Countdown to Hiroshima, July 13, 1945: Assembling 'The Gadget'

Each summer I count down the days to the atomic bombing of Japan (August 6 and Auguzt 9, 1945),  marking events from the same day in 1945.  I began last week with this report on the only real effort to halt the  use, led by atomic scientist Leo Szilard sending  petition to President Truman.   I've written  three books on the subject:  Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton),  Atomic Cover-Up (on the decades-long suppression of shocking film shot in the atomic cities by the U.S. military) and Hollywood Bomb   (how an MGM 1947 drama was censored by the military and Truman himself).

July 13, 1945:  "The Gadget" is carefully placed on top of the detonation tower at the Trinity and nearly ready to be set off in the first atomic test, but thunderstorms are in the forecast.

Washington intercepts and decodes a cable from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to his Ambassador in Moscow that states, "Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace." Secretary of Navy  James Firrestal writes in his diary: "The first real evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war came today through intercepted messages from Togo, Foreign Minister, to Sato, Jap Ambassador in Moscow, instructing the latter to see Molotov if possible before his departure for the Big Three meeting and if not then immediately afterward to lay before him the Emperor’s strong desire to secure a a termination of the war."

July 12, 1945 :  Headline in Wash Post:  "U.S. Brushes Jap Peace Feelers Aside."  Indeed, this was the case, awaiting (possibly) successful first test of the atomic bomb at Trinity.   The U.S. was demanding "unconditional surrender" while the Japanese were attaching one large condition:  that they be allowed to keep their Emperor, at least as a symbolic leader.  The U.S. would firmly reject that (a month later, after use of the two new weapons, they would accept it, for our own ends, and still call the surrender "uncondtional").

July 11, 1945 :   Truman was heading to Potsdam to meet with Stalin and Churchill, where he would issue the final ultimatum for a Japanese surrender.   But he awaited word on whether the new weapon  would work in its first test, due in a few days, weather permitting, knowing that it might allow him to dictate terms to the Soviets in the postwar world.  The first two targets for use of the bomb had been picked--two large cities in Japan previously not bombed, which would allow experts to assess the full power of the new device.   The bombs would be dropped over the center of the cities,  now occupied mainly by women and children, for the same reason.

The assembly of the first atomic bomb, called by scientists "The Gadget," began at the Trinity test site in the desert near Alamagordo, N.M., starting with installation of the explosive lens, trhe urnaium reflector and the plutonium core.  Video below: