…by Andrea Gross…
Before we get on the bus, we have to provide proof of United States citizenship. En route to the graphite reactor, we’re told to put away our cameras. I look out the bus window. Some buildings, some pipes, a few refuse bins. They look innocuous. Why can’t I take pictures, I ask the guide, but he just smiles.
I’m in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, now a small town with a population of 28,000 near Knoxville. During World War II, it was home to more than 75,000 folks, yet almost no one knew it existed. It was such a well-kept secret that it never appeared on a map.
In 1939 President Roosevelt learned that the Nazis were developing nuclear capabilities. Realizing that the United States had no choice but to do the same, he launched the Manhattan Project, a massive, top-secret, all-out effort to develop an atomic weapon. Three sites were selected to be part of the project.
In Tennessee the new city of Oak Ridge sprang up almost overnight. Homes, schools, stores and dance halls were built so quickly that children went to school in the morning and got lost going home because the landscape had changed so drastically in just those few hours.
Billboards based on the folkloric trio of monkeys — see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil — reminded people to mind their own business. In three short years they figured out how to produce highly enriched uranium (a necessary ingredient for an atomic bomb), but most of them didn’t realize what they’d done or why they’d done it.
At the same time, 51,000 people in Hanford, Washington were racing to produce plutonium and develop a production-scale nuclear reactor. Another group of people, this one comprised of 3,000 highly educated scientists, were working in a lab at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The Los Alamos group was responsible for turning the enriched uranium and plutonium into a nuclear weapon. Their work was so secret that they couldn’t tell anyone where they lived. All mail had to be sent to one address — P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe, NM — and was later distributed to the proper recipients.
Many of the Manhattan Project sites still exist. In Oak Ridge, which advertises itself as “The Secret City,” visitors can see one of the original prefab Secret City houses in the American Museum of Science and Energy, walk around Jackson Square where the people who worked on the project spent much of their free time, and tour the X-10 graphite reactor, now a National Historic Landmark. (www.oakridgevisitor.com)
Tours at Hanford last about five hours and include stops at the Cold Test Facility, the historic B Reactor, and the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. (www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/HanfordSiteTours)
In Los Alamos, people can tour the old Fuller Lodge that served as a mess hall and guest quarters during the Manhattan Project, see the house of J. Robert Oppenheimer (scientific director of the project) and, best of all, explore the Bradbury Science Museum. (www.lanl.gov/museum/)
Less than 100 miles away, in Albuquerque, an exhibit at the National Atomic Museum shows the after-effects of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (www.nuclearmuseum.org)
All of the sites explore, in one way or another, the issues surrounding the dropping of the bomb. Was it the right thing to do? Although visitors disagree over the answer to that question, they are nearly unanimous on another point: They’re glad they didn’t have to make the decision.
This article first appeared in the October 2010 issue of Northwest Prime Time, The Puget Sound region’s publication celebrating life after 50. For more information, visit www.northwestprimetime.com
Photo Caption: The International Friendship Bell in Oak Ridge was the first monument to recognize the relationship between a U.S. Manhattan Project city and Japan. It serves as an expression of hope for everlasting peace. ©Irv Green
