Sixty-five years ago today, July 16, the very first atomic bomb was tested in a remote desert region of New Mexico near the town of Alamogordo.  The place of the first atomic test blast was known as Jornada del Muerto - "Journey of Death" or "Dead Man's Trail".  The code-name of the test blast was "Trinity". 

Just hours before the Trinity test, as final preparations were being made, Enrico Fermi, who was credited three years earlier with producing the first nuclear chain reaction, was inviting wagers on "...whether, if the test was successful, it would ignite the atmosphere, and if it did, would it simply destroy New Mexico or the entire world."  Other scientists and participants in the Manhattan Project that had built the "device" (as they called the first atomic bomb) played poker.  At 5:29a.m. and 45 seconds...the world's first atomic blast, and "...in a millionth of a second, conditions at the center of the bomb core resembled the state of the universe moments after its first primordial explosion"
(quotes from JOURNEY OF DEATH, 1985, Brandywine Peace Community, see full text at http://www.brandywinepeace.com/Journey%20of%20Death/JOD%20cover.html). 

Just twelve days before the test, Harry Truman had, on July 4, 1945 - Independence Day - issued a  presidential memo authorizing  the use atomic bombs on Japan should the test be successful.  Three weeks after Trinity...Hiroshima, Nagasaki. 

In 1965, speaking at a press conference twenty years after Trinity, J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, recalled his thoughts following the first blast of an atomic bomb (see and hear Oppenheimer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8H7Jibx-c0 )

“…We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that one way or another.” - J. Robert Oppenheimer

Read Greg Mitchell's Secrecy, Cover-ups and Deadly Radiation: On the Birth of the Nuclear Age 65 Years Ago at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/secrecy-cover-ups-and-dea_b_647313.html. 

Plan now to join us in Valley Forge, PA, on Fri., August 6, the 65th Anniversary of the atomic destruction of Hiroshima, at Lockheed Martin, the world's #1 war profiteer and U.S.'s #1 nuclear bomb contractor as we remember the continuing legacy of Trinity and resist its continuing corporate incarnation; and on Mon., August 9, Nagasaki Day, at Phila. City Hall.  See www.brandywinepeace.com for more information.

See Brandywine Peace Community Website Update on:  Declaring Independence from War, Oil, & Corporate Power, July 3, 2010, Independence Mall, Phila -

Brandywine Peace Community
P.O. Box 81, Swarthmore, PA 19081 - (610) 544-1818 
brandywine@juno.com  www.brandywinepeace.com