8.+The+Office+of+Scientific+Research+and+Development+and+its+achievements+(+especially+the+Manhattan+Project)

    The Office of Scientific Research and Development     The Manhattan Project   **Name:** James Rankin   **Date of Birth:** November 7th, 1906   **Main event taking place at this time:** The creation of the OSRD and the research hopefully leading up to the making of an atomic bomb. **Occupation:** Scientist working for The Office of Scientific Research and Development **Background:** As a young boy, I was always interested in the way things worked and that state of mind carried me towards my current profession, physicist for the government, working on the S-1.   Many years ago, back in 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt approved the creation of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Luckily enough, I was one of the few lucky physicists and scientists in the country to be recruited by the government to conduct secretive studies for the Office of Scientific Research and Development, or the OSRD is what I call it. Once I was recruited, the government didn’t tell me very much, but I was told that this organization for which I was recruited for, conducted studies that had to do with military artillery, sonar devices, and the National Defense Research Committee, the NDRC (Carlisle 1). I was also told that a man named Vannevar Bush is heading both the OSRD and the NDRC (Carlisle 1). Apparently, the OSRD not only deals with military weaponry, but they had also produced a new drug called penicillin (Danzer 567). Although there were evidently numerous parts of the OSRD, I had been recruited to work on the development of an atomic bomb. This attempt to create an atomic bomb to use in World War II was known as the Manhattan Project, headed by my supervisor and friend, General Leslie Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer (Danzer 583). I have been conducting numerous experiments trying to unlock the secrets of highly reactive elements such as plutonium and uranium, which we are planning on incorporating into the atomic bomb (“Federation of American Scientists” 1). Once we felt we had perfected the atomic bomb in late 1944 and into 1945, we began conferring where and when we should test the atomic bomb. After much conferring with my supervisors and fellow scientists, we agreed to test the atomic bomb on July 16th, 1945 in the dessert near Alamogordo, New Mexico (Danzer 583). On that day, my fellow scientists stood in awe as our creation detonated, leaving an enormous mushroom cloud that supposedly could be seen up to 180 miles away. My friend and fellow scientists, Otto Frisch, described the mushroom cloud as ‘a red hot elephant standing balanced on its trunk (Danzer 583). Once President Truman heard of our great success, he gave Japan notice on July 25th, 1945 that they could either surrender or face ‘prompt and utter destruction’ (Danzer 584). The Japanese refused to surrender and on August 6th, 1945, the plane //Enola Gay//, dropped //Little Boy// on the city of Hiroshima. Once Hiroshima was destroyed, the Japanese still refused to surrender. On August 9th, we dropped //Fat Man// on Nagasaki, killing some 200,000 people with the immense force of impact and with the deadly radiation that loomed over the remains of the cities (Danzer 584). Just last week, I attended a meeting of the Federation of American Scientists, in which the founder of the FAS and a scientist who I worked with on the Manhattan Project, Hans Albrecht Bethe, delivered a speech. At this meeting, Hans proposed that ‘all scientists in all countries to cease and desist from work, creating, developing, improving, and manufacturing further nuclear weapons- and for that matter, other weapons of potential mass destruction such as chemical and biological weapons’ (“Federation of American Scientists” 1). I constantly feel guilty about what I had done to help the government manufacture this deadly atomic bomb. Every day, I wake up and the thought plagues me that I helped the U.S. government kill hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and cause so much pain and suffering for people in Japan whose ancestors were slaughtered at the hands of the deadly S-1, the Manhattan Project’s deadly atomic bomb. 

     Pictured above is an example of the pins that we were given by our advisors if we were working on the Manhattan Project, commonly known as Project S-1 to physicists like myself.      <     http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/atomic/atomic-qv03-0386.jpg     >              Works Cited             Carlisle, Rodney P. “Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD).” __Encyclopedia of the Atomic Age__. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2001. __American History Online__. Facts on File, Inc. Hunterdon Central Regional High School. 21 Oct. 2008.  Danzer, Gerald A., et al. __The Americans__. Boston: McDougal Littell. 2003.  “Federation of American Scientists.” __American History__. 2008. ABC-CLIO. 21 Oct. 2008 <[|http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com]>.