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and Bell Laboratories. The committee did its work so well that Roosevelt later formed an even more powerful Office of Scientific Research and Development.

 

The leader of both groups was Vannevar Bush -- no relation to the future presidents. He had long experience as a professor of electrical engineering and as an inventor. Many scientists knew him.

 

Vannevar Bush put together a hard-working team. And in the years that followed, American scientists and engineers developed one invention after another to help the war effort.

 

Scientists developed new devices to help the Navy find German submarines. They improved methods for bombers to find their targets. And they developed more powerful rockets to protect American troops when they landed on foreign beaches.

 

American scientists and doctors also made great progress in improving the methods of wartime medicine. World War Two may well have been the first war in history in which a wounded soldier was more likely to survive than to die.

 

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But, in many ways, the most important scientific development of the period was the atomic bomb.

 

In nineteen thirty-nine, Albert Einstein wrote President Roosevelt a letter. The scientist told the president that it might soon be possible to build a powerful weapon -- a weapon that would use the power of the atom. And he urged Roosevelt to get American scientists to build the atomic bomb before German scientists could build one.

 

Roosevelt agreed. He created a special team of scientists. Their work became known as the Manhattan Project. Roosevelt made sure that these scientists got all the money and supplies they needed.

 

Roosevelt died before the scientists could complete their work. But in April nineteen forty-five, the scientists told the new president, Harry Truman, that they were almost ready to test their invention. Just three months later, they exploded the world's first atomic bomb in the desert in the southwestern state of New Mexico.

 

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Truman had to make a difficult decision. He knew the atomic bomb would cause widespread death and suffering if it was used on a Japanese city. But he was willing to do anything to avoid the need for American troops to invade Japan.

 

In Japan, a new prime minister and government were searching for a way to end the war. But Truman believed that the Japanese were still not ready to surrender. And he felt it was his duty to end the war as soon as possible.

 

This undated U.S. Air Force photograph shows the ground crew of the "Enola Gay" airplane that bombed Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 with the "Little Boy" nuclear bomb

 

On August sixth, nineteen forty-five, the first atomic bomb fell on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later, a second A-bomb fell on the city of Nagasaki.

 

PRESIDENT TRUMAN: "Having found the atomic bomb, we have used it. We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us."

 

STEVE EMBER: President Truman.

 

PRESIDENT TRUMAN: "It is an awful responsibility which has come to us. We thank God that it has come to us, instead of to our enemy."

 

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