All language subtitles for the.manhattan.project.in.colour.2025.1080p.web.h264-cbfm_Legendas01.ENG

80 years ago,
a terrifying power was unleashed -

two nuclear bombs
detonated over Japan.

This was the most extraordinary
tampering with

the basic fabric of the universe.

Physicists from Britain and America
pooled their expertise

in a daring scientific mission,

codenamed The Manhattan Project.

Places that had never, ever
existed before,

using technologies that had never,
ever existed before,

basically sprang out of the mud.

Thousands of black and white
photographs and hundreds of reels

of film survive from those
game-changing years.

Now, using the latest technology
to transform rarely seen images

and restore, sharpen and repair
priceless damaged film,

the Manhattan Project comes to life.

The work of Robert Oppenheimer's team
was a turning point in history.

Mankind had acquired the means
of its own destruction.

There was a flash of a whiteness.

Within few seconds,
turned into pitch dark.

Because I was inside the mushroom
cloud.

The genie is out of the bottle,
and is not going back in.

March, 1940.

Britain is bracing itself
for a German invasion,

and a wave of terror
from the skies.

The idea of aerial bombardment
terrorising civilian populations

becomes this huge concern
in the 1930s.

The Spanish Civil War,

Hitler's invasion of Poland
in September '39.

Those show just how deadly bombs
can be.

And so, in March 1940, you have
Britain on this really high alert

in the expectation of the Luftwaffe
dropping high-explosive bombs,

incendiaries, and that causing
utter devastation.

Meanwhile at Birmingham University,
two Jewish scientists

who fled Nazi Germany -
Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch -

are exploring the potential
of a new type of weapon,

an atomic bomb.

The possibility of a weapon of
mass destruction began in Berlin

two years earlier with
a revolutionary breakthrough.

German physicists discovered
a process known as fission,

the splitting of the atomic nucleus
of the uranium atom

into two or more fragments.

So, the question becomes,
could you start a chain reaction?

That's why fission is important.

Maybe you could harness this
in a non-destructive way

and produce a tremendous amount
of electricity.

On the other hand, though,
that can be harnessed perhaps

in the form of some sort of weapon
as well.

Maybe producing a tremendous amount
of energy.

Many scientists believed an atomic
weapon would be too large

for any bomber, as it needed to be
made of hundreds of tonnes

of uranium-235.

In Birmingham, Rudolf Peierls and
Otto Frisch tested that idea,

and made a stunning discovery.

They shocked and amazed,
and distressed themselves,

to discover, really, you'd only need
a piece of U235 the size

maybe of a melon,

and then you've got yourself
a super bomb.

It would liberate as much energy as
a thousand tonnes of dynamite.

And it would also liberate
radiation, and do damage that way.

And here, at least in theory,

was the possibility of changing
the war

and winning the war.

Unless - and this was the moment
of horror -

the Nazis were already doing this.

As emigres, Frisch and Peierls
knew at first hand

the threat Germany posed.

They urgently wrote up their
findings in a memorandum

which they sent to the British
government.

As a weapon, the super bomb would be
practically irresistible.

There is no material or structure
that could expect

to resist the force of explosion.

Owing to the spreading of
radioactive substances

in the wind, the bomb could probably
not be used without killing

large numbers of civilians.

If one works on the assumption
that Germany is, or will be,

in the possession of this weapon,
it must be realised that

no shelters are available
that would be effective.

The most effective reply
would be a counter threat

with a similar bomb.

Therefore, it seems to us to start
production as soon as possible.

The British government agreed with
scientists Frisch and Peierls,

and launched a research programme
to beat the Nazis

to an atomic bomb.

In September 1941, Prime Minister
Winston Churchill

gave the green light to an atomic
programme, codenamed Tube Alloys.

Remember that Churchill
is a Victorian.

He's, really, a 19th century
cavalry officer.

He's trained in horse
and lance and sword.

And yet, 50 years on from when
he took part in the last great

cavalry charge, he's being asked
to get his head round a weapon

that is fuelled by the same power
source that makes the stars

of the night sky twinkle.

It's quite something.

But within a year, the Tube Alloys
project concluded that Britain

was in no position to successfully
build a bomb on its own.

The scale of doing it industrially
would be vast.

And the possibility of doing this
in Britain, which was still under

threat of invasion and regular
attack by the Luftwaffe,

was out of the question.

The British looked to the
United States for assistance,

because after the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, in December 1941,

the Americans had accelerated
their own atomic project.

The United Kingdom and the
United States joined forces.

The UK became kind of
the junior partner,

and sent a couple dozen
of its best scientists,

including continental refugees,
to the United States.

Britain was expert in the theory
of nuclear weapons,

but the Americans were far ahead
experimentally.

A key step in the development
of an atomic bomb

was to build a nuclear reactor

to prove a controlled chain reaction
was possible.

If you can produce a controlled
nuclear chain reaction,

you can produce an uncontrolled
nuclear chain reaction.

An uncontrolled nuclear reaction
being some form of weapon.

In December 1942, in the unlikely
setting of a squash court

under a disused stadium
at the University of Chicago,

the world's first nuclear reactor
took shape.

In the early days of nuclear
technology,

safety was not a priority.

Uranium dust was as common on us
as sand at a beach.

We were breathing the uranium fumes
from the grinding wheels

and from the saws, etc.

We even carried it around
in our lab coat pockets.

You could dust it off your coat,
like that.

In charge of the nuclear reactor
project

was Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.

He was very much
sort of hands-on physicist.

He'd previously been doing a lot of
work with flow neutrons in Italy,

and had been awarded the Nobel Prize
for that work.

So, he was kind of like the main
person who knew

about how to do this.

Fermi supervised the building of
a six metre-high reactor

made of graphite blocks
and uranium rods,

which became known as
the Chicago Pile.

On December 2, the reactor was ready

and ran successfully for 4.5 minutes
before Fermi shut it down.

He'd created the world's first
artificially controlled

nuclear chain reaction.

It was monumental,
but nothing visible.

The code word for the experiment
being a success was

"The Italian navigator has landed
in the New World."

If the pile in Chicago
hadn't worked,

there wouldn't have been
a Manhattan Project.

Up until the moment that Fermi's
experiment was done,

everything had been in theory.

That is the real moment
when the atomic age began.

In December 1942, President Roosevelt
authorised a huge sum

of $500 million -
over $10 billion today -

for an atomic programme
to help win the war.

He wants to push this thing now
with all speed.

And so, in many ways, the countdown
to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

really begins in December 1942.

At the end of 1942,

the Allies were beleaguered
and fighting on multiple fronts.

The need to build an atomic bomb
was more important than ever.

It's truly a world war,

because you've got conflict
in Russia,

you've got the battle of
the Atlantic,

you've got the North African
campaign,

you've got the Pacific theatre.

And then, you've got to think
about the very brutality

of the Nazi and Japanese regimes.

You've got to beat them.

But the whole idea of that seems
like a really distant hope.

After the success of
the Chicago nuclear reactor,

the Americans began planning
two types of bomb,

uranium and plutonium.

The challenge was to enrich these
elements in significant quantities

to provide fuel for the bombs.

You are going to need huge
factories,

huge workforces to run those
factories,

huge workforces to construct them.

So, what entity is good at huge
national construction projects?

The Army Corps of Engineers.

The Army Corps of Engineers
traditionally named a project

after the location
of its headquarters.

For the atomic programme,
it was Manhattan.

So, it became known as
the Manhattan Engineer District,

later shortened to
the Manhattan Project.

The man in charge was
Brigadier General Leslie Groves.

General Leslie Groves
got things done.

He was responsible
for the construction of this

enormous building
called the Pentagon.

He had the engineering background.

He certainly
had the leadership skills.

He was very no nonsense.

Groves appointed a professor from
Berkeley named J Robert Oppenheimer

to oversee the bomb design.

Oppenheimer was a very clever
physicist

who had worked on quantum mechanics.

He was not a Nobel Prize winner,

and for Groves, I think,
that was one of the key things.

Groves was surrounded by all these
Nobel Prize winners,

which probably was overpowering.

And in Oppenheimer, he found
somebody that he could talk to,

who would respect him
and he would respect them.

Two people of quite different
temperaments, they fitted together.

Oppenheimer was a quick learner
not only within the realm

of science, but also in the realm of
leadership and management as well.

But Oppenheimer could be
intimidating, cruel,

awkward, inspiring,
absolutely inspiring.

All of these things.

In early 1943, General Groves bought
a stretch of land near Hanford,

in Washington State, to build
factories to produce plutonium

and entire valleys
in Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

for a site to enrich uranium.

Oak Ridge did not exist
before World War II.

This was a purpose-built city.

These giant factories, places that
had never, ever existed before,

using technologies that had never,
ever existed before,

basically sprang out of the mud.

With the war fuelling paranoia
about Japanese and Nazi spies,

secrecy was of paramount importance
to the Manhattan Project.

Philip Anderson was eight years old
when his father was put in charge

of constructing houses at Oak Ridge.

The family were not allowed to tell
anyone where they were moving to,

but Philip's school teacher
insisted on finding out.

She got right in my face and said,

"You tell me where you're going,
and you tell me now."

And I started crying.

And she said - she was right in my
face - and she said, "Tell me!"

And I said, "We're going to
Oak Ridge, Tennessee."

And she said, "All right."

And I went home that night in tears
and told my father what I had done.

And he said, "That's all right.
We'll take care of it."

The next morning, agents in coats
and hats arrived at the school

and escorted Philip's teacher
out of the class.

And when they returned,
my teacher was an absolute wreck.

Her hair was dishevelled,
she had been crying.

She pulled herself together, and
said, "Philip, I'm sorry for what

"I did, and this will just all be
a secret between us now,

"just between us, OK?"

I think it demonstrates the secrecy
in which Oak Ridge was planned

and developed, and carried on
its mission.

Oak Ridge grew to become home
to 75,000 residents,

and consumed more electricity
than New York City.

Photographer Ed Westcott
was employed by the War Department

to record the everyday life
of this brand-new city.

His job was to visually document
everything that went on.

This could be General Groves -
kind of the top brass, so to speak -

but also daily life.

He took pictures of people
at the butcher's shop,

pictures at dances,
pictures at the bowling alley.

So, it created this incredibly
rich look at this

very, very specific,
unique moment in history.

Thousands of women made up
the Oak Ridge community.

Ruth Huddleston
joined when she was just 18.

Her job was to operate
electromagnetic separation units,

known as calutrons.

If it went over too far
to the right,

we had to adjust it.

Sometimes you had to shut it down.

But we weren't supposed to tell
anybody that we operated those.

I don't remember ever even saying,
"I wonder what we're doing?"

For a lot of the young people
living and working there,

it was a very sociable,
exciting experience.

In many ways, it resembled
the college experience

a lot of these young women
would never have had.

For some of the Oak Ridge community,
life was very different.

The city - like all Manhattan
Project sites - was segregated.

Black married couples were not
allowed to bring children with them,

and they were also not allowed
to live together.

There were schools in Oak Ridge,

but there were no schools
for the black children.

Ed Westcott's photos capture scenes
of a workforce,

black and white, that had no idea
they were helping build

a weapon of mass destruction.

It's as though you're watching
a film, and you know what's

coming up next, but you can see
these characters have no idea

where this is headed.

As well as Oak Ridge and Hanford,

the Manhattan Project
needed a third site,

a laboratory to build the bomb
away from prying eyes.

Scientific director Robert
Oppenheimer loved New Mexico,

and decided that a remote
boys' school in Los Alamos

would provide
a basic infrastructure.

One of the school buildings became a
home for Oppenheimer and his family.

Having looked at photographs
of Oppenheimer entertaining guests

in this room, you can almost hear
the conversations.

You can almost smell the cigarette
smoke, in a sense,

when you really think about it
and put yourself in that place.

There are famous photographs
of Oppenheimer sitting just behind

where I'm seated right now.

It's almost like a time machine
to be able to come into a place

like this, as it was back then,

and to reflect on the laughs
that were shared,

the concerns about what
nuclear technology might mean

for the future of humanity,
those discussions.

It all happened here.

By 1944, all three main Manhattan
Project sites were operational.

Los Alamos was receiving plutonium
from the massive factories

at Hanford and enriched uranium from
the atomic city of Oak Ridge.

Billboards reminded the workers
of the urgency of their task.

Thousands of Allied troops
were being killed in the war

against Germany and Japan.

We now know that in 1944
the end of the war was effectively

just around the corner -
but, of course, nobody knew then.

So, what this poster is trying to do
is to inculcate a kind of

sense of urgency in people.

"Look, you've got to do what you
can, make every minute count.

"Because even if you're not being
bombed in the middle of Tennessee,

"you might lose your son.

"So, the quicker we get on
with this, the quicker it ends."

Oppenheimer and his team
were attempting to use

revolutionary science
to defeat the enemy.

Everything had to be invented
from scratch,

and then produced at a massive
industrial scale

in order to win the war.

The Second World War is not just
fought on battlefields.

It's also fought in laboratories.

Almost every part of the atomic
process was unknown and untested.

The stakes are pretty high.

At Los Alamos, the scientists worked
six long days a week.

21 came from Britain, including
Rudolf Peierls and Otto Frisch,

whose influential memorandum had
made the Manhattan Project possible.

Home movies taken by American
physicist Hugh Bradner

shows his colleagues making the most
what little free time they had.

You'll see them hiking,
horseback riding.

Doing all of these activities
that are just kind of normal.

It's an incredible view
into wartime Los Alamos.

I've never understood how these
films were able to come into

existence, because of the
rigorous security,

but apparently this was approved.

The British scientists
and their families were well known

for holding parties,
and even pantomimes at Christmas.

My aunt and my dad really enjoyed
their time in Los Alamos.

They had no idea what was going on.

My grandmother had no idea.

Obviously, locals would be curious
what was happening up at Los Alamos.

They would try and plant stories
to try and keep things secret.

My aunt and my dad recall
being told that they trying to

make windscreen wipers
for submarines there.

The success of D-Day, and the slow
but steady Allied advance

towards Germany, meant that by early
1945 the Nazi threat was receding.

But the threat from Japan remained,

so the Manhattan Project
continued without a pause.

By that point, the war in Europe
was almost over.

But the Allied bomb
was almost complete.

So, the question was,
where would they use it?

Japan was an obvious target.

Two entirely different types of bomb
were being developed.

One used enriched uranium,

the other plutonium.

Having a choice increased the chance
of a successful detonation.

Oppenheimer and his team were almost
certain that the uranium bomb

would work - but the plutonium bomb
caused concern.

The problems were that plutonium was
so delicate that it had a habit

of sort of exploding prematurely,

leading to a fizzle
rather than an explosion.

And that's why they had to actually
make a bomb and test it.

On May 8, 1945,

as preparations were made to
detonate the plutonium device,

Germany surrendered.

Japan fought on.

Although the Japanese were now
the target, the Americans and

the British desperately wanted
to find out just how far

German nuclear scientists had got
with their plans to build a bomb.

In April and May, 1945,
Anglo-American forces moving

deep into Germany are on the
lookout for evidence

of German nuclear activity.

And on the eastern edge of
the Black Forest,

they find what they have been
looking for.

They find a lot of paperwork,
a lot of secrets,

but, more importantly,
they find some German scientists.

Including Werner Heisenberg,

arguably the leading physicist of
his generation in Germany,

and also Otto Hahn, who in 1938
was part of the team

that first discovered in their
laboratory this process

called nuclear fission.

The ten scientists were brought here
to Farm Hall in the UK,

an 18th century house in the heart
of Cambridgeshire.

British intelligence had made
special plans for their arrival.

Professor Marcial Echenique bought
Farm Hall in the late 1970s,

and began updating the electrics.

During that period we start to lift
the floorboards.

And we discovered these loose wires
which didn't connect to lights

or plugs, or anything like that.

Loads around different rooms
in the house.

So, we were very, very puzzled
about that.

Marcial discovered the wires
were part of an operation,

codenamed Epsilon, which used hidden
microphones to listen in

on the German scientists'
conversations.

The British thought eavesdropping
would be a more successful way

to learn nuclear secrets
than interrogation.

The day the scientists arrived,

the intelligence services
started recording.

The transcripts of their
conversations

are no longer top secret.

What we can see is that,
at one point,

one of them gets really very close
to working out the truth

about the secret bugging.

"I wonder whether there are any
microphones installed here?"

And it's Heisenberg himself who
replies, "Microphones installed?"

And then the transcript says
he's laughing.

"No, they're not as cute as
all that.

"I don't think they know the real
Gestapo methods.

"They're a bit old-fashioned
in that respect."

Well, of course,
Heisenberg was dead wrong.

The British patiently waited,

hoping for insights into the German
nuclear programme.

Back in Los Alamos, the testing
of the plutonium bomb,

nicknamed the Gadget,
was scheduled for mid-July.

A site for the so-called Trinity test
had been found in the desert

at the Alamogordo Bombing Range,
in New Mexico,

and a 30-metre tower constructed
to house the bomb.

On July 13, it was almost ready.

One of Robert Oppenheimer's team
filmed the final preparations.

As the Gadget's being prepared
in this improvised tent at the base

of the tower, you'll see several
scientists who are milling about.

You can tell who Oppenheimer is
because of the classic silhouette

that includes his hat
which he was famous for.

Everything about this process
was new.

The scientists often improvised.

A strip of sticky tape is handed to
physicist Norris Bradbury,

who uses it to secure a
block of explosives.

The following morning, the bomb was
hoisted to the top of the tower.

On the exterior of the bomb case,

you will see this white tape
all over it,

and that white tape is covering up
holes,

because you want to make sure that
you keep the dust in the air

out of those holes, which could
affect electrical components

and things like that.

Once atop the tower, the tape
is removed.

Everything's wired together.

And at that point, you are getting
pretty close

to being able to set it off.

Darkness fell, and Oppenheimer and
his team took up their positions

9,000 metres away.

To protect themselves from the
blast, some applied suntan lotion

to their faces and arms.

Everyone was on edge.

Was it all going to be worth it?

Building these cities,
enriching this product.

Was the Gadget
actually going to work?

Or was it going to basically wipe
the United States off the map?

At 5.29am,

the world's first atomic bomb
exploded.

This was the most extraordinary
tampering with

the basic fabric of the universe.

Otto Frisch - who predicted the
devastating consequences

of an atomic bomb - watched in awe.

Three decades later,
he said that he could still hear

the sound of the blast.

For the first time, many of the
other Manhattan Project scientists

realised the magnitude
of what they had created.

Oppenheimer was very well read,

and he quoted the Hindu scriptures.

"Now I am become death,
the destroyer of worlds."

Somebody else more prosaically said,
"Now we are all sons of bitches."

And from that moment on, the
conflicts about the morality

of it all became very prominent.

Henry Linschitz,
part of the Los Alamos team,

he looked at that broiling
mushroom cloud,

and he simply said, "My God.

"We're going to drop that
on a city?"

Rachel Fermi knew little about
her grandfather Enrico's crucial work

on the Manhattan Project

until her aunt showed her a box
of family photos.

Just loose and amongst it was this
small sort of faded red snapshot

of a mushroom cloud,

and it was just so shocking
to see that there.

That juxtaposition of this icon
of kind of mass destruction

within my own family's pictures.

Rachel discovered that it had been
taken by technician Jack Aeby,

who gave a copy to her grandfather.

Even though hundreds of cameras were
set up to record the test,

Aeby's picture is the only one
in colour.

He knew that it was going to be
brighter than any light

that had been seen on the earth,

like, apparently ten times brighter
than the sun.

And so he used the chair he had to
sit on as a kind of tripod

to keep the camera steady.

He took four shots, where he had
just guessed the exposure,

and this one worked.

It almost tells the story of the
Trinity test in a single picture.

It's so small and fragile,
and starting to fade.

It's just the fragility of it,
and yet the utterly intense power

that it unleashed at the same time.

As the results of the Trinity test
were assessed,

out in the Pacific, the
heavy cruiser, USS Indianapolis,

was sailing west.

On board, guarded 24 hours a day,
was a second bomb,

codenamed Little Boy.

Its ultimate destination - Japan.

The Trinity test,
the detonation of

the world's first atomic bomb
had been successful.

When they thought it was safe,

General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer
returned to Ground Zero.

The 30-metre-high steel tower
had been vapourised,

and the ground turned jade green.

The sand and earth has just been
completely fused by

the immense temperature. The atomic
explosion itself generates

a temperature hotter
than the heart of the sun.

The site had been chosen
for its isolation,

but half a million people
lived within a 240km radius,

most of them Hispanic
or Indigenous Americans.

Bernice Gutierrez was born
eight days before the test.

She and her parents lived just 55km
away in the village of Carrizozo.

Neighbours felt the force
of the blast.

RUMBLING EXPLOSION

They describe it
as brighter than the sun.

They experienced falling out of bed.

They experienced windows cracking.

The animals that were outside
facing the radiation

turned white.

The Manhattan Project
bought some of the livestock

to study the effects of radiation,

but didn't collect data
about civilian exposure,

concerned it would alarm the public.

Over the decades, Bernice's family
have been devastated by cancer,

including her mother,
sister and two brothers.

Of my three children,

my oldest son became sick
with a precursor to leukaemia,

and he passed away from that
four years ago.

My husband survived colon cancer

and now has been diagnosed
with prostate cancer.

My only daughter survived
thyroid cancer.

And so far, so good,

my youngest son so far
hasn't had anything,

but in my family,

we don't ever ask if we're ever
going to get cancer.

We wonder when. You never know...

Excuse me.

You never know
who's going to be next.

The first victims of nuclear
radiation were not Japanese,

but American.

Bernice is part of a group
who call themselves Downwinders,

campaigning for compensation

and an acknowledgement

of what's happened to them
and their families.

What the government did to us,

they poisoned us
and never came back.

We were expendable,
disposable people.

On 26th July 1945,

the uranium bomb Little Boy
arrived on

the Pacific Island of Tinian.

That same day
President Harry Truman called

for Japan's unconditional surrender.

When they refused,

Truman authorised the use
of the atomic bomb.

He knows that he's going to lose

maybe half a million American lives
taking Japan.

He also knows that maybe millions
of Japanese will die.

But if he drops the A-bomb,
in a split second,

yes, he'll kill tens of thousands
of Japanese,

but that may be fewer lives lost
than an attritional campaign

to take the whole
of the Japanese homeland.

The target was Hiroshima,

chosen as it was largely untouched
by bombing raids.

The effect of the new weapon could
therefore be more easily measured.

On August 5th, Little Boy was loaded
into a brand-new B-29 bomber.

The pilot, Paul Tibbets,

then had his mother's name painted
in its side - Enola Gay.

It took off in the early hours
of August 6th.

The bomb is primed in the air,
and at that point,

Paul Tibbets
tells the rest of the crew

that they're gonna be
making history,

that they're carrying
an atomic bomb.

It's gonna be the first combat use
of this weapon.

Ten-year-old Hideko Tamura is living

with her family
close to the centre of Hiroshima.

She has just returned to the city
having been evacuated

to the countryside.

On the morning of August 6th,

Hideko woke early.

I'm so happy I'm home,
with all my books

and all my everything.

It was the happiest,
ultimate happy moment.

It's a beautiful day.

It is a clear blue sky

and into that sky will come
a single bomber, the Enola Gay.

At 8.15, the bomb doors open,
and Little Boy is released.

45 seconds later it detonates.

It started with a flash
of a whiteness,

followed almost instantly
was the humongous explosion.

Within a few seconds,
it turned into pitch dark.

That was because I was inside
the mushroom cloud.

I remember saying to myself,
"So this is dying in the war."

Hideko somehow survives
under the rubble of her home.

She's not the only member
of her family still alive.

From the rear entrance

staggered in my father's
older brother, Uncle Hisao,

covered with blood.

In the middle of his throat

was a great big piece of glass.

He said, "Mo dameda."

It's the end of everything,
end of life.

Although her uncle and aunts survive,

Hideko's parents are missing.

Her cousin Hideyuki is killed.

He was obsessed
with American B-29 bombers.

Hideko can guess his final moments.

So, when B-29 Enola Gay came,
just before it dropped,

he must have said, "Oh, B-29!"

I can't stand it, thinking about it,
picturing that.

It breaks my heart
in a thousand pieces...

..even today, 80 years since.

Most people had multiple
life-ending injuries,

and these were caused generally
by burns, horrific burns,

and also as a result of injuries
sustained from blast damage.

Many people also receive
significant doses of radiation.

I lost my hair

and ran high fever that went past
the thermometer.

It was physically
a very trying time.

And then suddenly
my father is there,

and he said
I have to take hold of myself.

I have to want to live
because he wanted me to live.

Hideko recovered from
the radiation sickness.

Soon after, her mother's remains

were found in the rubble
of the city.

In 1952,
Hideko moved to the United States

and became a lifelong campaigner
for peace and reconciliation.

The day after Hiroshima was bombed,

the workers at Hanford
and Oak Ridge finally learned

the secret of
what they had been making.

The first thing I thought was,

"My boyfriend will be home."

And then I got to thinking -

they start telling all the people
that were killed over there.

And it made you think of
something else,

you know, that I had a part in it,

cos that's what they told us.

I didn't much like the idea
that I had a part in it.

But war's war.

Ain't nothing you can do about it
but try to stop it.

On the day Hiroshima was bombed,
at Farm Hall in England,

the ten German scientists who were
being secretly recorded

to uncover their nuclear secrets,

were told by the British
about the atomic strike.

Some of them are seriously
distraught at this news.

And what the transcripts show
is that you have

the physicist Walther Gerlach - he
goes immediately up to his bedroom

and what the hidden microphones
pick up

are the sounds of him sobbing.

He's then followed up there
by his colleague Otto Hahn.

And Hahn asks him,

"Are you upset because we did not
make the uranium bomb?

"I thank God on my bended knee
that we never made it."

"Or are you depressed
because the Americans

"could do it better than we could?"

Gerlach then replies, yeah,
that is the reason for him crying.

It seemed to the intelligence
officers listening in,

that the Germans had been far behind

the Manhattan Project
in atomic bomb technology.

Otto Hahn declares,

"They are 50 years
further advanced than we are."

In Washington, with no sign
of a Japanese surrender,

President Truman
authorised the dropping of a second,

more powerful device,
codenamed Fat Man.

Kokura was target number one,
Nagasaki was the backup.

Weather conditions on 9th August
were bad at Kokura,

and therefore, Nagasaki was promoted
to number one target that day.

The B-29, nicknamed Bockscar,
dropped Fat Man

just after 11am on August 9th.

Little Boy's explosive uranium power

was the equivalent
of 15,000 tonnes of TNT.

The plutonium Fat Man was

the equivalent of 21,000 tonnes.

It landed off target,

but its destructive power
was immense.

What the blast didn't destroy,
a firestorm finished off.

It's estimated the total number
of dead in Hiroshima

and Nagasaki was over 200,000.

Six days later, on August 15th,
Japan surrendered.

The war was over.

The Manhattan Project
had achieved its aim.

General Grove's mission statement
was to be able

to build and deliver
a working atomic weapon

before the enemy. He succeeded.

The Manhattan Project officially
ended on January 1st 1947.

Many of the Los Alamos scientists
returned to university life.

Some were troubled
by what they had done.

Robert Oppenheimer
became a key figure in

the debate about atomic weapons.

He believed bombing Japan
was the best option to end the war,

but the lives lost
weighed heavily on his mind

for the rest of his life.

It wasn't just a city,
it wasn't just the enemy,

these were humans, and there was
a very high human cost

that was paid as a result
of the attacks.

I believe
when you become scientists,

you are not seeking
to make human life miserable.

You have a goal generally open

to enhance the quality
of human life.

How can any serious scientist
come to do this?

80 years on,

debate around the morality of
the Manhattan Project continues.

What is undisputed is that it

changed the course of human history.

We continue to grapple with

the effects of the development
of nuclear weapons

and nuclear energy
to this very day.

Perhaps the further that Hiroshima
and Nagasaki recede into the past,

the more they become history,

the more they become
forgotten about.

The memory of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki

as a bar to the use
of nuclear weapons,

that begins to erode.

And that is a really, really
worrying and dangerous thought.

And that in turn, is why we must
never forget the impact

of the first and so far
only occasion these awful weapons

of mass destruction have been used
against human beings.

The genie is out of the bottle
and is not going back in.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media