New Mexicans were active in the armed services during World War II, with nearly 50,000 serving and 2,256 suffering casualties; New Mexicans received seven Medals of Honor during the war. Navajo Code Talkers devised a secret military code that was used to help win battles in the Pacific. New Mexico native Bill Mauldin and Albuquerque resident Ernie Pyle won Pulitzer Prizes for their coverage of the war. On the home front, Army air bases were built in Hobbs, Carlsbad, Clovis, Roswell, Alamogordo, Albuquerque, and other towns.
The biggest contribution from New Mexico in World War II was a secret scientific community organized on the remote Pajarito Plateau which developed the world's first atomic weapons. J. Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist and General Leslie Groves, along with other scientists of the Manhattan Project worked long hours to develop a bomb that was finally tested at the Trinity Test Site, southeast of Socorro, in mid-July 1945. Other bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which caused mass destruction and led to the surrender of Japan one month after the Trinity blast.
It is arguable that New Mexico contributed greatly to the United States' final victory in World War II. Perhaps more so than any other state of its size in the Union. After the War, both the U.S. and New Mexico entered into a boom period thanks to returning service men who sought college educations and purchased homes. Of course, New Mexico residents also contributed to the post-war baby boom.
Taken from the New Mexico Magazine.
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