The threat of war intensified with the discovery of nuclear fission at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in December, 1938. The United States was aware of German and British efforts to weaponize fission by 1939. Though the U.S. wasn’t directly involved in WWII at the time, there was concern about the Germans developing a bomb first. In fact, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard, a refugee physicist from Hungary, wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, warning him that uranium fission chain reactions could conceivably be harnessed to create “extremely powerful bombs.” Einstein encouraged Roosevelt to invest heavily in research.
It took Roosevelt a couple of months to respond. In a letter to Einstein in October, 1939, Roosevelt made it clear that he shared their concerns. He informed Einstein that he had set up a committee composed of civilian and military personnel to study uranium. With that decision, the seeds of the Manhattan Project were sown.
Manhattan Project
Prior to 1943, most of the work done on weapons design was theoretical, based on experiments conducted within academic settings, with universities like Columbia playing a pivotal role. However, after the U.S. entered the war in 1942, the project became more urgent. The War Department established a new Army Corp of Engineer’s district, with no geographical boundaries. The district was known as the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), with offices established on Broadway in downtown Manhattan. The work coordinated under the auspices of the Manhattan Engineer District would be known as “The Manhattan Project.”
The Army Corps of Engineers assigned Major General Leslie Groves to oversee operations in 1942. He was responsible for building three top-secret facilities, with community amenities to accommodate thousands of scientists and support staff in a secure setting for an extended period of time. Locations needed to be insulated from enemy attack, isolated due to confidentiality, and sparsely populated due to the hazards associated with radiation poisoning.
The mission was complex, unprecedented, and urgent. Several lines of research and development had to be conducted simultaneously, with the unknown variables outnumbering the known. While scientists explored designs, the explosive agents had to be produced and processed for the actual weapons. All of this needed to happen without adversaries finding out.
Secret Cities of the Manhattan Project
By the end of 1942, the Army Corp of Engineers built Oak Ridge in Tennessee, Hanford in Washington, and Los Alamos in New Mexico. Oak Ridge worked on enriching uranium, making it radioactive enough for nuclear fission. Reactors in Hanford transformed uranium into plutonium, which was a more powerful nuclear fuel than uranium. Scientists in Los Alamos designed bombs and built experimental detonation systems. Over the course of two and a half years, the Manhattan Project employed 130,000 people at 37 facilities around the United States. Most of the people involved didn’t know what they were working on beyond their specific task. In total, the project cost approximately 2 billion dollars.
The Birth of Los Alamos
Los Alamos’ origin story is inextricably linked to the Manhattan Project. The largest parcel of land purchased was the 470-acre Los Alamos Ranch School for Boys, established in 1917 by one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. There were 50 buildings on the campus. They were quickly converted to laboratory space.
Scientists started arriving in Los Alamos by April, 1943, with more arriving as the work progressed. At the project’s peak in 1945, there were more than 5,000 scientists, engineers, support staff, and their families living at the site, with many of the world’s top physicists collaborating on the project, including Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, Maria Goeppert Mayer, Norris Bradbury, Richard Feynman, Arthur Compton, Leo Szilard, and Hans Bethe.
Nothing about life in Los Alamos was “normal.” Though the hastily built town had amenities, like an elite school system and numerous recreational and cultural organizations, ranging from outdoor recreation to the arts, the covert nature of the research required intense security precautions. A barbed wire fence surrounded the community, with armed guards stationed at all entrances. Everyone at the site had the same Santa Fe mailing address (P.O. Box 1663), including approximately 300 babies born in Los Alamos between 1943-1945. Laboratory staff were not allowed to travel more than 100 miles from Los Alamos, nor were they allowed to contact relatives or friends. Any accidental encounters had to be reported to security.
Trinity Site
The dawn of the atomic age began in the Tularosa Basin on July 16, 1946. Scientists elevated a plutonium bomb, dubbed Gadget, on a 100-foot steel tower, named “Zero,” with the base of the tower designated as “Ground Zero” (a phrase that quickly became part of the modern lexicon). When the bomb detonated at 5:30 a.m., an intense flash of light lit up the sky. A ball of fire rose rapidly from the ground, followed by a mushroom cloud that extended 40,000 feet into the atmosphere. The explosion emitted a wave of intense heat, followed by the roar of a shock wave reverberating across the basin. The explosive power was comparable to 20,000 tons of TNT. Intense heat melted the desert floor, creating a 1600-yard circle of fused glass around Ground Zero. The explosion vaporized the tower.
The blast was visible up to 160 miles away, with several local papers reporting on it. However, government officials attributed the explosion to an accident at an ammo dump, so the story didn’t make national headlines. Though the initial press release left the door open for civilian evacuation in impacted communities, project leaders decided against it, worried that it would raise suspicion or incite panic.
“The extent to which America nuked itself is not completely appreciated still, to this day, by most Americans, especially younger Americans.” ~ Alex Wellerstein, Nuclear Historian, Stevens Institute of Technology
Radiation Fallout
The radioactive fallout blanketed a swath of land 250 miles long and 200 miles wide, with scientists tracking some of the fallout as far as the Atlantic Ocean. The densest concentration of radiation was on Chupadera Mesa, 30 miles from Trinity site. To protect against radiation, scientists used lead-lined tanks to collect rock samples. They required protective gear for people working near Ground Zero. Though scientists purchased some of the cattle that were burned to study the effects of radiation, they didn’t collect data about civilian exposure. At the time, the public wasn’t aware of the lethality of radiation poisoning.
The Tularosa Basin was remote and sparsely populated in the 1940s, but there were ranchers and herds of cattle less than 15 miles from Trinity site and thousands of people living within a 50-mile radius. In total, nearly half a million New Mexicans within 150-mile radius of Trinity Site were exposed to radiation. They weren’t warned or given the opportunity to evacuate. Some residents saw ash falling from the sky for days. Girls at a local summer camp near Ruidoso reported grabbing handfuls of the white flakes and rubbing it on themselves.
Downwinders
Scientists knew radiation exposure led to tumors, cancers, and still births. In fact, Stafford Warren, the doctor responsible for assessing radiation safety during the Manhattan Project, wrote to General Groves a few days after the Trinity Site test, warning Groves about the potential for nuclear fallout over a 2,700 square-mile area downwind. His concerns went unheeded.
Radiation fallout impacted plants and animals, contaminating water supplies and poisoning cattle. After bombs were dropped on Japan, government officials continued to downplay concerns about potential health hazards in New Mexico, even as the toll became more obvious over the ensuing decades.
The people who were impacted near Trinity site, and other nuclear test sites and facilities around the country, referred to themselves as “downwinders.” They began to collaborate, collecting data to document the prevalence of diseases within their communities. As a result, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) in 1990, which provided monetary compensation to some downwinders near the Nevada test site. However, the act didn’t acknowledge or recognize downwinders in New Mexico at all.
Bombing Japan
When the United States completed the bomb in July, 1945, the war with Germany was over. However, the war with Japan was ongoing, with brutal losses on all sides. Allied forces were reticent to launch a ground invasion, knowing the Japanese would never surrender. Within weeks of testing the bomb at Trinity Site, the U.S. dispatched two additional bombs to the Pacific, one plutonium and one uranium.
On August 9, 1945, at approximately 8:45 a.m., The United States dropped the world’s first uranium bomb on Hiroshima. The blast destroyed 2/3 of the city, killing 70,000 people instantly. Radiation exposure killed over 30,000 more by the end of 1945. Three days later, on August 12 at 11 a.m., the U.S. dropped a plutonium bomb, similar to Gadget, on Nagasaki, instantly killing 40,000. The Japanese surrendered two days later, ending World War II.
Shortly after the war, one of the Manhattan Project’s physicists, Philip Morrison, traveled to Hiroshima to study the effects of the bomb. He reported that it, “destroys so quickly and so completely such a large area that defense is hopeless.” He spent the rest of his life campaigning against nuclear weapon proliferation.
Atomic Espionage
Despite the security precautions, the stakes were high during World War II and the Manhattan Project attracted spies. Though German and Japanese espionage attempts were thwarted, the Russians, relying on the ideological sympathies of American and British citizens, were quite successful. Hundreds of American citizens provided information to the Soviets during World War II.
The Americans eventually discovered several spy networks through the Venona Intercepts, a 37-year counterintelligence operation focused on decrypting messages from Soviet Intelligence between 1943 and 1980. The project led to the discovery and disruption of several espionage operations in the United Kingdom and the United States. Though several spies within the Manhattan Project were apprehended, others were never identified, known only by their code names.
Spies Within The Manhattan Project
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are the most famous of the “atomic spies.” Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, worked on implosion development in Los Alamos. David passed information through his wife to Julius Rosenberg, who turned it over to Russian intelligence agents. The FBI arrested all of them shortly after Klaus Fuchs confessed in 1950.
Klaus Fuchs was one of the most productive spies within the Manhattan Project, passing information about weapon design to the Soviets while working at Los Alamos. He continued to provide information to the Soviets after returning to the UK in 1946. He was working on the British Atomic program at the time. When he was apprehended in 1950, he confessed and turned over everything and everyone he knew. The FBI picked up his handler, Harry Gold, who led them to David Greenglass. Greenglass also confessed, implicating the Rosenbergs. However, the Rosenbergs refused to cooperate.
Whereas David Greenglass received 15 years and his wife, Ruth, was never charged, the Rosenbergs were ultimately executed in 1953, becoming the first civilians in the United States to receive the death penalty for espionage.
Trinity Site Tours
There are two “Trinity Site Open House” events held for the public annually. Typically, the events occur on the first Saturday in April and the third Saturday in October. The open house is free to the public.
There are two routes to the site. One is accessible via caravans from Alamogordo. However, they limit the number of cars in each caravan. Book early. If you are not part of one of the caravans, you will need to enter through the Stallion Gate between 8 AM – 2 PM. The gate is off U.S. Highway 380. There is no need to pre-register if you are driving in on your own.
Photos are allowed at Ground Zero and the McDonald ranch house. Photography is strictly prohibited elsewhere on the missile range. There is an obelisk marking Ground Zero, with trinitite formed during the blast on the ground. Trinitite is mildly radioactive, though, supposedly, safe to handle.
Manhattan Project National Historical Park
Los Alamos Visitor Center
475 20th Street
Los Alamos, NM 87544
Los Alamos National Laboratory
P.O. Box 1663
Los Alamos, NM 87545
(505) 667-5061
mapr@lanl.gov
Established in 2015, the Manhattan Project National Historical Park (MAPR) encompasses three sites in three states, including Los Alamos, New Mexico. Each site was critical during the Manhattan Project, collectively making incredible advances in science, manufacturing, and engineering. The scientists and staff at these sites led the world into the “atomic age.”
In Los Alamos, there are 30 Manhattan Project landmarks, with 13 sites scattered around town and 17 located “Behind the Fence.” Most of the 13 locations in Los Alamos, like Robert Oppenheimer’s house, Ashley Pond, and Fuller Lodge, are open to the public. The Visitor Center provides info booklets for walking tours. There is also a park app available. No fees. If you want to see the other sites, there is more involved.
“Behind the Fence” in Los Alamos
The Department of Energy hosts free guided tours of the 17 Manhattan Project landmarks “behind the fence” at Los Alamos National Labs (LANL). They typically offer tours for two days, with two tours available each day. The dates tend to correlate with the Trinity Site tours, so people can arrange to see both. DOE limits tours to 25 people and they fill up quickly. Tour participants must be U.S. citizens, at least 18 years of age.
LANL Security does not allow cell phones, cameras, bluetooth devices, or recording devices. There is walking and standing involved. It is a good idea to wear long pants and good walking shoes or boots.
