Its a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. In a august 6th, 1945, the United States detonated the First Nuclear weapon in history over the city of hiroshima, japan, followed by a second detonation august 9th over the city of nagasaki. Six days later japan surrendered bringing an end to the second world war. I have received this afternoon message from the japanese government and applied to the message forded to the secretary on august 11th. I deem this reply a full acceptance of the potsdam declaration which specifies the Unconditional Surrender of japan. Through the work of cspans cities tour well share stories of the people that contributed to this worldaltering event. We begin in new orleans at the National World war ii museum. Were here today on the road to tokyo exhibit which is going to take us through the war in the pacific and asia from 1941 to 19 45. So one of the interesting aspect, i think the most interesting aspect of the war in the pacific is how quickly the turning point came in it. The bombing of pearl harbor was december of 194 is and just about six months later after the japanese had run wild through the pacific the battle of the midway was fought and at battle of midway the u. S. Dive bombers destroyed no fewer than four japanese air carriers in a very, very basketweave battle, a major portion of japans naval strength and whatever chance japan had of winning the war tis appeared in june of 1942. That early into the war what what we might say the pain and humiliation of pearl harbor and the big victory at midway. Its a big ocean but thats a relatively basketweave time so the war would go on over three years from june of 1942 to august of 1945. I think most Japanese Naval officers in particular but overs across the board realized that the war was probably lost after midway, but they had taken this colossal gbl to launch a war on the United States, a country whose economy was ten times the size of their own, and really what was there to do now this early on in the war but simply to hang tough and hope for some kind of miracle, and i think thats what japanese officers in particular were doing. It was often couched in terms of loyalty to the emperor. We cant let the emperor down but i think it was more about the Corporate Culture of the Japanese Army corps. They had to hang tough, its a big ocean. Maybe something would happen, maybe the americans would tire of the struggle. Maybe wee, the japanese, could take such a toll of u. S. Casualties that han american president would be forced to to end the war on some more favorable terms to japan but, of course, that was never to be. Clearly the Japanese Military power was broken, but on individual islands they could defend tenaciously. Studies were done, casualties estimates. They were out of the ballpark in the hundreds of thousands. Unbeknownst to most of those who were predicting these casualties, a stop secret military program had been going on for some time in the United States, a research and Development Program of a sort that had never been seen before, and it was, of course, the invention of atomic weaponry so the socalled Manhattan Project. Well, jim Robert Oppenheimer was the father of the director bomb. He directed the civilian laboratory at los alamos in 1942 during the Manhattan Project, and under his leadership he directed nobel prizewinning scientists, engineers, military personnel and the civilians who worked on the atomic bomb project in los alamos. In 1938 two german physicists working in berlin, strassemann and haun bombarded this lump of material called uranium and got a curious result. It kind of released a lot of heat, and then it created a a different element, element that was farther down on on, you know, the element table, table of elements. The word about this spread through the Nuclear Physics world like a like a forest fire that that scientists had split the atom and that it was scientists working in nazi germany that had split the atom so there was a lot of knowledge that the germans had split the atom, that england was working on their own splitting of the atom and harnessing that into a military weapon but it wasnt until after pearl harbor that the Manhattan Project was created and a lot of resources under the control of the army corps of engineer was devote to create this this new weapon. So leslie r. Groves was appointed the head of the Manhattan Project and he had just finished building the pentagon. Groves talked to different Physics Departments and asked people who would be a good leader, and oppenheimer probably was not high on the list. Actually oppenheimer had not even been in charge of his Physics Department at berkeley before he was chosen to be the head of the central laboratory. The there was something about pooy that groves like. A couple of things, groves saw that he was hungry. There were nobel Prize Winners being considered but they had already accomplished the nobel prize. Groefz wanted somebody who was hungrier and would make work a little bit harder and also on a train trip across the country oppy was able to describe to groves what was needed to be done in terms that groves and a layman could understand, so so groves picked oppy. The other thing is where to locate the central laboratory. You couldnt have it in chicago because what happens if an accident happened or also it would be easy to to breach the top security, you know, if youre walking down a street involved in it, a colleague who wasnt involved came up and said, hey, joe, what are you doing . Well, i mean there there would be an easy way to break top secrecy on that so they looked around and picked some places in the west. Oppy had come to new mexico to to recover from an illness when he was 18 years old and had fallen in love with with new mexico. At one point he said that he wished he could marry the two loves of his life, physics and new mexico. Thats before he got married. I just want to be clear about that, and this was an opportunity for him to do that. So he he showed groves some places around new mexico and they settled on this boys school at los alamos and so after that was chosen in november of 1942 oppy started recruiting people and couldnt tell them what he was doing. He said you know i would like you to join me on this project and i cant tell what you youre going to be doing. Youre going to be in a pete aboutful place essential to the war effort. People who new oppy new the work that was being done in germany. They knew that this was going to be something that was going to be important, so a lot of people did sign on. They were given an address in santa fe to report to. They went to that 109 east palace address right near the peraza in santa fe and then were told youre not quite there. Its another 40 miles. Heres your temporary security pass to get into los alamos so he got in there. Scientists assembled in march of 1943. They decided that there were that they needed to do multiple ways of trying to make this weapon. And part of the problem was the nuclear material, the uranium or plutonium, it was miniscule. There wash it is plutonium is totally manmade, and so a a reactor in hannaford, washington was created to then manufacture this plutonium. Uranium is naturally made, but the part thats used for bombs is only about 1 of what occurs in in nature, so how do you refine that out . How do you extract that 1 out, and thats why the the Big Industrial complex at oac ridge was made to kind of separate this isotope of uranium from the rest of it and then assemble it in a big enough quantity that it could be used as a bomb. Oak Ridge National laboratory is a Major Research institution and oak Ridge National lab has been around since right after the second world war. This was set up originally in 1943 as clinton laboratories. Didnt have the name oak ridge at the time and the purpose of clinton laboratories was to learn how to produce plutonium which was a radioactive element that could split and release vast amounts of energy just like some forms of uranium can, but they didnt know much about plutonium. It was an artificial element and had to be created by man, and they knew nothing about the characteristics of plutonium. The building started in february of 1943. This facility, the graphite reactor as we know it today was started in the spring of 1943, completed by november of 1943 and came online as the worlds first operating nuclear reactor, and in this case used specifically to produce tiny, tiny amounts of plutonium which were recovered and then shipped up to the Metallurgical Laboratory which was part of the Manhattan Project in chicago so that they could can be characterized up there and other bits of plutonium that were produced here were shipped out to Los Alamos Laboratory in new mexico where the bombs were actually designed and build by Robert Oppenheimer and other famous physicists and ultimately tested out there in new mexico, so the purpose of oak Ridge National laboratory was originally to serve of as a test reactor which is where we are right now to produce trace amounts of plutonium for a nuclear weapon, and they realized i say they, the government realized fairly quickly back in 1942 and 43 that oak ridge and east tennessee were not the places to produce vast amounts of plutonium for a we op. Plutonium is a highly toxic element. I mean, its very, very carcinogenic, very dangerous if not handled properly, and east tennessee was not the place to be producing large amounts of plutonium. This reactor, here, it wasnt even called a reactor. It was called a pile. It was designed simply to learn how to produce plutonium, not to produce large amounts of it. Eventually after a year or two they actually began to produce some enriched uranium over at y12 and that enriched uranium was carried out of here in a handbag, in a valise. On the train it went out to los alamos, i mean, Somebody Just carrying it normally and likewise small amounts of plutonium were shipped up to chicago where they could characterize it and out to los alamos where they could learn how to build a bomb using plutonium so everything was coming in, train loads and train loads but nothing as far as anybody could tell was going out, but it was a a very ultra secret undertaking, and no one knew what was going on except the managers until the bombs were actually dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki in japan in august of 1945. Recruitment was very challenging at times because they couldnt say a lot about what the end goal of the project was. So you had one of the women i profiled in my book was recruited literally right out of the halls of her high school during her senior year. I interviewed other women who were recruited out of college. I talked to a woman who was recruited out of a diner where she was working. So they went all over the place looking for smart, capable, young women who followed instructions very well, who were very capable of following instructions. They also had to recruit a lot of men and constructionwise turnover was a very big challenge. They did not want to have a lot of turnover because that slowed production. That slowed the construction rate. So, i mean, they just scoured everywhere, getting as many people as they can, from a military standpoint, certain soldiers who had a background in, say, engineering or science might be literally taken right out of line as they were getting ready to, you know, board a ship to go overseas because they had a certain skillset. And redirected to oak ridge or one of the other sites. So they were they were drilling down as much as they could. But yeah, a couple of my women literally right out of right out of high school. If you had a Nobel Prize Winning scientist he might live in one of the two or threebedroom houses that had been built, depending on housing was assigned depending on how many children you had, things of that nature. So they might actually have a lovely house, standalone house. A 20 19, 20yearold young woman who was recruited out of high school, or say a 22yearold woman recruited out of college would probably live in one of the dorms. There were dormitories and cafeterias and dances, in many ways quite similar to college. She would have a roommate and she would pay rent for her dorm. If you were africanamerican you were living in the hutment area. So these were 16 foot by 16 foot mostly ply Wood Structures that you might share with three to four other people. In the case of katie, who was the africanamerican woman that i profiled, because oak ridge was completely segregated and facilities were segregated, the kinds of jobs she was available to have were limited. She was not allowed to live with her husband. She was not allowed to bring her children with her. And when i interviewed her, i said, you know, what made you decide to do this . This is an incredibly trying situation that youre going through. And she said the pay i was getting was more than double the best i had ever been offered back in auburn, alabama. So for her and her husband it was definitely an economic motivation to endure what they were enduring at oak ridge as africanamericans. There was a real need for bodies that was fueling this. So thats underlying all of this. But competence. Just sort of absolute competence. What went into organizing the Manhattan Project was something they referred to often as a compartmentability. In other words you dont need to know anything more than than what you need to know to perform your job as well as you possibly can. So you might be sitting next to somebody who has a different job than you do. You dont know what they know. They dont know what you know. And you two dont know what this other guy knows. You guys all know the minimum that you need to know to perform your job. And thats it. So, for example, some of these women were operating elect ro magnetic separation calutrons they called them. This involved operating various knobs and dials to keep a specific needle within a certain range to get very, very basic. And this is exactly how they were trained. When they would talk to me this is exactly how they were trained. The needle goes this way, turn the knob this way, the needle goes that way, turn the notary public that way. If this sparking happens, you know, call the supervisor. That was it. They didnt know what the machines were for. They didnt know what the end project of the end product of the project was. They just knew everything they needed to know to be able to perform their specific task. And that was something that was throughout the Manhattan Project. You were only given enough information to do what you needed to do to the best of your ability. Most of the people, this obviously varied from person to person, most people had a certain level of curiosity but it was also drilled into them that if you got too curious and asked too many questions you could lose your job. To people didnt get too curious that often. Some people did. Many people i interviewed saw people get physically taken out of work in the middle of the day with zero explanation, and never saw them again. So, you know, there was this idea that im not supposed to ask any questions so im not going to ask any questions. There was also a fair amount of what i might call selfcensorship that happened. Everybody was told this was a very important project for the war. That is something they were told. They werent told what the project was but they said it was very important to the war effort and it was important that they didnt talk about what they did. And pretty much i mean, if youve ever talked to people who lived through world war ii, everybody knew somebody who was away fighting. Most people knew someone who had died. So the idea that they were supposed to if they were told they were not supposed to talk about things because that was good for the war effort that was enough for a lot of people. So there was thats what i mean when i talk about selfcensorship. Nobody wanted to be the person who inadvertently or accidentally caused a problem with the war effort or let out a piece of information, even though they didnt know what it meant, you know, nobody wanted to be that person who actually, you know, caused a problem for what they were trying to accomplish. In september 1940 the Martin Company was commissioned to build a plant specifically at aufitt field fort crook, by june of 1942 the plant was in full production. That production continued with the effort and all theaters of the war. It was then after that, that Production Assembly for the b29 was then put into place. How this fits into i would say the par history is the b29 became the iconic bomb r of war in the pacific. Designed to carry more destruction, and carry it higher, faster and farther than nyb29s were like artillery, pointed at the heart of japan. Those particular airplanes were manufactured at the martin, nebraska bomber plant where colonel tibbetts personally came and chose his bomber that would eventually be named enola gay after his mother to be the first aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb. Were at the National Museum of the u. S. Air forces air power gallery. At the tail end of the world war ii story. The first thing were going to look at is mark iii atomic weapon, more wide le known as the fat man atomic bomb. The reason this is significant is because it is a sign or a signal of the beginning of the atomic age, the end of world war ii and its a marker of the supremacy of American Military and scientific and Industrial Power at midcentury in the en