This Date in History

While traveling from the ETO (European Theater of Operation) after the surender of the German Army and while in-route to the Pacific to prepare for the invasion of the Japanese home islands, my Father In-law with the rest of his company stopped in a small rail depot literally on the edge of nowhere to rest and stretch their legs.

It was early on the morning of July 16th 1945, when the sky suddenly lit up like it was high noon. One of the nearby MP's told everyone that a near by ammunition dump had probably exploded. Since all of the men in Dads company were experienced veterans, they knew this was not true, and my father in-law made the unfortunate comment that they had all seen a lot of explosion in Europe and THAT was NOT an ammunition dump!

As a result of this comment, their departure from the railhead at Alamogordo New Mexico was delayed.

What Dad actually saw (and probably heard and felt) was the "Trinity Test", a blast that was seen for over 200 miles, and heard for almost 100. The test left a crater 2 miles wide, vaporized the steel testing tower, and turned an area approximately 1/2 mile in circumference into glass as the sand melted under the heat.

"Fat Man" (named after Winston Churchill for obvious reasons) was dropped on Nagasaki Japan on August 9, while "Little Boy" (initially named Tall Boy after Roosevelt, but changed after his death) was detonated on Hiroshima, Japan on Monday, August 6, 1945. Both at the executive order of then U.S. President Harry S. Truman.

The "Trinity Test" held on July 16, 1945, was the code name given to the first testing of an atomic bomb. Dr. Robert Oppenheimer team leader for the "Manhattan Project" chose to name the "Trinity Test", a name inspired by the poems of John Donne. The site chosen was a remote corner on the Alamagordo Bombing Range known as the "Jornada del Muerto," or "Journey of Death," 210 miles south of Los Alamos.

Dr. Robert Oppenheimer wasn't positive the test would be successful, General Leslie Groves overall military commander of the Manhattan Project wondered how he would explain to Congress about wasting a billion 1941 dollars of government money research on a weapon that didn't work, and Dr. Enrico Ferme, was taking bets that the bomb would ignite all of the oxygen in the atmosphere and kill everything and everyone in the state of New Mexico. Mean while, Captain Paul Tibbets was on the Pacific island of Tinian practicing bombing runs in his B-29 named "Enola Gay" after his mother.

The success of the Trinity test meant that both types of bombs -- the uranium design (Little Boy), untested but thought to be reliable, and the plutonium design "Fat Man", which had just been tested successfully -- were now available for use in the war against Japan. Within days, Japan offered to surrender, but not because the US had atomic bombs, but because cooler heads in the Japanese government finally prevailed, and Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989) was guaranteed the survival of his throne.

In retrospect, the fire bombings conducted on Tokyo and other major Japanese cities prior to the Nagasaki/Hiroshima event by General Curtis Emerson Lemay, killed far more Japanese civilians then both atomic bombs combined, but when considering the Japanese military and civilian mindset at the time of total dedication to the emperor and Bushido, and that conservative estimates put American causalities at 1 million wounded, 250,000 dead, and the Japanese causalities in the millions, if the islands of Japan were invaded (some estimated the war would last until 1969), the use of the bombs seems historically and militarily justified.