An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (2024)

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In never-before-seen photographs, explore the secret U.S. facility and home to the Manhattan Project scientists who developed the first nuclear weapon

An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (1)

An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (2)

In February 1943, the Los Alamos Ranch School, an outdoorsy institution for boys, abruptly closed its doors so the U.S. government could take over the campus. A local poet named Peggy Pond Church, daughter of the school’s founder, later described the “element of extreme haste and mystery” that surrounded the whole operation. As bulldozers arrived on the New Mexico campus, she had her first glimpse of J. Robert Oppenheimer. “Cowboy boots and all,” she wrote, “he hurried in the front door and out the back, peering quickly into the kitchen and bedrooms. I was impressed, even in that brief meeting, by his nervous energy and by the intensity of the blue eyes that seemed to take in everything at a glance, like a bird flying from branch to branch in a deep forest.”

Oppenheimer, then 38, had been tapped to lead a facility that government documents called Project Y. The physicists working there were part of the ultra-secret Manhattan Project, and they had one goal—developing the first nuclear weapon before the Nazis beat them to it.

The effort needed a remote location, but Oppenheimer was especially partial to the Ranch School site. A native of New York City, he hadn’t always strutted around in cowboy boots. But he’d fallen in love with the wilderness near Santa Fe during his teens and 20s. Later, he and his family bought a cabin in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. They called it Perro Caliente, reportedly because Oppenheimer shouted “Hot dog!” when he found out the cabin was available.

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This article is a selection from the July/August 2023 issue of Smithsonian magazine

An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (4)
An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (5)
An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (6)

Los Alamos had views of the same mountain range. During the last two years of World War II, between 1,500 and 8,200 scientists and staff members lived on the Ranch School campus and in a quickly constructed nearby town. One of the first to arrive, in March 1943, was Richard Feynman, another New Yorker, who had recently earned his PhD at Princeton University. “The beauty of the scenery, for a person from the East who didn’t travel much, was sensational,” Feynman said later. “There are the great cliffs that you’ve probably seen in pictures. You’d come up from below and be very surprised to see this high mesa.” The nearby houses were still under construction. “We were all jammed in there in bunk beds,” Feynman recalled. Another theoretical physicist and his wife had to pass through Feynman’s bedroom to get to the bathroom.

The town of Los Alamos was soon up and running, but its existence remained secret. All its residents shared the same mailing address: P.O. Box 1663. Many people on the support staff were young military personnel and, sequestered away from the world, they had to create their own entertainment. “Square dancing evolved as a natural Saturday evening activity in that Southwestern setting,” Richard Rhodes wrote in his definitive history, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “Single men and women sponsored dorm parties fueled with tanks of punch made potent with mixed liquors.”

An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (7)
An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (8)
An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (9)

The married scientists found their own ways to relax. The Oppenheimers rode horses on Sunday mornings. Enrico Fermi, who’d recently built the world’s first nuclear reactor, liked to climb mountains with his colleague Hans Bethe, where they could look out at the world from 12,500 feet. Fermi and Bethe had both been born in Axis countries, Fermi in Italy and Bethe in Germany, but they’d fled their homelands because of antisemitism. (Fermi’s wife was Jewish, and Bethe had Jewish ancestry.)

The scientists’ minds were crammed with physics problems and moral questions. “I had many sleepless nights,” recalled the British physicist James Chadwick in a 1969 interview. “And I had then to start taking sleeping pills. It was the only remedy.”

On July 16, 1945, the breakthroughs at Los Alamos were put to the test in a world-changing experiment called Trinity, a few hours south in the New Mexico desert. At 5:29 a.m., onlookers saw a blinding flash of light. “It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way right through you,” wrote Nobel Prize-winning physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi, who was there that day. “It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last forever. You would wish it would stop; altogether it lasted about two seconds.” The flash gave way to a massive fireball with streaks of yellow, red and green. “It looked menacing. It seemed to come toward one. A new thing had just been born; a new control; a new understanding of man, which man had acquired over nature.”

An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (10)
An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (11)
An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (12)

A few weeks later, on August 6, Americans dropped the first atom bomb, devastating the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, another plane dropped an atom bomb on Nagasaki. On the evening of August 14, President Harry S. Truman told reporters at the White House that Japan had surrendered. That was the last time nuclear weapons were used in combat, though their proliferation still causes countless cases of insomnia. The scientists who developed the weapons live on in the public’s imagination, most recently inspiring the Christopher Nolan film Oppenheimer, which opens this summer.

An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (13)
An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (14)
An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (15)

Los Alamos is still an active national laboratory, and the Manhattan Project sites are still off limits to the public. Photographer Minesh Bacrania, a physicist who worked in the lab’s nonproliferation division from 2006 to 2012, received special permission to take these photos for Smithsonian of restricted historic sites that are no longer in operation.

“You can trace so many discoveries back to the work done at Los Alamos,” Bacrania says. The Manhattan Project and the Cold War gave rise to innovations like integrated circuits, earth-sensing satellites, new medical imaging techniques and high-performance computing. “That iPhone in your pocket can be traced all the way back to a little shed in a canyon,” he notes.

Still, Los Alamos will always be remembered as the birthplace of the atom bomb. Many would argue that this weapon has secured a kind of peace, as superpowers continue to avoid mutually assured destruction. But the scientists themselves never stopped grappling with what they’d done. “The physicists have known sin,” Oppenheimer said two years after the war, “and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.”

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Minesh Bacrania | READ MORE

Minesh Bacrania is a photographer based in Santa Fe.

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz | READ MORE

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz is a senior editor at Smithsonian magazine. She was previously a senior editor at the Atlantic.

An Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Los Alamos Lab Where J. Robert Oppenheimer Created the Atomic Bomb (2024)

FAQs

Was the atomic bomb made in Los Alamos? ›

In Los Alamos, New Mexico, Manhattan Project administrators found an ideal location for the secret laboratory where they designed and built the world's first atomic weapons.

Why did Oppenheimer choose Los Alamos? ›

It fulfilled the selection criteria, and Oppenheimer was keen to locate the bomb-production facility at Los Alamos because of its natural beauty. He had enjoyed summers in Los Alamos as a youth and believed that the beautiful location would help the weapons team endure the arduous challenge ahead.

Who was one of the main scientists behind the building of the bomb? ›

No one person can be credited with producing the world's first atomic bomb but two men had outsize achievements in that effort: physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and Army Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves.

Who created the theories that lead to the atomic bomb and the creation of the US Manhattan Project? ›

Leo Szilard was a Hungarian physicist that worked closely with Einstein to draft the aforementioned Einstein Letter to President Roosevelt that prompted the president to establish the Manhattan Project.

Was there going to be a third atomic bomb? ›

Yes, there was indeed a third bomb forthcoming if Japan didn't surrender after the second bomb was dropped. This third bomb, sometimes referred to as the second Fat Man or the Third Shot, was another plutonium-239 implosion bomb.

Did Truman really call Oppenheimer a crybaby? ›

Truman did call Oppenheimer a 'crybaby scientist' but not directly or during the depicted event. Events in Oppenheimer film differed slightly from historical reality, adding drama to the scene. Nolan clarified Truman's remark as a response to Oppenheimer expressing guilt post-atomic bombings.

What happened to Oppenheimer's children? ›

Soon after his father died, Peter permanently moved to northern New Mexico to live at a residence his father had purchased years earlier, the Perro Caliente ranch, according to the AHF. According to the AHF, Peter still lives in New Mexico working as a carpenter and has three children: Dorothy, Charles and Ella.

What did Oppenheimer say when the nuke went off? ›

Given his fascination with learning Sanskrit, it's commonly believed that Oppenheimer said, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" in the wake of the Trinity test.

Are Los Alamos still active? ›

Today, the nucleus of this once-secret city is still Los Alamos National Laboratory, though you'll find plenty of historic and cultural resources to explore as well. Start your adventure with our visitor center in Los Alamos, NM.

Was Oppenheimer a good person? ›

There's not an easy answer for this. Oppenheimer helped make the atomic bomb, but he also helped end World War II. By many accounts, Oppenheimer was a well-intentioned, complicated and conflicted man, as Nolan's movie will likely show. He may have not defined himself as a good person.

Was the bomb in Oppenheimer real? ›

“Obviously, we couldn't make an explosion the size of the actual explosion so we used trickery,” cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema explains, and no, they didn't detonate a real atomic bomb. The ten-minute sequence capturing the first-ever successful atomic bomb detonation came together through many experiments.

Who kept the atomic bomb a secret? ›

The goal was to keep the entire atomic bomb program secret from Germany and Japan. In this, Manhattan Project security officials succeeded. They also sought, however, to keep word of the atomic bomb from reaching the Soviet Union.

Did the US warn Japan before dropping the atomic bomb? ›

It was our custom to warn Japanese civilians before bombing their cities because we were attempting to destroy military targets, not kill civilians. We dropped leaflets over Hiroshima but did not mention the atomic bomb.

Would America have nuked Germany? ›

Not all historians agree that the U.S. would have dropped the bomb on Germany. Consulted by this newspaper, Antony Beevor points out that he does not do alternative history but, in any case, the Americans would not have deployed an atomic bomb when the Red Army was closing in on Berlin.

What ethnicity was Robert Oppenheimer? ›

Oppenheimer was born on April 22, 1904 to a wealthy German-Jewish couple, Julius and Ella Oppenheimer, and grew up on Riverside Drive in Manhattan (Bird & Sherwin, 2005, pp. 9-11).

Where was the atomic bomb built? ›

The Manhattan Project took shape at three primary locations across the country: Hanford, Washington; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Albert Einstein (left) and Leo Szilard review their letter warning FDR about potential to build atomic bombs.

Is the Trinity test site still radioactive? ›

Radiation levels in the fenced, ground zero area are very low. The maximum levels are only 10 times greater than the region's natural background radiation. Many places on Earth are naturally more radioactive than Trinity Site.

Was Los Alamos Oppenheimer's Ranch? ›

Oppenheimer House

J. Robert Oppenheimer was a visionary scientist and an inspirational administrator. Built in 1929, the Oppenheimer house served the Los Alamos Ranch School before the Manhattan Project took over. Oppenheimer, his wife Kitty, daughter Toni, and son Peter lived in this home from 1943-1945.

Is Los Alamos still nuclear? ›

Los Alamos is located in the high desert of northern New Mexico, 35 miles from the state capital of Santa Fe. LANL spans almost 40 square miles of DOE-owned property and has almost 900 individual facilities, 13 nuclear facilities, 8.4 million square feet in buildings, and a $39.1 billion replacement plant value.

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