the new lab will be devoted to experiment. Oppenheimer was a theorist. Putting them in a framework yes, we knows us, how a star works. We know how a supernova explodes. But every single bit of physics that goes into understanding our universe, has first been tested out right here on planet earth. And that is what an experimentalist does. Laws holdhether those up. They are not Laws Congress can repeal. Narrator the best scientific talent in the country and outside the country would the siking as site working at locale 200remote miles from a coastline or International Boundary from safety from attack. Room for testing, whether good enough for construction to proceed year round, and enough housing to accommodate the first group of scientists. Dudley of the manhattan engineering district found a location in oak city in utah. There were too many residents, and too much farmland that would be evicted. Oppenheimer was no stranger to the southwest. His family had a vacation cabin in the Pecos Wilderness of new mexico. The next prospect was another town in new mexico. Oppenheimer and groves drove to new mexico to have a look. Opinion, thesame Narrow Canyon walls were too deep for comfort space and security. Oppenheimer remembered a place he had been to on a trip and returned. It was a place called los alamos. They drove there, and the students were out on their playing fields, and a light snow was falling. This is it, groves said. Located on the eastern slope of the mountains, los alamos was had as occupants homesteaders. It was the dream of an extra rough rider named ashley pond. It was the school for the sons of wealthy families based on a vigorous life. Students wore shorts yearround and slept in unheated sleeping porches. Each student was assigned a horse to care for and pack trips into the mountains were common. The school had spent its time quietly since the late 1920s, but now the school was starting to come to an end. School officials started noticing a lowflying planes studying the area. Cars and military vehicles appeared on the roads that lead up from the valley. On december 4, 1942, the School Received notice from henry stimson, the secretary of war, that the school was being taken over. Condemnation proceedings were used and it was decreed that all records of the acquisition be sealed from public view. Almost 54,000 acres were required. Almost 9000 acres were public land. The cost of acquisition was 440,000. After pearl harbor, we all knew that we were kind of playing an endgame. We would get out of school and we were off to war. And so in the beginning of the fall of 42, there was already surveyors around here from the government, and then they took it over. They brought around mega bulldozers to the place. There was actually fantastic construction in a very short period of time. We knew the school would be taken over, but we didnt know when. Narrator construction crews started throwing up buildings for administration, laboratories, housing, schools, and Everything Else the community needed to function. It looked more like a boom town than a wartime army camp. All mushrooming around the ranch school. At the end of all of this, before christmas these two dudes , show up here, the first one in a porkpie hat and the second one in a fedora. They were called mr. Smith and mr. Jones. It took two hours to know that this was oppenheimer and lawrence. We call them by those names among us kids right then, because we knew of them so well from our physics courses and things like that. We had pictures in our physics books. Narrator in 1943, the last graduation was held. New roads of unpaved streets became mud in the rain. Define the new community. In 1943, the university of california was selected to operate the new laboratory. Recruiting scientists was difficult, because prospective employees were already doing important work, and needed good reason to change their jobs. Because of security, only scientific personnel could be told anything about the nature of the work. They were to tell no one about what they did, not even their families. Laney, new mexico, 15 miles south of los alamos. Southeast of santa fe. In the spring of 1943, they started arriving at the railroad station that looked like it was in the middle of nowhere. Arriving from all parts of the country and europe were the best Scientific Minds in the world. Niels bohr, edward teller, richard feynman, edward mcmillan. Some came as consultants and the rest as permanent staff. Santa fe, new mexico. To those who came into town en route from around the country, it was hard to see the small town is the states capital. The first stop was in office at 109 east palace avenue, run by dorothy mckibben. It was the welcome and checkin for all of those who came to disappear up on the plateau. She arranged for transportation, housing, and hundreds of other Little Things that took away some of the apprehension of things to come. One wife said, i felt a Kindred Spirit with the pioneer women accompanying their husbands westward, alert to dangers, resigned to the fact that they journeyed into the unknown. Narrator after leaving santa fay, the dirt road was rough even for that day. Once they crossed the bridge over the rio grande, they climbed up a steep road to the top of the mesa. There, they were met by the First Security gate. Once they made it in, it was a different world. Dr. Bethe this was a desolate place. The buildings were just being built, and the one thing that was beautiful was the view of the sun off the cliffs on the other side. Dr. Teller my wife and son came to or three weeks later and we stayed in a big house, and it was sort of a mess. It wasnt easy to sleep. ,omeone was beating his drum which i did not like. But apart from that, of course, the surroundings. I knew it was magnificent. It was wartime. It struck me as a military camp, with an influx of university people. I felt right at home. There were famous europeans who were common. Narrator the british were part of the project. They arrived as part of the mission to help work on the bomb. Rows of work family houses stretched to the north, named sun homes. Barrick send dormitories and trailers, everyone was a transplant from somewhere else. Because of the mission, because of Everything Else on the hill, it became a tightknit community of scientists, spouses, children, and mers and military personnel. Most people were in their 20s or 30s. The average age was 25. They were healthy and middle class. There was no unemployment. What you did at the lab dictated your social standing, as well as of your housing. From our point of view, it was wonderful. We couldnt have had a better waste to live. There was plenty of food to eat. A lot of the people there had pretty miserable times in their apartments, which were very shoddily constructed to the disappointment of many europeans and did not have bathtubs. Separation of adjacent houses was feeble. You knew when your neighbors were having a party. Narrator some senior lab officials lived in homes previously used by the schoolmasters. It became known as the top row as bathtub row since they , were the only places that had them. In the beginning of april, 1943, oppenheimer assembled his staff, of about 30, to sum up the studies of the weapon from the previous summer in berkeley. It also Incorporated Research done on fission over the past year. It was determined that explosive means would do the job by taking a sub Critical Mass and making it critical so that the Radioactive Material would detonate. Two methods to do that had been devised. One was a gunmetal, where two halves of sub critical material were shot together to form a Critical Mass, starting the nuclear detonation. It was discovered that the gun method would work with uranium, but not with plutonium. With plutonium, there was spontaneousish and. That produce neutrons all the time. Fission. Neous if you had a gun assembly, shooting two pieces together, before they got together and have a big explosion, they would redetonate. Dr. Bethe we had assembly which we made fun of and there was the idea of implosion, which in the end, turned out to be the way to do it. Suddenly, the top priority shifted to the plutonium model. Narrator the gun method was the easiest, but the science of implosion would have to be developed, also. It required science and engineering that would enable scientific simultaneous and uniform compression of plutonium. Because nothing like this had ever been created, the plutonium weapon would also have to be tested. It would be months for the first significant amounts of Nuclear Material would be delivered. Before that could happen, there were many questions which came down to the central problem, how to make the fissionable serial material of uranium 235 or the plutonium 239 to release their Energy Efficiently in a casing that an airplane could deliver. One of the biggest problems of extracting u235 or p238 was the job of the plant at oak ridge, tennessee. A gas diffusion measured method was used, thousands of miles of piping was used. Hundreds of acres of barrier produced metal from uranium enriched gas. Also used were electromagnetic separation to produce and refine the material. Oak ridge required thousands of workers. A team was assembled in chicago by seaborg to devise a method for extracting plutonium. Hanford, washington was selected for the location of refining the plutonium. Ond depended as much a chemical separation as the reactors. The chemistry was seaborgs, scaled up from his micro chemical work. Dr. Seaborg we had been working with what you called tracer amounts, invisible amounts detected by its radioactivity, but we couldnt deduce the Chemical Properties with certainty that way. We needed to work with actual ponderable weighable amounts, and that is why we produced weighable amounts of plutonium in this way. This meant we had to work, and i say we, the chemists working with me, on what they call an ultramicro chemical scale. Narrator slowly, the materials started coming to los alamos in september, 1944. For those in loss elements who were not part of the project, life continued. All of the material came to po box 1663 in santa fe. Everyone have the same address. Babies born at the lab had it as their place of birth. It was the address on drivers licenses, bank accounts, income tax returns, and insurance policies. Los alamos was an army post, one that had more civilians than met military personnel. 80 babies were born in the first year. By 1945, there were 300 infants on the site. It was so much of a concern that general groves almost literally oh ordered oppenheimer to stop the population explosion. The population doubled every nine months. Housing would always be short, water scarce and electricity intermittent. The threat of structure fire was always in the back of everyones mind. Then there was security. Residents could not travel more than 100 miles from los alamos. If you ran into a friend on the outside of the project, you had to give a detailed report to security. Famous names were disguised. Occupations were never