Two vintage films from 1989 on The Manhattan Project

[Tony Nuspl]

The death by radiation exposure of nuclear scientists at Los Alamos is featured in the film “Fat Man & Little Boy”, underlining a little known aspect of the Manhattan Project. The film treatment includes a few graphic scenes of what it is to suffer from acute radiation poisoning from exposure to plutonium going critical. The other film on The Manhattan Project that came out in the same year hardly touches upon this downside of the Los Alamos test. In "Day One", Oppenheimer does NOT undergo a change of heart in this made-for-Television treatment; he argues in favor of killing 20,000 civilians, in a committee meeting in Washington D.C. At least this latter film has the benefit of putting the decision to drop the bomb into the right context: The atomic was dropped by Truman not to bring an end to the war against Japan sooner, but rather as the first blow against the USSR, which was threatening to invade and occupy Japan before the U.S. could do so. It was the opening salvo in the Cold War, and likely had no influence on the Japanese decision to surrender, compared to their fear of an impending Russian invasion. It was far better, judged the Japanese in 1945, to be under the U.S. sphere of occupation, than the Soviet one.

See the Wikipedia entries for both films:

Nobody's Fool / Fat Man & Little Boy (1989)

1989 (rated R) 236 minutes

Day One (1989)

1989 (Not Rated) 140 minutes