Seventy-three years ago, Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, in charge of the Manhattan Project, telephoned Gov. John Dempsey, of New Mexico, to inform him of a special weapons test, to be conducted shortly, in darkness, at Alamogordo, and that there was a very small and remote possibility that the test might incinerate all of the oxygen in his state.
When the test occurred at Trinity Site, the governor, with his family, had driven to safety at the Texas border while President Harry Truman was seated between Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in Germany.
The Navy sent a coded message to our president that read: “The light from baby’s eyes could be seen beyond Montauk,” a distance of much more than 125 miles. A stunning success, with the brilliance and temperature of 10,000 suns.
The project manager and theoretical physicist, Robert Oppenheimer, stated, “I have become death, destroyer of worlds.” The genie was out of the bottle. Thus began the Atomic Age.
Eric Duerst
Toledo
