Covering a three-week period from the Trinity test to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the program chronicles America's political gamble and the planning for the momentous event.

Archival film, dramatizations, and special effects depict what occurred aboard the Enola Gay and inside the nuclear blast.

[2] Six Japanese survivors are interviewed: Kinuko Laskey (a nurse in a communications hospital), Morio Ozaki (an army cadet), Teruko Fujii (16-year-old tram driver), Thomas Takashi Tanemori (an eight-year-old schoolboy), Dr. Shuntaro Hida (a doctor at a military hospital), and Akiko Takakura (a 17-year-old city bank clerk).

From the United States the interviewees are Paul Tibbets (the commanding officer and pilot of the Enola Gay), Theodore Van Kirk (the navigator of the aircraft), Morris R. Jeppson (the weapon test officer), and Russell Gackenbach (the navigator of the accompanying photographic aircraft Necessary Evil).

White House Map Room Duty Officer George Elsey is interviewed as an eyewitness to the Potsdam Conference.