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The United States exploded the first atomic device at a site near Alamogordo,
New Mexico. At 5:30 am, July 16, 1945, scientists from Los Alamos, watching
from observation bunkers 10,000 yards away, exploded an atomic device with a
plutonium core, releasing a blast equivalent to 18,600 tons of TNT. The Trinity
Test, as it was called, vaporized the metal tower from which the device was
exploded and turned the sand around the base of the tower to glass. A brigadier
general who had observed the test from a bunker 10,000 yards south of the
explosion later wrote, "The whole country was lighted by a searing light with
the intensity many times that of the mid-day sun ... Thirty seconds after the
explosion came, the air blast pressing hard against people and things, to be
followed almost immediately by a strong sustained awesome roar which warned of
doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blasphemous to dare tamper
with forces heretofore reserved to the Almighty." The blast following the
explosion sent searing heat across the desert and knocked some of the observers
to the ground. It also knocked over a 200-ton steel container half a mile from
ground zero.
At the same time, the Big Three powers--United States, Britain, and the Soviet
Union--were meeting in Berlin for the Potsdam Conference to discuss
reconstructing postwar Europe and ending the war with Japan. The United States
and Britain hoped to end the war without a costly invasion of Japan. President
Truman learned of the success of the Trinity Test on the second day of the
conference. General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, reported that the
uranium and plutonium bombs would be ready for use by early August. British
Prime Minister Churchill and President Truman agreed that the bomb could lead
to Japanese surrender without an invasion and without Soviet help. On July 26,
the United States, Britain, and China issued the Potsdam Proclamation, calling
for the Japanese to unconditionally surrender or face "prompt and utter
destruction." Japan refused.
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