On July sixteenth 1945 a cloud of smoke rose up above the desert in New Mexico. It was less than a month later when that same cloud of smoke rose up above the murdered bodies of at least 78,000 Japanese in the city of Hiroshima. Three days later at least 38,000 more were killed in the city of Nagasaki by the same deadly bomb and again the same ominous cloud of mushroom-like smoke arose. The dropping of these ruinous bombs led to the almost unconditional surrender of the Japanese. The question that plagued the world was, "did we have to drop the bombs?". Was Truman right in his decision to drop a weapon with inconceivable power on two cities inhabited mostly by civilians? In 1938 the United States got word that the Germans were producing the technology for an atomic bomb. We then started our own research project on nuclear weapons, its code name was "The Manhattan District (project)." The Manhattan District received heavy government funding after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
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