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U.S. Offers Glimpse at Manhattan Project Facility
jonerik writes "According to this article from the Associated Press, the US government is this week permitting the public a rare glimpse of its high-security Y-12 nuclear weapons plant as part of Oak Ridge, Tennessee's annual Secret City Festival, which is being held this coming weekend. Although the plant is still associated with ongoing nuclear weapons work, members of the public will be permitted to see parts of the facility associated with its work on the Manhattan Project's 'Little Boy' bomb, which was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The facility produced the uranium-235 which was used in the device using 1,152 massive calutrons across nine separate buildings in 1944 and 1945. 'Don't you know the people in Knoxville wondered what in the world was going on out here,' Department of Energy guide Ray Smith said on Monday. 'All this material was coming in, truckload after truckload, and nothing ever left.'"
I highly doubt that they're going to give out plans on building your own nuke...you can find that stuff on the internet, anyways. And congrats on being another one of the million Americans that think 9/11 should restrict everything we do. "OH NO, THERE ARE TERRORISTS EVERYWHERE! I'm staying in my house for the rest of my life."
It's a UN thing. Only the founding members of the UN (US, Russia, France, China, UK) are permitted to develop nukes, ostensibly for peacekeeping purposes.
Anyone wanting to join the UN has to agree to this and not develop nuclear weapons. In return they get access to nuclear theory and technology to make (for example) nuclear energy reactors.
If you're a country and you want to develop nukes, then you're in for some serious trouble. If you're a member of the UN then you're breaking the rules, so everyone gets pissed off at you. If you're not a member of the UN then you're considered to be the bad guys, so everyone gets pissed off at you.
The problem is that as a country you can't really afford to have everyone pissed off at you because you face things like international pressure, political sanctions and pre-emptive strikes. In today's globalised interdependent economy, these things really matter.
Perhaps one day, you will understand that the world is still governed by the aggressive use of force, and that it's only the right people winning armed conflicts that allows us to simulate otherwise.
And congrats on being another one of the million Americans that think 9/11 should restrict everything we do.
When I was growing up, here in the UK, we had terrorist attacks from the IRA every so often (bombings, shootings, etc. mainly in London). The thing that the politicians always said was "If the terrorists change they way we live our lives and restrict what we can do then they have won" (or words to that effect). Then a bunch of people flew a plane into a building in the US and it seems the terrorists have won since everything is now being restricted to prevent terrorism... how times change.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Disclaimer: I am Japanese.
I'd like to point out that you're not entirely correct. Okay, maybe the first bomb was justifiable, if terrible and horrifying, in the name of ending the war.
What you fail to realize is that 1) The US originally had many more targets on their list, including Kyoto, which has a large historical significance (the Heian period was a very peaceful time), and 2) They issued an ultimatum, dropped the first bomb, and dropped the second bomb before the time was up.
They could've dropped the first bomb and had the same result. The fact that they chose to drop two bombs is troubling.
One thing that you don't realize is that while the initial purpose of Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project was to end World War II, almost everything that has come after that has been devoted to peace and the betterment of mankind. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a major institute for the advancement of dozens of areas of science including cleaner sources of energy, biology, environmental cleanup, particle physics, material science, mathematics, and more.
And, having grown up in Oak Ridge, I can tell you that no one forgets what the bombs did. No one in Oak Ridge ever tries to cover up what happened. Quite frankly, I'm disappointed that you are so willing to dismiss a city and project that has had an immeasurable impact on history. Should we celebrate the death of more than one hundred thousand civilians? Certainly not. But neither should we ignore the contribution that the workers, engineers, and scientists of Oak Ridge made toward the ending of the most horrible war that we have ever seen. Many of the workers from Oak Ridge made tremendous sacrifices to serve their country in the way that they could, and the honor in those sacrifices should be respected, regardless of the end result, especially since most of the workers were unaware of the nature of the project.
the parent writes: 'Keep in mind this is the japanese we are talking about not the french, they will die before they surrender. They are still finding japanese soldiers who refused to surrender.'
to extrapolate from individual characteristics (even culturally shared ones) to political/military outcomes, or even aggregate behaviour, is a fallacy.
this is like the old story of people saying that we have wars because it's 'human nature', when in fact while 'human nature' may give us the capacity to be soldiers (as well as to not be), it is ultimately *politicians* who start wars, not average people--average people just participate in them (and can escalate them through their participation).
equally, while you may say that because of some shared cultural characteristic japanese soldiers were less likely to give up the fight once they were involved in it, this does not imply that the japanese political/military elite would have had incentives to continue fighting no matter what. you cannot treat all japanese as if they had the same incentive structure.
the average japanese soldier was motivated by a belief in the emperor, the japanese nation, following orders and carrying out his duty. but what was the emperor motivated by? what were the generals motivated by? and when you put them all together, what is the systematic behaviour? it's not the same thing.
japan did in fact realise that it was losing, and while it is true that the average soldier probably would have fought to the death (just as many people would fight to the death defending their country, or what they see as their country's right), this does not imply that people making decisions would have taken them on the basis of 'death before defeat'. clearly this was shown not to be the case by the japanese surrender. there is absolutely nothing in the history that indicates that they would not have surrendered had it not been for the atomic bomb being dropped. what makes the atomic bomb somehow override japanese people's supposed character of wanting to fight to the death, where other means do not?
there were still IRA bombings up to the late 90s, no cold war then either. and the bombs did seem pretty bad because they killed and injured a lot of people.
the difference is that they were not exploited in order to create a climate of fear completely disproportional to the actual events. incidentally that is exactly the point of terrorist tactics--but we see today that those tactics can be effectively turned around and made more useful for the (supposed) target of the attacks than for the attackers...
"1) The US originally had many more targets on their list, including Kyoto, which has a large historical significance (the Heian period was a very peaceful time),"
The idea was brought up but, if I remember correctly, quickly abanonded by the Truman administration for the reasons you mention. If it was still on the list by the time Hiroshima was bombed, it was very far down the list. It had little military signifigance, unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were still pumping out munitions.
"2) They issued an ultimatum, dropped the first bomb, and dropped the second bomb before the time was up."
However, the bombings weren't exactly simultaneous. Three days seem long enough to verify exactly what had happened to Hiroshima (it was obvious that the damage was done by a single catastrophic blast rather than a carpet-bombing campaign). And even after Nagasaki, it took six more days of waffling on the part of the Japanese government to get around to surrendering.
During those six days there was an attempted military coup aimed at preventing the emperor from surrendering, even after both bombs. Oh, and the Soviets declared war, and all this takes place months after the US submarine force set up a near-total blockade of the home islands, dooming Japan to slow starvation in any event.
Even after all this, when a sizable chunk of the Imperial Army was still willing to continue the war, why do you think the "same result" would have been acheived after just the first bomb?
Disclaimer: I am Japanese.
Fair enough...I'm American.
They could've dropped the first bomb and had the same result. The fact that they chose to drop two bombs is troubling.
Hmmm...the fact that they didn't immediately surrender makes it far less troubling in my not so humble opinion.
It's difficult for us that weren't alive during that time to have a true perspective on the moods of both nations at the time. So I wouldn't want to be the one to try to pass judgement on either side. I've visited both cities, and seen the museums with body parts in jars...a true eye opener that will hopefully never become necessary in a third location.
Just another day in Paradise