- The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons.

-  It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada

-  1939

-  The world's scientific community discovered that German physicists had learned the secrets of splitting a uranium atom. 

- Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, living in the US, felt the president needed to know of the dangers

- Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt, urging the creation of an atomic research program

- Roosevelt was against the project, but agreed to it, progressing very slowly. 

- In late 1941, the American effort to design and build an ATOMIC BOMB received its code name — the Manhattan Project.

-  A breakthrough occurred in December 1942 when Fermi led a group of physicists to produce the first controlled Nuclear Chain Reaction under the grandstands of STAGG Field at the University of Chicago.

-   The main assembly plant was built at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

-Robert Oppenheimer was put in charge of putting the pieces together at Los Alamos.

- nearly $2 billion had been spent on research and development of the atomic bomb and employed over 120,000 Americans.

- Secrecy was most important.  Germany and Japan could not find out about the project.  Even the Vice President did not know about it.

- American leaders later learned that a Soviet spy named Klaus Fuchs had penetrated the inner circle of scientists.

- By the summer of 1945, Oppenheimer was ready to test the first bomb.

 - On July 16, 1945, at Trinity Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico, scientists of the Manhattan Project readied themselves to watch the detonation of the world's first atomic bomb, from a 100 ft. tower.

- A blinding flash visible for 200 miles lit up the morning sky. A mushroom cloud reached 40,000 feet, blowing out windows of civilian homes up to 100 miles away. 

-  The excuse used for the explosion was that a huge ammunition dump had just exploded in the desert. 

- They had now entered the nuclear age.

To an important degree, the Cold War served as an economic stimulus as World War II did in the early 1940s. But the Cold War has now ended, and there is not even a shred of a conversion policy. And one of the dominant lessons of World War II is that unless there is a plan for conversion or reconversion, people are subject to the whims of the free market.

Wartime conversion was not without hardships, but most of them resulted from too little planning, not too much. In 1942, after delaying, the government finally had to force the automobile industry to convert their plants to the manufacture of planes. Four hundred thousand automobile workers were thrown out on the streets until that conversion could take place. All the auto dealers and salespersons were suddenly out of jobs. Eleanor Roosevelt had an altercation with General Motors Chairman William Knudsen because he had been unwilling to accept a plan a year earlier. What made it finally work was the recognition that there had to be a plan, that the government was behind the plan, and the plan had public support. In 1992, despite all the talk about it, there is no collective effort to plan for the aftermath of the Cold War. http://prospect.org/article/way-we-won-americas-economic-breakthrough-during-world-war-ii

- Between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent. By 1945 one out of every four married women worked outside the home.

- As the demand for public transportation grew, women even became streetcar “conductorettes” for the first time.

- Approx. 350,000 American women served in uniform, both at home and abroad, volunteering for the newly formed Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, the Navy Women’s Reserve, the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, the Coast Guard Women’s Reserve the Women Airforce Service Pilots, the Army Nurses Corps, and the Navy Nurse Corps.

-  Some of the other jobs they took up included: driving trucks, repairing airplanes, laboratory technicians, radio operators, and flying military aircraft across the country

- However near the end of the war, the majority of the working women were forced out of their jobs because of the return of men and the downward demand for war materials

- Women veterans could not take advantage of the G.I. Bill because they were not yet regarded to be equal to men. 

-  British, Soviet, and American women had similar, liberating effects from WWIII with new roles, while women in China, Korea, and Jewish women had an opposing experience- begin forced into sexual slavery

-   The women organized into military auxiliary units had special uniforms and….. EQUAL PAY!!

-   Influenced new conventional image of female behavior, as "Rosie the Riveter" became the popular symbol of women who abandoned traditional female occupations to work in defense industries. 

1.       It became very difficult for refugees to flee, and those that did leave left from neutral ports such as Libson, Portugal

2.       In Germany-occupied Poland, Jews were prohibited from emigrating

3.       Jews in Germany could legally leave until fall of 1941

4.       FDR began to rescue European Jews in 1944 by establishing the War Refugee Board

5.       The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and World Jewish Congress also helped provide relief in the US

6.       A vacant US army base in Oswego, New York became an Emergency Refugee Shelter

7.       Nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees were brought to upstate New York using this system

8.       Liberated Jews suffering from illness emerged from concentration camps and hiding places to the world, which still seemed to have no place for them

9.       Most Jews tried to begin new lives outside of Europe, such as moving to Palestine

10.   Immigration restrictions were still in effect in the US after the war, and legislation to expedite the admission of Jews was slow in coming

11.   The entry qualifications for Jews to be admitted into the United States were so stringent and privileged certain refugees to such an extent, however, that President Truman called the law "flagrantly discriminatory” against Jews.

·      Roosevelt felt pressured by the popular belief and a signed executive order, relocating all Americans with Japanese decent to internment camps

·      The court upheld the order through Korematsu v. United States

o   Fred Korematsu defied the military and policy by remaining to live with his Italian-American girl friends while his family was force into internment camps

o   The police caught him and he was processed through court

·      Internment camps were camps that held around 120,000 Japanese people and forced them into harsh living conditions

·      During the relocation, many Japanese people were forced to live in stables at racetracks

·      The living conditions were horrible many people died of dieses and were killed by military when they were not listening to orders

·      Adult have the option earn a salary of 5$ a day and work on the farms

The hope was that US could gain produce from this but farming conditions were bad and not much came out of it

Sources
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/On-this-Day--The-Supreme-Court-Upholds-WWII-Internment-of-Japanese-Americans-.html