The Day After Trinity Analysis

A percentage of history is evaluated through the use of firsthand accounts and personal bias, even if not on purpose. Both director of The Day After Trinity, Jon H. Else, and Thomas Misa interpreted the events leading up to the atomic bomb differently. In Misa’s chapter seven, Misa, mentioned how the development of the atomic bomb was essentially a national effort with many failures and successes. Misa treats each step in the process as equal, and even goes out of the way to explain utter failures, such as Ernest Lawrence’s attempt at efficient electromagnetic separation to produce uranium-235. This inclusion of all efforts towards the Manhattan Project shows how the process thrived on trial and error. The working and reworking towards a solution was the ultimate factor in the timely inception of the bomb. Else, however, directed his documentary in a way to only focus on the efforts of American physicist Robert Oppenheimer. While he may have dabbled in certain subjects, Else spent most of time showing firsthand accounts of Los Alamos scientists. Hans Bethe, a physicist revered by Oppenheimer, for example, explained how Oppenheimer ultimately led the effort for …show more content…
On the other hand, the atomic annihilation of Japan can be interpreted as a justification for the immense undertaking that was the Manhattan Project. As a government should, Congress was deeply involved with the Manhattan Project. After all, it was a huge scientific project that costed $2 billion and essentially ended the Second World War. General Leslie Groves, as well as other individuals, knew that the second bomb had to be used before Truman could shut down the operation, which he happened to do to the third bomb which was about to be shipped to Tinian. The atomic bombs, especially the second one, Fat Man, doubled as a means to ending the war and as a means to satisfy Congress’s need for