Alamogordo Test Range,Jornada del Muerto desert 5:29:45 A.M., July 16 1945.
Trinity Site.
At that moment, at that location, exploded the first man-made nuclear device ever created. Leo Szilard had the premonition in 1933 that inexorably led to this moment in history. The device, by modern nuclear standards, was small but effective, and powerful. Even a small nuclear device like the Trinity device, nicknamed The Gadget, with an estimated yield of 20-22 kilotons was a terrifying weapon. Once the conventional explosives triggered the implosion of fissionable plutonium at it's core (only the Little Boy bomb used on Hiroshima employed Uranium) the ensuing fireball grew to several hundred meters across with 109 milliseconds. The twenty meter high steel tower it sat atop vaporized into the ether and the nuclear age was born. It was the first nuclear test. There would be many more.
There have been many documentaries on cable that have dealt with the nuclear age in general and the Manhattan Project in particular but precious few theatrically released ones. The Day After Trinity (1980) which documents the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the first atomic bomb was made in 1980 by director Jon Else and writer/editor David Webb Peoples and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. It would be the last time many of the physicists who worked at Los Alamos would be interviewed for a documentary and for that alone it has the weight of being an important historical document.
Having covered the details of the Manhattan Project in my previous post on Day One there is 
no need to go into the details again. The Day After Trinity has the physicists who worked at Los Alamos telling the familiar stories, New Mexico locals telling odd stories about the events of 1945 and the usual recap of history. What sets The Day After Trinity apart from most if not all documentaries on the nuclear age is the attitudes, the mannerisms and the odd behavior on display by all the participants, recording history by eyewitnesses before they die, setting itself up as a vital record to be studied not just cinematically but sociologically for the years ahead.
There's the farmer describing with amusement the black cat that became white after the Trinity test due to fallout. The cat was later sold to a tourist. He also describes the cattle and how they had white patches as well. None of it seems to bother him. No recognition seems present on his part that something potentially deadly and genetically altering has covered his land.
There's the New Mexico woman describing driving down the highway at 5:30 in the morning with her sister when the bomb went off. Her sister asked, "What was that?" The director Jon Else asks why is it notable that her sister asked that? The woman responds, "Because she's blind."
There's Robert Serber, Los Alamos physicist and Robert Oppenheimer protege, acting as strangely as a man can act before the camera. He rocks backwards and forwards in his chair, he speaks with a bizarre cadence, emphasizing articles and participles rather than nouns and verbs.
He recounts going to Hiroshima and Nagasaki within 10 days of the blasts to investigate the damage. He brought back an artifact from Hiroshima. It was used to determine from the angle of the burned on shadows that the bomb went off at the proper elevation, 1,850 feet. He could have chosen any item of the thousands of building pieces with burned on shadows from the outskirts of Hiroshima to prove this but he chose this one, and he pulls it out to show us. It is a section of wall from a schoolhouse. He seems to have no recognition of the oddness of using something from a battlefield identified with children. He seems eager to point out the burned on shadows to prove his point. By the time he's done you half expect him to pull out a baby carriage to further support his case.
There's Frank Oppenheimer, Robert's brother who also worked on the project, grabbing his forehead and covering his eyes at least one quarter of the time he is on camera. Almost as if he doesn't want to be seen telling this story.
There's Robert Wilson, Los Alamos physicist, and his wife, Jane Wilson, recounting how euphoric he was after Germany surrendered and then Jane talking of how depressed and physically ill he was after Hiroshima was bombed.
And above all, there's Freeman Dyson. World renowned British physicist Dyson did not work on the Manhattan Project but did later come to know many of the physicists who did. It is this distance that allows Dyson to have the clearest analysis and most eloquently stated thoughts on the matter. If you have never read any books or articles by Dyson I highly recommend doing so. He is as much philosopher as he is physicist. He speaks of how the machinery was in place to 
drop the bomb the moment the project was authorized. Billions of dollars and tens of thousands of paid workers meant the decision to drop the bomb had already been made. It was made the moment they began work on it.
And through archival footage, there's Robert Oppenheimer. He stayed on with the Atomic Energy Commission after the war and fought against the construction of the Hydrogen Bomb. As a result his security clearance was revoked and he was shown the door. In one interview from the sixties he is clearly consumed with guilt, crying as he expresses his thoughts on that July 16th day in 1945. In another interview from 1965 the interviewer asks him what he thinks of President Johnson's proposal for nuclear disarmament. Oppenheimer replies, "It's twenty years too late. The time for that would have been the day after Trinity."
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As The Day After Trinity is a documentary made in 1980 there is no trailer for it so I took it upon myself to create one. I hope you will watch it and I hope it gives some sense of the documentary itself. It is just under three minutes long. It is a simple trailer, opening as the film does with Haakon Chevalier, a friend of Oppenheimer, reading a letter he had written to Oppy after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had finally revealed the Manhattan Project to the world.
Next you will see images of Frank, Robert's brother, as I described him above.
It concludes with the images of Hiroshima from the documentary with a voice over I extracted from an interview in the documentary by the great Freeman Dyson, explaining more eloquently than I ever could why the bomb was dropped and why so many non-violent physicists worked on it.
Please watch it and check out the documentary if you can. The music used is the music from the documentary itself.
