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Historians Propose National Park To Preserve Manhattan Project Sites
Hugh Pickens writes writes "William J. Broad writes that a plan now before Congress would create a national park to protect the aging remnants of the atomic bomb project from World War II, including hundreds of buildings and artifacts scattered across New Mexico, Washington and Tennessee — among them the rustic Los Alamos home of Dr. Oppenheimer and his wife, Kitty, and a large Quonset hut, also in New Mexico, where scientists assembled components for the plutonium bomb dropped on Japan. 'It's a way to help educate the next generation,' says Cynthia C. Kelly, president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, a private group in Washington that helped develop the preservation plan. 'This is a major chapter of American and world history. We should preserve what's left.' Critics have faulted the plan as celebrating a weapon of mass destruction, and have argued that the government should avoid that kind of advocacy. 'At a time when we should be organizing the world toward abolishing nuclear weapons before they abolish us, we are instead indulging in admiration at our cleverness as a species,' says Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich. Historians and federal agencies reply that preservation does not imply moral endorsement, and that the remains of so monumental a project should be saved as a way to encourage comprehension and public discussion. A park would be a commemoration, not a celebration, says Heather McClenahan, director of the Los Alamos Historical Society pointing out there are national parks commemorating slavery, Civil War battles and American Indian massacres. 'It's a chance to say, "Why did we do this? What were the good things that happened? What were the bad? How do we learn lessons from the past? How do we not ever have to use an atomic bomb in warfare again?" '"
It's Christmas at ground zero
There's music in the air
The sleigh bells are ringing and the carolers are singing
While the air raid sirens blare
It's Christmas at ground zero
The button has been pressed
The radio just let us know
That this is not a test
Everywhere the atom bombs are dropping
It's the end of all humanity
No more time for last-minute shopping
It's time to face your final destiny
It's Christmas at ground zero
There's panic in the crowd
We can dodge debris while we trim the tree
Underneath the mushroom cloud
Ronald Reagan:
Well, the big day is only a few hours away now.
I'm sure you're all looking forward to it
as much as we are.
You might hear some reindeer on your rooftop
Or Jack Frost on your windowsill
But if someone's climbing down your chimney
You better load your gun and shoot to kill
It's Christmas at ground zero
And if the radiation level's okay
I'll go out with you and see all the new
Mutations on New Year's Day
It's Christmas at ground zero
Just seconds left to go
I'll duck and cover with my Yuletide lover
Underneath the mistletoe
It's Christmas at ground zero
Now the missiles are on their way
What a crazy fluke, we're gonna get nuked
On this jolly holiday
What a crazy fluke, we're gonna get nuked
On this jolly holiday!
--Wierd Al Yankovic
Christmas At Ground Zero
But it all depends on the execution. As with any museum/park/etc. how you structure it sets the tone.
Great example would be German museums dealing with the events surrounding their involvement in the World Wars and the Holocaust. You go into any of those, and while they talk a lot about the Nazi Party, National Socialism, Hitler and the rest, you would be hard pressed to say that anyone would think any of it is an endorsement. Everything I saw really had a tone of: "My God, we screwed the pooch BIGTIME. Let's put this all out here, so maybe people won't let it happen again"
Granted, the atomic bomb isn't quite as clear of a moral area, since while it did kill many, many people, it also ended the war much earlier than was likely without it, and therefore all the casualties that would have entailed didn't occur. Instead of glorifying a WMD, it can help foster discussion about them, and past them.
arc de triomphe, Trafalgar square, brandenburg gate, etc?
Whatever you may think of the two bombings in particular lots of countries have killed a lot more people in their wars, and built varying types of monuments. Should the war museums in britain not have lancaster bombers given how they were used to obliterate cities? How about any monument to the royal navy which was basically built to starve continental adversaries into submission?
For all it's faults the manhattan project was also one of the largest research projects in history, if not the largest, and I think it's important to remember just went into making it, how much money and resources can be spent testing ideas in a desperate hope to find one that works, and a tribute to the people who did the work to make it happen at all. It's important to recognize the consequences of that work too, but it really was tremendous work and genius to realize the potential of uranium and plutonium, good and bad.
For those who've never visited, a tour of the museums at Los Alamos (the town) is incredibly humbling and thought-provoking. Except perhaps for psychopaths, there is nothing celebratory about it. On the contrary, the atmosphere is deeply troubling and anxiety producing. However, I for one would appreciate the opportunity to visit the lab grounds as a national park, to better understand how the Manhattan Project transpired. I believe this is important for humankind to grasp the darker sides of its nature.
Critics have faulted the plan as celebrating a weapon of mass destruction, and have argued that the government should avoid that kind of advocacy.
I've been to plenty of Holocaust museums and memorials and I don't recall any of them focusing on a celebration but rather the educational aspect.
It shortened the war by years, sparing millions of lives at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
Also, there is a difference between honoring something like this and remembering something like this.
Go to Dachau, take the tour - the difference between honoring and remembering becomes obvious.
There is a difference between a National Park and a National Historic Park. The proposed "National Park" is a National Historic Park, about 3 notches below a National Park in terms of visitors, staff, and funding.
The sooner the Americans come, the better...One hundred million die proudly.
-- Japanese slogan in the summer of 1945.
Japan was finished as a warmaking nation, in spite of its four million men still under arms. But...Japan was not going to quit. Despite the fact that she was militarily finished, Japan's leaders were going to fight right on. To not lose "face" was more important than hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives. And the people concurred, in silence, without protest. To continue was no longer a question of Japanese military thinking, it was an aspect of Japanese culture and psychology.
-- James Jones, WWII
We will prepare 10,000 planes to meet the landing of the enemy. We will mobilize every aircraft possible, both training and "special attack" (kamikaze) planes. We will smash one third of the enemy's war potential with this air force at sea. Another third will also be smashed at sea by our warships, human torpedoes and other special weapons. Furthermore, when the enemy actually lands, if we are ready to sacrifice a million men we will be able to inflict an equal number of casualties upon them. If the enemy loses a million men, then the public opinion in America will become inclined towards peace, and Japan will be able to gain peace with comparatively advantageous conditions.
-- Imperial General HQ army staff officer in July 1945, from Weintraub's "The Last Great Victory"
"We hated the Japs but nobody had the slightest desire to go there and fight them because the one thing we knew was that we'd all be killed. I mean we really knew it. I never used to think that, I used to say the Japs would never get me. But there was no question about the mainland. How the hell are you going to storm a country where women and children, everybody would be fighting you? Of course we'd have won eventually but I don't think anybody who hasn't actually seen the Japanese fight can have any idea of what it would have cost."
-- Austin Aria, veteran of the Okinawa campaign
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
But but, you spoiled the little Hate-America-First poster boys cleverly set up one liner.
Still one has to fear the pablum that would be spat by perky Park Service summer intern "interpreters".
I've seen my fair share of parks, and the drivel that flows is pretty annoying.
Ask them anything off script and they are at sea.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I think the reality would have been that that USA would have used conventional weapons to firebomb Japanese cities, getting to the same result as nuclear weapons but more slowly. The "shock & awe" of nuclear weapons made it clear that Japan didn't have a choice... they could surrender, or be annihilated.
arc de triomphe, Trafalgar square, brandenburg gate, etc?
Nothing in comparison.
Brandenburg Gate: Built to represent peace, so Napoleon could come and visit the city.
Trafalgar square: built after Napoleon's defeat, to remind the British Nation that French people are funny.
The Arc de Triomphe: built after Napoleon's victory, to remind the French Nation not to discriminate against short people.
The Japanese have already agreed to capitulate
No, they didn't. What had happened is that some Japanese had decided to seek surrender through odd channels (such as via the USSR), but there's no indication either that the ones seeking surrender had the authority to do so or that the US knew that status either.
I see no reason stemming from those diplomatic activities to question the use of the atomic bombs or the allegation that the war would have continued otherwise and resulted in hundreds of thousands of allied deaths and millions of Japanese deaths.
The war was basically over. The main part of the Japanese Army was on the Chinese mainland.
The forces in Japan were more than sufficient to inflict massive casualties on the US. Look at what they managed at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the previous two battles on Japanese soil. Plus they were training their civilians to resist and fight. Plus we now know they were planning on using chemical weapons on the invasion beaches when the US landed. Plus they had been holding back kamikaze aircraft and suicide boats, again look at Okinawa. Plus they had also perfected the aerial dropping of bubonic plague infected fleas, they even tested it on Chinese villages, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731. Marry this with their new submarines that could launch 2 or 3 aircraft, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400_class_submarine, and they would have the capability to target San Francisco not just invasion beaches. We have no idea what would have happened if the war went on until Spring 1946, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_japan.
The Russians were already invading in the north.
Wrong, Russia did not invade Japan until after the atomic bomb was dropped, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan.
Even if Russia would have attacked with the atomic bombing they would be quite busy on the mainland for many more months. Plus the Russians did not have an amphibious capability, they could not invade the Japanese home islands in force even if they wanted to.
Again, the vast majority of the Japanese army was on the Japanese mainland.
The millions of Japanese casualties that the previous poster referred to would have been predominately civilian. Some fighting, some caught in the middle, some suiciding ... again see Okinawa.