ce of energy could be the result. The chain reaction could release energy rapidly and with explosive force. Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller, Hungarian-born physicists were frightened by the possibility that Germany might produce an atomic bomb. They insisted that Albert Einstein inform President Roosevelt about the possibility of the Germans making an atomic bomb. In late 1939 President Roosevelt ordered an American effort to make an atomic bomb before the Germans. This project to produce the atomic bomb was named the Manhattan Project. Industrial and research activities took place at such sites as Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Hanford, Washington. The Manhattan Project was led by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer directed the design and building of the bomb. He and other scientists worked on this project from 1943 to 1945. He was known as the father of the atomic bomb. The first atomic bomb was successfully exploded on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Vice President Harry S. Truman became President of the United States because of the death of Roosevelt. On May 7, 1945 Germany surrendered. Truman proclaimed May 8 as V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day). In July, President Truman went to Potsdam, Germany, to discuss war issues with Prime Minister Churchill of Great Britain and Premier Stalin of the Soviet Union. During his time in Posdam, the President received secret word that the atomic bomb had been successfully tested. On his way back to the United States, President Truman ordered American fliers to drop an atomic bomb in Japan. On August 6, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay left the Pacific island of Tinian to bomb the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The Enola Gay was named by the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, after his mother. The crew of Enola Gay were told that no one could be sure what would happen when the atomic bomb was dr...
