Today

Blog readers will know that the UC Regents at their regular meetings often have presentations about the Department of Energy labs - Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley - over which UC has managerial responsibilities. The labs are the remnants of the World War II Manhattan Project, the Project that produced the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima eighty years ago today. The Manhattan Project was linked to UC-Berkeley through its research director, Professor J. Robert Oppenheimer. The film Oppenheimer that received much attention a few years back told the story, but in a rather disjointed fashion that assumed at least some audience knowledge of the WW2 period. That was a big assumption for events eight decades ago. 

A better source is the BBC docudrama "Oppenheimer," telecast in 1980, from which the image above is taken. You can see its 7 parts - one hour each - at the links below:

https://ia601509.us.archive.org/28/items/sacramento-city-at-risk/Oppenheimer_1980_Episode_1.mp4

https://ia801509.us.archive.org/28/items/sacramento-city-at-risk/Oppenheimer_1980_Episode_2.mp4

https://ia601509.us.archive.org/28/items/sacramento-city-at-risk/Oppenheimer_1980_Episode_3.mp4

https://ia801509.us.archive.org/28/items/sacramento-city-at-risk/Oppenheimer_1980_Episode_4.mp4

https://ia601509.us.archive.org/28/items/sacramento-city-at-risk/Oppenheimer_1980_Episode_5.mp4

https://ia801509.us.archive.org/28/items/sacramento-city-at-risk/Oppenheimer_1980_Episode_6.mp4

https://ia801509.us.archive.org/28/items/sacramento-city-at-risk/Oppenheimer_1980_Episode_7.mp4

Although there is a lot more "content" easily available for viewing now compared with 1980, the BBC series will hold your attention better than most options. And it gives a picture of the political atmosphere at Berkeley in that earlier era.

The NY Times has photos of the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/world/asia/hiroshima-nagasaki-japan-nuclear-photos.html.