Building the First Atomic Bomb | New Mexico PBS

Comments · 515

• JB

  @JBE · 4 months ago (edited)

  Authenticity is the one thing people want more than anything else. AI will never give you that. Older uploads and real documentaries are pure gold. Thank you for this great video.

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• KE

  @KenStrauss-v5l · 1 year ago

  My uncle was part of the Manhattan project. He was an engineer in Oak Ridge TN.   He is 103 years old

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• JI

  @jimbryce6982 · 3 years ago (edited)

  This is the most engrossing work I've experienced in study of the Manhattan Project. I've seen and read many. I was born in early 1942 and have memories of that time: soldiers in uniform filling trains, the sky seemingly covered with aircraft, friends and family huddled around the radio listening to news and the President. Then Peace and Christmas a year after the war when many members of my family gathered in a house my parents had bought as peacetime settled in. Two were young sisters who served as nurses. Their brother was a really interesting and very intelligent man. He told me about electronics and radio giving me a telegraph set that sparked my interest The Next Christmas he gave me a Gilbert Atomic Lab that included a simple Geiger counter and a small bottle of carnotite, a uranium ore.  I was fascinated and this became the foundation for my lifelong interest in science and technology. I saw him only a few times in later years and treasured each opportunity, storing up memories that are with me now. I knew he was in the military during the war. He said he was a radio operator but said no more of those times, and I never asked for more. One by one those of the wartimes are leaving us. He and one sister died; then just a few years ago I received the call that his remaining sister was gone. I was very close to her and rushed to be with my younger relatives. We went through boxes of family records. I asked to review his and came across a number of letters he exchanged with his father and others. As I was reading them, my younger relatives and their spouses were commenting on the stamps and asking questions that suddenly shocked me into realizing I was the oldest person there; I was morphing into the explainer of ration coupons and other details they had never known. I organized his letters chronologically. Reading from the earliest I sensed his increasing anxiety. He was in some kind of special program. He was from Oklahoma that had a lot of radio training sites, yet postmarks on his letters were "Pullman, Washington". His letters spoke of the pressure he was under. One was on high quality paper with the letterhead: "Army Specialized Training Program Unit No 3923 -- Engineers    State College of Washington   Pullman, Washington". He wrote he was surrounded by people he thought even smarter than he, and they all were taking advanced mathematics, chemistry, physics at a rate ten times as fast as regular college courses -- to be radio operators? Researching ASTP it seems what they were studying was far more involved than other programs around the country that were simply accelerated college courses. The student program entry test scores he quotes in letters are significantly higher than those of other ASTP locations I've seen  described. The postmarks started in mid-1943. As they progressed into 1944; he became more anxious; everyone knew an invasion of mainland northern Europe would come soon -- and then Japan. Obviously washing out would place him far from the quite college town of Pullman. Then unexpectedly ASTP was suspended around the country.  His letters become descriptions of C-47 radio training at Bergstrom Air Base in Austin, Texas as VE day came. VJ Day followed after Little Boy and Fat Man. Home again he joints the family at Christmas celebrating Peace giving me a telegraph set and later a Geiger counter that spark my interests to be his. But what's the relation to this history of the Manhattan Project? Why was a designated specialist radioman studying calculus, physics, and chemistry in a small college town in sparsely populated eastern Washington? Find Pullman on a map. Trace a path just several tens of miles west until you intersect the Columbia River.  Look carefully.  You'll see there's a spot some say is the "hottest" place on Earth: Hanford, Washington. The first place on this planet where plutonium was manufactured and turned into Trinity, Fat Man, and many other less colorfully named munitions. My cousin never said anything about what he did or was being prepared to do in the war except train as a radio operator. I suspect he may not have known exactly at the time, but it's certain he quickly realized he stood at the very door of the Manhattan Project, being readied. He never said a thing. It seems he was one of many who  silently prepared to play roles, all historic, in saving (yet destroying) thousands of lives  perhaps even his own.

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• FI

  @firebearva · 3 years ago

  It is now 2023 these men are part of history.  As a veteran of a different war I am grateful for their service, contribution and the sharing of a profound life experience.

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• LO

  @lornespry · 3 years ago

  This documentary is expertly crafted. It provides a point of view that I for one had not yet encountered, despite my pointed interest in the subject over many years. The film succeeds brilliantly because the interviewees are allowed to do more than pass commentary — they unfold a discourse.

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• AQ

  @Aquacentric · 7 years ago

  Father Was Radio Assayer and a Chemist on the Manhattan Project. Still living at 90 somewhere in Oregon. He did save lives.

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• CA

  @cashobuyer · 6 years ago

  Best documentary I've watched on the Manhattan project.

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• TH

  @The_DuMont_Network · 1 year ago

  Only two words to describe this program. Well done.

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• JJ

  @jjames05 · 6 years ago

  His statement about guilt at the end was incredibly profound. Thanks for posting.

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• AS

  @asmodeus0454 · 3 years ago

  Fascinating story. Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, etc. all make up a really fascinating chapter of modern history.

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• BI

  @billthomas8994 · 3 years ago

  Nice to see an old school properly done documentary again.  Contrast this with today’s tedious pinhead narrators who drone on and on.

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• LO

  @lohandicap · 1 year ago

  I work at Los Alamos now and since I was a kid and did a science fair project about the atomic bomb, I’ve been fascinated with this place since. Can’t believe I’ve ended up here…

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