ON THIS DATE – AT 12:42 P.M. ET:   The world changed on this date in 1945.  It was the date of "Trinity," the first nuclear explosion in history, carried out by the United States at a test site in New Mexico.

Trinity was the culmination of the Manhattan Project, carried out under the direction of Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves and the nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.  The Manhattan Project was so named because some of its early work was done at Columbia University in New York's borough of Manhattan.  The urgent objective was to be sure the Nazis didn't get the nuclear bomb first, and use it to win the Second World War. 

But Nazi Germany had already surrendered by the time Trinity was conducted.  The Japanese, though, were still fighting, and plans were being finalized for an Allied invasion of Japan later in 1945.  The casualty predictions were horrifying. 

Once Trinity proved that an atomic bomb would work, American strategists focused on using it to bring a quick end to World War II, without the need for an invasion of the Japanese mainland.  The first operational atomic bomb was thus dropped on Hiroshima by a B-29 bomber named the "Enola Gay" on August 6th.  Please note the remarkable speed with which the United States, under its new president, Harry S. Truman, acted after the Trinity test.   From Trinity to Hiroshima was only three weeks.  On August 9th a second nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.  The Japanese capitulated on August 14th. 

The nuclear bomb was, and is, the most destructive weapon man has ever developed.  And yet its use by the United States, although it resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands, undoubtedly saved the lives of millions of others by ending the largest war in history.  Over the years, some historians have argued that the bomb wasn't necessary, that Japan would have surrendered within weeks anyway.  But that view has faded in light of facts that have come out, some of them revealed by Japanese historians.  In truth, Japan had no intention of surrendering.  The real power in the country lay with the Japanese army, which believed in a fight to the death.

Today we are facing the same fear of nuclear proliferation that began to emerge at the end of World War II.   Still, we should not regret our development of the nuclear weapon.  It probably saved a generation of young Americans, still fighting in the Pacific in August of 1945.  They deserved to live, too.

July 16,  2017