Los Alamos, New Mexico

On Monday, July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 a.m., Mountain War Time, the
first atomic bomb exploded in a brilliant flash visible in three states.
Within just seven minutes, a huge, multicolored bell-shaped cloud
soared 38,000 feet into the atmosphere and threw back a blanket of
smoke and soot to the earth below. The heat generated by the blast
was four times the temperature at the center of the sun, and the light
produced rivaled that of nearly twenty suns. Even ten miles away
people felt a strong surge of heat envelop them. Within a second, the
giant fireball hit the ground, ripping out a crater a half-mile wide and
fusing the surrounding sand into glass. The shock wave blew out
windows in houses more than 200 miles away. Within a mile of the
blast, every living creature was killed--squirrels, rabbits, snakes, plants,
and insects--and the smells of death persisted for nearly a month. Very
early that morning, Ruby Wilkening had driven to a nearby mountain
ridge, where she joined several other women waiting for the blast.
Wilkening worried about her husband, a physicist, who was already at
the test site. No one knew exactly what to expect, not even the
scientists who developed the bomb. The Wilkenings were part of a
unique community of scientists who had been marshaled for war.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, convinced by Albert Einstein and
other physicists that the Nazis might successfully develop an atomic
bomb, had inaugurated a small nuclear research program, and shortly
after the United States entered World War II the scientists reported
that, with sufficient support, they could produce an atomic weapon in
time to affect the course of the conflict. Roosevelt decided to go
forward with the program, known as the Manhattan Project, and
directed the Army Corps of Engineers to oversee operations. By
December 1942 a team headed by Italian-born Nobel Prize-winner
Enrico Fermi had produced the first chain reaction in uranium under
the University of Chicago's football stadium. Now the mission was to
build a new, formidable weapon of war, the atomic bomb.

The government moved the key researchers and their families to Los
Alamos, a remote, unpopulated location in the Southwest. At an
elevation of 7,400 feet, protected by the majestic peaks of the Sangre
de Cristo mountain range, the region included the largest extinct
volcano (the Valle Grande), ancient Indian ruins as well as modern
Indian pueblos, and outposts of the old Spanish empire where residents
still spoke in seventeenth-century dialects. To locals and tourists alike,
Los Alamos was known as "the Magic Mountain" or "Shangri-La."
The scientists and their families arrived in March 1943. They occupied
a former boys' preparatory school until new houses could be built.
Some families doubled up in rugged log cabins or nearby ranches.
Telephone service to the outside world was poor, and the mountain
roads were so jagged that changing flat tires became a tiresome but
familiar routine. Construction of new quarters proceeded slowly,
causing nasty disputes between the "long-hairs" (scientists) and the
"plumbers" (army engineers) in charge of ground operations. Despite
the chaos, outstanding American and European scientist eagerly signed
up. The majority were young, with an average age of twenty-seven,
and quite a few were recently married. Many couples began their
families at Los Alamos, producing a total of nearly a thousand babies
between 1943 and 1949.

The scientists and their families formed an exceptionally close-knit
community united by secrecy as well as antagonism toward the army.
Most annoying was the military atmosphere. Homes and laboratories
were cordoned off by barbed wire and guarded by military police.
Everything, from linens to food packaging, was stamped with the
words "Government Issue." Security personnel followed the scientists
whenever they left Los Alamos. The scientists' homes were wired for
sound, and several scientists were reprimanded for discussing their
work with their wives. All outgoing mail was censored. Well-known
scientists commonly worked under aliases--Fermi became "Eugene
Farmer"--and code names were used for such terms as atom, bomb,
and uranium fission. The birth certificates of babies born at Los
Alamos listed their place of birth simply as rural Sandoval County, and
children registered without surnames at nearby public schools. Even
automobile accidents went unreported, and newspapers carried no
wedding announcements or obituaries. Only a group thoroughly
committed to the war effort could accept such restrictions on their
personal liberty.

A profound feeling of urgency motivated the research team, which
included refugees from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and a large
proportion of Jews. The leadership of California physicist J. Robert
Oppenheimer created a scientific elan that offset the military style of
commanding general Leslie Groves. Just thirty-eight, slightly built, and
deeply emotional, "Oppie" personified the idealism that helped the
community of scientists overcome whatever moral reservations they
held about placing such a potentially ominous weapon in the hands of
the government.

In the Technical Area of Los Alamos, Oppenheimer directed research
from an office with a desk, long tables, and blackboard along the walls
in a typical two-story army building. At seven o'clock each workday
morning, the siren dubbed "Oppie's Whistle" called the other scientists
to their laboratories, where they worked out the theoretical and
practical problems of building explosive devices. Physicists and
mathematicians, for instance, collaborated on the theory of "implosion,"
by which a plutonium sphere would be set off through charges of
heavy explosives or "lenses," in turn creating a supercritical mass. They
even studied the great explosions of history, including accounts of
Krakatau, the volcanic island off Java that erupted in 1883, killing
36,000 people and throwing up a tidal wave that reached the southern
tip of Africa. Once a week Oppenheimer called together the heads of
the various technical divisions to discuss their work in round-table
conferences. From May to November 1944 the key issue was testing
the bomb. Many scientists feared that the test might fail, and, with the
precious plutonium scattered and lost, the entire project might be
discredited. But as plutonium production increased, the Los Alamos
team agreed to test "the gadget" on a site 160 miles away. The
unprecedented scientific mobilization at Los Alamos mirrored changes
occurring throughout American society as the nation rallied behind the
war effort. In addition to the 16 million men and women who left home
for military service, nearly as many moved to take advantage of
wartime jobs. Several states in the South and Southwest experienced
huge surges in population. California alone grew by 2 million people, a
large proportion from Mexico. Many broad social changes--such as the
massive economic expansion in the West, the erosion of farm tenancy
among black people in the South and white people in Appalachia, and
the increased employment of married women--accelerated during the
war. Although reluctant to enter the war, the United States emerged not
only from under the weight of the Great Depression but the leading
superpower. The events of World War II, eroding old communities
and creating new ones such as Los Alamos, transformed nearly all
aspects of American society.