Grand junction saturday at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2s book tv and sunday afternoon at 2 00 on American History tv on cspan three. 70 years ago on july receive, st. 45, the first atomic bomb was tested. Next on real america, the moment in time the Manhattan Project, a library of congress and national cob coproduction from the year 2000 which tells the story of the race to create the bomb. This interviews includes interview is with some of the key project transitions. Things change in time. In a moment in time in 1945, everything changed. The desert of central new mexico. The journey of death. Named by spanish conquistadors pause if you ran out of water you did not survive. This is now known at trinity site. In a moment in time at this 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. For years adolf hitler forced the nazi rule on europe. To the rest of the free world, his intentions were war and brutality was his method. Populations were set in motion. I came from hungary and germany. I have seen many things. I was deathly afraid for my family and all 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. Those of us who came from europe were more of that than the american fence. It came in stages. From very early on, jews were arrested and put in concentration camps. It kept getting worse. So i think is there was no question that i should immigrate. There were skin sky activities from the best institutions in europe seeking also to get away. When they fled the nazis, they brought with them an International Relationship of friendships and acquaintances, along with research they had been doing on a relatively new field, that of nuclear fission. It had been discovered in germany in 1938 and was an emerging field that promised massive amounts of energy. But there was also the thought that it could deliver that energy as a bomb. A single massive amount of injury that could destroy a city. And we knew there were a number of confidantes available. So that made us concerned that we might be too late. The war just began four months earlier. So we knew it was a terrible world war. And it seemed fateful. We immediately saw no ones mind was on anything except how could this be used . Its quite clear it is quite possible to make an explosion. It was this that led the possibility to the u. S. Government. Together, with albert einstein, and edward teller, he composed a letter to Franklin Roosevelt. It told of the terrible possibility, germany had the talent and research to develop an a atomic letter. Delivering on their behalf was alexander sacks, a friend and economic adviser to the president. Roosevelt said, alex, what you are after is to see that the nazis dont blow us up. Precisely, sacks said. This requires action, roosevelt told an aide. Intelligence reports from europe indicated 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 a Top Secret Military project, one that would have the highest priority and tightest security. It would be named the manhattan district. Finally we began to do something in participating. 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 was known that the nucleus of one form of uranium, split when it formed a neutron. Energy was release sd and more neutrons and struck nuclei. It is known as a change reaction. No one knew at the start how much fissionable material was needed to support an explosive chain reaction. That volume would be known as the critical mass. Another element, only discovered in late 1941 by Berkeley Nuclear chemist also had properties to explode in a chain reaction. The isotope we produced was plutonium 238. A month later, joined by emilio sea grave we identified in this room the isotope of importance, and isolated it so it could be have sufficient properties measured at the 37 inch cycle. General Leslie Groves of the u. S. Army corps of engineers had just completed a major product, the construction of the pentagon. It had been his desire to accept a combat assignment oversea his superior officer told groves the secretary of war had selected him for an important assignment in washington. He was appointed head of the Manhattan Project. General tkproefs was a very difficult man to sum up. But the same thing that appealed to groves is enormous devotion, determination to do what he could. Italian physicist working in a space underneath the university of chicago stadium assembled a large pile of graphite blocks with uranium in it. In december 1942, he succeeded bringing the first manmade controlled Nuclear Chain reaction. Now that controlled fission had been accomplished it could be study and the next steps could proceed. A highly regarded 38yearold physicist. In october of that year he was at the university of chicago when groves came through on his first inspection tour. In conversations with groves, oppenheimer discussed the need for a central facility and other details. Groves saw something in him, a leadership and an understanding of what needed to be done. I became a graduate student at berkeley. His reputation for clear ex plication was strong. He was quick and easily able to quash a question. It was very difficult to interact with. He was a difficult human being. He was extremely intelligent, extremely quick. He understands he understood everything when it was being talked about. Groves selected oppenheimer as the leader of the Manhattan Project together in one place. Oppenheimer came to the project with an immediately controversy. His security was questioned because of college acquaintances with communism. In the time before the war, he had been there lifted. Groves overrode all selections and stayed. No one thought he would under take such a test. It was amazing general groves would have done that. I began to realize they were very different persons. Very different views of the world. But they both had an intensity, determination. And i think thats what won over groves. Oppenheim once he could see oppenheimer was in the job and he was determined to get it done as best he could. Groves wanted to compartment allize each of the divisions. Oppenheimer disagreed. Science was discovered through collaboration. He held weekly cloak yums among the different science groups to Exchange Information to solve problems. He insisted that everybody should be interested and should know and should consider it. The new lab would be devoted to experiment and engineering. Oppenheimer was a theorist. The theory is the explanation of the objections. Putting them in a framework that convinces us. We do know how a super nova explodes. But every single bit of physics that goes into understanding our universe has first been tested out right here on planet earth. And thats what an experimentalist does. He explores whether the laws really hold up. The best scientific talent in the country and outside the country will be working in what will be 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 room for explosives testing. Enough housing to immediately accommodate the first group of scientists. Major john dudley of the hand manhattan engineering district found an ideal location in oak city, South Central utah. But there were too many residents and too much farmland. Oppenheimer was no stranger in the southwest. His family had a vacation cabin in pacos, northern new mexico. The next was james springs. They drove there to have a look. Both had the same opinion. The Narrow Canyon walls were too deep for comfort, space, and security. Oppenheimer remembered a he had been by while on a trip and returned office as a visitor. It was a boys school in los alamos. The students and masters were on the playing fields and a light snow was falling. This is it, groves said. Located on the eastern slope of the james mountains, los a alamos had homesteaders and the los alamos school. It was the dream of a rough rider ashley pond. It was a school for the sons of wealthy families based on a vigorous life. Students wore shorts yearround and slept in unheated sleeping areas. Each student was assigned a horse to care for. And pack trips into the mountains were common they had spent time quietly since the 1920s. Now its time was coming to an end. School officials started noticing lowflying planes studying the area. Cars and military vehicles led up from the valley. On december 4th, 1942, the School Received notice from henry stenson, secretary of war, that the school was being taken over. Condemnation proceedings were used. It was decreed all records of the acquisition be sealed from public view. Almost 54,000 acres were acquired. 9,000 were public land. Cost of acquisition, 440,000. After pearl harbor, we all knew we were kind of playing the game. You get out of school and you go off to war. So in the beginning of the fall of 42, surveyors were around here from the government. Then they took it over. They were around a mega bulldozer. Absolutely fantastic construction in a short length of time. We knew the school would be taken over. We didnt know when or what would be happening. Construction crews started throwing up building for administration, housing, schools, and Everything Else the community needed to function. It looked more like a boomtown than a wartime army camp. So towards the end of this, just before christmas two dudes show up here calling themselves mr. Smith and mr. Jones. The first one wearing a pork pie and the second a fedora. No way im mr. Smith and mr. Jones. Who were there and whats the problem . Well, it took two hours to know this was oppenheimer and lawrence. We called them by those names among us kids right then. We knew of them so well from our physics courses. We recognized their pictures in our books. Class work was accelerated. In february 1943, the last graduation was held. New rows of unpaved streets that snow and rain turned to mud started to define the new community. In january 1943, the university of california was selected to operate the new laboratory. Recruiting was difficult. Because prospective employees were doing good 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 they were to tell no one what they did, not even their families. 15 miles southeast of santa fe. In the spring of 1943 they started to arrive at the small 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 of the world. Gray, bore, bega, teller, frisch, richard feinman, edward mcmillan. Some came as consultants and the rest at permanent staff. Santa fe, new mexico. To those who came into town en route it was hard to see the small time as the states capital. First was 109 east palace avenue. Run by dorothy mckibben. She arranged for transportation, houses and hundreds of other Little Things that took away the apprehension of things to come. One wife said. I felt akin to the pioneer women accompanying their husbands across uncharted plains. Alert to dangers resigned the fact that they journeyed for will or woe 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 grand, 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. It was a pretty desolate place. The living quarters were just being built. And the one thing that was beautiful was the view of the mountain on the other side. But everything on the los alamos plateau was a mess. And my wife and son came two or three weeks later. I stayed in the big house. And it was sort of a mess. It wasnt easy to sleep. 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 people whom i knew. So i felt at home. The british were part of the project. They arrived as part of a mission to help work on the bomb. Rows of four family apartment houses spread to the west and north. Dormitories, huts, trailers, everyone was a transplant from somewhere else. Because of the mission, because of Everything Else on the hill, it became a tight knit community of scientists, spouses, children, and military personnel most people were in their 20s or 30s. Average age was 25. They were healthy, middleclass. 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 had a better place to live. First place, there were plenty of food, meat. It was the days of rationing. A lot of people had miserable times in their apartments which were very cheap and shoddy construction, to the disappointment of many europeans did not have bath tubs. But the acoustic separation of houses were feeble. You always knew when your neighbors were having a party. Some lived in homes previously used by the school masters. It became known as bathtub row. Since they were the only places that had them. In the beginning of april 1943, oppenheimer assembled the staff, then about 30, for a series of introductory lectures by his collaborator, robert serber. It Incorporated Research done on fission the past year. It was determined that explosive means would do the job by taking a subcritical mass and making it critical so the Radioactive Material would detonate. Two methods had been devised. One was a gun method where two halves of material were shot together to form the critical mass, starting the nuclear detonation. It was discovered the gun method would work with uranium but not plutonium. There was spontaneous fission. That produced neutrons all the time. And at a sufficiently high rate that if you had a gun assembly, before they got together big enough to have a big explosion, they would predetonate. We all made fun of. It gave the idea of the implosion which in the end turned out to be the way to do it. Sudden isly the top priority shifted over to the plutonium. 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 simultaneous compression of plutonium. Nothing like this had ever been created. Plutonium would also have to be tested. It would be months before the first significant amounts of Nuclear Material would be delivered. Before that would happen, there were many questions which came down to the central problem, how to make the fissionable material, uranium 235 or 238, release at the right time in a casing an airplane could deliver. One of the biggest problem was extracting u235 from u238. That was the job at oakridge, tennessee. Thousands of stages of the operation, thousands of miles of piping and hundreds of acres of barriers were used to produce the metal from uraniumenriched gas. Also used were electromagnetic separation and thermal fusion. The produce and refine the material. Oak ridge employed thousands of workers. A team had been assembled in chicago by glenn seaborg to device a method for extracting plutonium. Hanford depended as much on chemical separation as it did on the reactors. It was glen sea borgs massively scaled up from his chick teams Ultra Chemical work. We had been working with what you call tracer amounts, invisible amounts detected by its radio activity. But we couldnt deduce the Chemical Properties with certainty that way. We needed to work with actual ponderable, weighable amounts. Thats why we produced weighable amounts of plutonium in this amount. This mean we had to work, i say we. The chemists working with me. On what they call an ultra micro chemical scale. Slowly, the materials started to come to los alamos in september 1944. For those in los alamos not part of the project, life continued. All mail came to p. O. Box 1663 in santa fe. Everyone had the same address. Babies born at the lab had it at their place of birth. It was on auto registrations, bank accounts, income tax returns, 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 population doubled every nine months. Housing would always be short, water scarce, and electricity intermittent. The threat of structure is 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 to a friend on the outside of the project, you had to give a detailed report to security. Famous names were disguised. Occupations were never mentioned. Everyone was an engineer. The word physicist was forbidden. All mail was sensored. All longdistance calls were monitored, which was easy since there was only one phone line in 1943. By 1945, there were three. The entire project was surrounded by high barbed wire fences and controlled by guards. Work weeks were six days, 12 to 14hour days were normal. Saturday nights they partied. They were big and small. And were an integral part to life on the mesa. We would tend to go to a dinner with six people. Social affairs were every saturday night. The furniture was pushed back for dancing. And parties often lasted well into the night. We would square dance once a month. Sunday were picnics, went to the mountains, went to the indian pueblo, the ruins. Santa fay, if we could afford the gas. There was a time. It was an intense time. We all worked i think it is fair to say 60hour weeks. We worked on saturday by rule. Sunday was the only day off. The work, governed by the urgency from events waged on the battle fields in europe and in the pacific, never got easier. But those work