03-08-2025
‘A light not of this world': The spectacle and emotions generated by the first atomic bomb blast, in the words of eyewitnesses
In mid-July 1945, the world's first atomic weapon was assembled for a test in a remote corner of the New Mexico desert known as the Trinity site. As recounted in Garrett M. Graff's new book, 'The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb' — which pulls together the first-person voices of around 500 participants and witnesses — the military and scientists involved in that historic moment, after long toil at the Los Alamos lab a few hours north, hoped to launch the atomic age. All sources are physicists except as identified otherwise and quotes have been edited for clarity and concision.
Leona H. Woods: In the middle of May, on two separate nights in the same week, the Air Force mistook the Trinity base for its illuminated practice bombing target and dropped bombs on the carpenter shop and on another building, neither of which was occupied by people after dark.
