2000, which tells the story of the race to create the bomb. This hourlong documentary includes interviews with some of the key Manhattan Project scientists and technicians. Things change in time. In a moment in time in 1945, everything changed. The desert of central new mexico, in area called the journey of death, named by spanish can keep the doors conquistadors because if you ran out of water here, you did not survive. This place is now known as trinity site. In a moment in time at the spot in july, 1945, things changed. In the instant of what happened here, the length of a war changed, along with the course of history. It began years before, and thousands of miles away. [drum procession] four years, adolf hitler had forced the influence of n nazi rule on europe. To the rest of the free world, his intentions were war and totality was his method. Populations were sent in motion. I came from hungary and germany. I have seen many things firsthand. I was deathly afraid about my family and all my friends. And i do not believe that people today realize how tremendous those dangers had been. Because hitler, indeed, could have taken over the world. And with our last breath, do so. Those of us who came from europe, were more aware of that than native american families. It came in stages. And from very early on, jews were arrested and put in concentration camps. Certainly, the loss of jobs was and kept getting worse. So i think there was no question that i should emigrate. There were other scientists from the best universities and scientific institutions in europe seeking to also get away. When they fled, they brought with them an International Relationship of friendships and acquaintances, along with research they had been doing on relatively new fields, that of nuclear fission. It had been discovered in germany in 1938 and was in emerging field that promised massive an emerging field that promised massive amounts of energy. But there was also the thought that it could deliver that energy as a bomb. And we knew that there were a number of competent physicist and chemists physicists and chemists. That made is really concerned that we might [indiscernible] be too late. The world war just began four months earlier, so we knew it was going to develop into a terrible world war. And this coming at that time seemed to the fitful proof that it was. Seemed the fateful we immediately sought no ones mind was on anything except this. It was this concern that led refugee german physicist leo to reveal that possibility to the u. S. Government. Together with Albert Einstein and edward teller, he composed a letter to president Franklin Roosevelt. It told of a terrible possibility germany had the research and the knowledge to design a nuclear weapon. Delivering the letter was alexander sachs, a friend and Economic Advisor to the president. Roosevelt said, alex, what you are after is to see that the nazis do not blow us up. Precisely, he said, this require action. Intelligence reports from europe indicated the nazis were working on such a weapon, but knowing you how much effort they were 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 Top Secret Military project, one that would have the highest priority and titus security. And tightest security. It would be named, the manhattan military engineering district. When finally we began to do something, in participating in the war effort, it was a relief. The project was massive. To design and build a device that existed only in theory from material that didnt exist in any quantity under unprecedented secrecy by people, many of whom were not even u. S. Citizens, it it was known that the nucleus of one form of uranium, isotope 235, which split when it absorbed a neutron. When this happened, energy was released and more neutrons were crated that struck and split other nuclei. When it happens continuously, it is known as a Chain Reaction. No one new at the start how much material was needed to support an explosive Chain Reaction. That volume would be known as the Critical Mass. Another element, only discovered in late by a particular nuclear 1941 chemist, also had the properties to explode in a Chain Reaction under the right conditions. He named it for the ninth planet from the sun, plutonium. The isotope we produced was plutonium 238. Produced by the due to run bombardment of uranium. Then a month later, we identified in this room the isotope of importance, plutonium 239. And isolated it so that it could be have its Vision Properties measured fision properties measured. At the 37 and cyclotron. General Leslie Groves had just completed a major project, the construction of the pentagon. It had been his desire to accept a combat excitement assignment overseas. The secretary of war has selected him for an important assignment in washington. He was appointed at the head of the Manhattan Project. He is a very difficult man to some up, but the same thing appealed to him that i think is a norm is devotion, determination to get the war over, to do what he could. And italian physicist working with him in a space underneath university of chicago stadium assembled a large pile of graphite blocks with lumps of natural uranium in it. In december 1942, he succeeded in bringing about the first manmade controlled nuclear Chain Reaction. Now that controlled fision have been accomplished, it could be studied. In the next steps could proceed. Robert oppenheimer was a respected theoretical physicist in 1942. He had been closely examining the development of fision science. He was at the university of chicago when growth came through when groves came through on his first inspection tour. In conversations with groves, he discussed the need for a central facility and other details. Grow saw something in him, in leadership, and it understanding of what was needed to be done. When i became a graduate student at berkeley, his aptitude for brilliant and clear explanation was very strong. And easily able to crush a question or objection. Oppenheimer was a difficult human being. He was extremely intelligent. Extremely quick. He understood everything when i had just reached of what was a glimpse of what was being talked about. Groves selected him to be the groves selected him to be the project leader. He came to the project with an immediate concern. His security was question because of college acquaintances with communism. In the time before the war, he had been very leftish. Grove overrode all objections and stayed with it. No one thought he would undertake such a task. It is amazing that grove would have done that. I began realizing that they were very different persons. They both had intense determination, and that is what i think what over won over grove. Once you could see he was determined to get it as best he could. Grove wanted to compartmentalize each of the different divisions. Oppenheimer held weekly colloquiums to exchange colloquiums to exchange information. To solve problems. Oppenheimer insisted that everybody should be present. The new lab would be devoted to experiment and engineering. He was a theorist. To me, the theory is the explanation of the observations. Putting them in a framework that convinces us, yes, we do know how a star works. We do 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 makes what an experimentalist does. They are not laws that congress can repeal, i assure you. The best scientific talent in the country, and even from outside the country, would be working at what is known as site y. But where . It would have to be in a remote and sparsely populated locale. At least 200 miles from a coastline or International Boundary for safety from attack. Room for explosive testing. Weather good enough for construction to proceed yearround. And enough housing to accommodate the first group of scientists. Major john dudley of the manhattan engineering district found an ideal location in oak city in southcentral utah. But there were too many residents and too much farmland that would be evicted. Oppenheimer was no stranger to the southwest. Has family had a vacation cabin in northern new mexico. In the pecos wilderness. The next prospect was springs, new mexico. Oppenheimer and gross drove there to have a look groves drove there to have a look. They both have the same opinion. Oppenheimer remembered a place he had been by while on a pack trip and had returned often as a visitor. It was a boys school at a place called los alamos. In the late afternoon, they drove there. The students and their masters were out on the Playing Field and a light snow was falling. This is it, groves said. Located on the eastern slope of the mountains, los alamos had some homesteaders and the Los Alamos Ranch school. It was the dream of an extra roosevelt rough rider named ashley pond. It was a school for the sons of wealthy families that was based on a vigorous life. Students wore shorts yearround and slept in on heated sleeping porches. Each student was assigned a horse to care for and pack trips into the mountains were had now, itsool spent its time in the late 20s but now, its time was coming to an end. School officials started noticing lowflying planes studying the area. Cars and military vehicles appeared on the crest of the road. On december 4, 1942, the School Received a notice from henry stenson, secretary of war, that the school was being taken over. Proceedings were used and it was decreed all records of the acquisition be sealed from public view. Almost 54,000 acres were acquired, almost a 9000 acres were public land. The cost of acquisition was 440,000. After pearl harbor, we all knew that we were kind of playing it and game an end game. We get out of school, we are off to war. So in the beginning of the fall of 1942, where with already surveyors around here from the government, then they took it over. Absolutely fantastic construction in a very short length of time. When youre the school would be taken over. We didnt know just when. Construction crews started throwing up buildings for administrations, laboratories, housing, schools, and every thing as a community needed. It looked more like a boom town than a wartime army camp. All mushrooming around the ranch school. So towards the end of this, just before christmas, these two dudes show up in a calling themselves mr. Smith and mr. Jones. The first one wearing a pork pie and the second one a fedora. No way i am mr. Smith and mr. Jones. Who were they . It took just two hours to know that this was oppenheimer and lawrence. And recall them by those names among us kids because we knew them so well from our physics courses and things like that. We recognize their pictures. Classwork was exhilarated and interpreting 1943, the last graduation was held. New roads of unpaved streets started to define the new community. In january of 1943, the university of california was selected to operate a 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. But day were to tell no one about what they did, not even their families. 15 miles southeast of santa fe. In the spring of 1943, this data they started to arrive at the small railroad station they started to arrive at a small railroad station that looked like it was in the middle of nowhere. Arriving from all parts of the country and europe with the best Scientific Minds in the world. E, niels bohr, edward teller, otto fish, richard simon, edward mcmillan. Some came as consultants and the rest as permanent staff. Santa fe, new mexico. To those who came into town on route from across the country, it was hard to see the small town as the states capital. First up was in office at 109 east palace avenue, run by dorothy, it was the welcome and for all those who came to check in disappear 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 akin to the pioneer women accompany their women husbands across the uncharted plains westward, alert to dangers, resigned to the fact that they journeyed into the unknown. After leaving santa fe, the dirt road up to the site was rough, even for that day. Once they crossed the bridge across the rio grande, they climbed up a steep road to the stop of the to the top of the mersa. Once they made it in, it was a different world. It was a pretty desolate place. The living quarters were just being built and the one thing that was beautiful was the view on the other side. Everything on the los alamos plateau was in the midst. And my wife and son came to her three three weeks later. I stayed in the big house. But apart from that, of course, the surroundings i knew they were magnificent. It was wartime and it struck me as being a military camp. I felt right at home. Of course, famous europeans who i had never met were quite, and walked about. The british were part of the project. They arrived as part of a mission to help work on the about. On the bomb. For family apartment houses spread to the west and north. Barracks and dormitories, huts 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 military personnel. Most people were in the 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 the quality of your housing. From our point of view, it was wonderful. We never had a better place to live. The first place, there were plenty of food, meat. These were the days of rationing. A lot of people there had really miserable times in their apartments, which were cheap and rather shoddy. To the disappointment of many of the europeans, they also did not have laptops. Bathtubs. You always knew when your neighbors were having a party. Some senior lab officials lived in homes previously used by the schoolmasters. It became known as bathtub row, since they were the only places that had them. In april 1943, oppenheimer assembled the staff, than about 30, for a series of introductory lectors lectures to some of the studies of the weapons from the previous summer in berkeley. It also Incorporated Research done on fision over the past year. It was determined that explosive means would do the job. By taking a subclinical mass and making it critical to the Radioactive Material would detonate. 2 methods to do that have had been devised. It was discovered the gun method would work with uranium, but not with plutonium. With plutonium, there was spontaneous fision and that reduced neutrons all the time. Produced neutrons all the time. At a sufficiently high rate that if you had a gun assembly in shooting two pieces together, before they got together begin big enough to have a big explosion, they would socalled predetonate. It was a stupid way of assembly that we made fun of. It gave us the idea of the implosion which in the and turned end turned out to be the way to do it. Said in the, the top priority really shifted over to the plutonium. The gun method was the easiest, but the science of implosion would have to be developed. It are quite science and engineering that would enable sign simultaneous compression of plutonium. The plutonium weapon would also have to be tested. Nothing like this had ever been created. It would be months before the first significant amount 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 material, the uranium 235 or plutonium 239, release their Energy Efficiently at the right time in a casing and airplane could deliver . One of the biggest problems with extracting u235 from u238. A gas diffusion method was used with thousands of miles of piping and hundreds of acres of barriers were used to produce the metal. Also used were an electromagnetic separation and thermal diffusion method to reduce and refine their material. 18 had also been assembled in oak ridge implied thousands of workers and at team had also been assembled in chicago to devise a method for extracting plutonium. Washington was elected as the location to build reactors or its extraction. For its its extraction. But they depended as much on chemical separation as it did on the reactors. The chemistry was glenn haas massively glenns. We had been working with what we had been working with what you call trace amounts detected by its radioactivity. But we could introduce the we could not d deuce the Chemical Properties with certainty that way. We needed to work with actual label amounts weighable amounts. Igable why we produced we amounts of plutonium. That meant we had to work i say, we, the chemists working with me on what we call an ultra micro chemical scale. In september 1944, the materials started coming to los alamos. For those in los alamos who were not part of the project, life continued in continued. Babies born at the labs had the same address as their place of birth. It was the address on drivers licenses, bank accounts, ration coupons, and insurance policies. Los alamos was an army post. One that had more civilians than military personnel. In the first year, 80 babies were born. By 1945, there were over 300 infants at the site. The births got to be so much of a concern to general groves, he almost ordered oppenheimer to stop the populations motion. 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, you had to give a detailed report to security. Famous names were disguised. Occupations were never mentioned. Everyone was an engineer.