Manhatten Project

In “The Apocalypse Factory,” Steve Olson tells the story of Hanford, a small rural town in Washington State that played an outsize role in America’s nuclear ambitions.

Before the War Department contracted him to write exclusively about the atom bomb, a staff member of The New York Times wrote several articles that provided a glimpse into the events leading up to the Manhattan Project.

By the end of this section, you will explain the causes and effects of the victory of the United States and its allies over the Axis Powers.

The top-secret Manhattan Project resulted in the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945

The first headquarters of the nation’s secret effort to build the bomb lay in New York City.