"THE MOST TERRIBLE WEAPON IN HUMAN HISTORY"

TRUMAN BRIEFED ON MANHATTAN PROJECT

Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On April 24, 1945, President Harry S Truman was briefed on the Manhattan Project*.  When Mr. Truman assumed the presidency upon the death of FDR on April 12, 1945, he was informed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson** that work was in progress on a "new, terrible weapon." 

After the briefing on the 24th, President Truman authorized the continuation of the Manhattan Project and agreed to form a committee to advise the POTUS on the use of the atomic bomb.

*Manhattan Project...In 1942, the US government authorized  a concerted attack on the atom to produce an atomic bomb.  The Manhattan Engineer District of the Corps of Engineers, a.k.a. Manhattan Project, was organized to accomplish this goal.

The first experimental explosion of an atomic bomb took place at Alamogordo, NM on July 16 1945 & the 1st atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on Aug 6 1945.

**Henry Lewis Stimson (1867-1950) was born in NYC & educated at Yale & Harvard.  HLS served as Secretary of War under Presidents Taft, Hoover, FDR & Truman.  He called the atomic bomb the "most terrible weapon ever known in human history."

SOURCE

"Atomic Bomb," The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume 1, Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, Chicago, 1967.   

   

 

Henry L. Stimson Arrives at White House

Photo by Abbie Rowe (1945)

NARA/Truman Library Image

FIRST PEACETIME DRAFT

JFK+50:  Volume 5, No. 1759

AMERICA'S FIRST PEACETIME DRAFT

Washington, D.C.  (JFK+50) Seventy-five years ago today, October 29, 1940, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson* drew the first number from a glass bowl in the first peacetime military draft conducted by the government of the United States.

The draft was authorized by the Selective Training and Service Act which was passed by Congress and signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on September 16, 1940.

The act required all males between the ages of 21 and 35 to register with local draft boards.  After the United States entered World War II, a new Selective Service Act advanced the maximum age for eligibility for military service to 45 and required men up to 65 years of age to register.

*Henry L. Stimson (1867-1950) was born in New York City and graduated from Yale College in 1888.  At Yale, HLS was a member of the Skull & Bones Society.  He graduated from Harvard Law school in 1890 and became a partner in the Root & Clark law firm.  

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Stimson US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and he served as president of the NY Bar Association from 1937 to 1939.

President William Howard Taft appointed HLS Secretary of War in 1911 & he resumed that position under FDR after the start of WWII.  After the war, HLS directed the Manhattan Project.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson

August 10, 1945

NARA/HST Library Photo