Important Japanese airfield near Shanghai bombed; Italy declares war on Japan; U.S. tests nuclear bomb in New Mexico

July 12, 2015-July 18, 2015
Location: Government Documents

As France celebrates French National Day for the first time since being invaded by Germany in 1940, U.S. scientists (with British collaboration) ignite a nuclear bomb in the desert of New Mexico. Data from hundreds of instruments record what occurs. This plutonium device would be the model dropped less than a month later on Nagasaki. On the same day components of the untested but foolproof uranium model are departing San Francisco on the USS Indianapolis to be shipped across the Pacific to Tinian, in the Mariana Islands. President Truman learns of the successful nuclear test while attending the Potsdam Conference, in occupied Germany, with the two other Allied heads of state Winston Churchill (to be replaced shortly by Clement Attlee) and Joseph Stalin. They are discussing the administration of post-war Germany and not the use of the atomic bomb. Learn more about the nuclear bomb project in Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb published in 1985 by the U.S. Army Center of Military History.

Newsmap. Monday, 23 July, 1945: week of 10 July to 17 July, V-E Day + 11 weeks, 188th week of U. S. participation in the war. Text and photographs describe seaborne and Mariana-based B-29 attacks on the Japanese home islands; the return of American troops on the Queen Mary; training in Ft. Jackson, S.C.; listing of divisions returning in 1945 and those scheduled to redeploy; and outline map of U.S. showing training camps. Verso: text and photographs describe the various functions of the Army Engineer.

• View this map in print in the Map Collection reading room, ground floor of UHM Hamilton Library, the week of 12 July 2015
• View this map online through the University of North Texas Digital Library ( http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc863)

Notes: Newsmaps were color posters issued by the U.S. Army and the Government Printing Office (GPO) on Mondays during the World War II. They combine maps, images, and news from the previous week’s war effort.