By Azor Cole. Sept. 6, 2016. The National Park Service is enjoying its Centennial celebration this August, and the Pacific Northwest is in full rejoice. The Olympics, North Cascades, Mt. Rainier, Crater Lake and, most recently, the Manhattan Project National Historical Park (including Hanford Reactor B) are just a few that grace this scenic landscape. Well, ‘gracing this landscape’ may be an oversimplification.
The Manhattan Project was a 1939 federally-funded project spread across three cities: Los Alamos, NM; Oak Ridge, TN; and Richmond, WA. Near Richmond, Reactor B was built, the world‘s first full-scale, plutonium production reactor. It is commonly referred to as the Hanford Site and was responsible for producing the plutonium which powered the world’s first atomic bomb used at the climax of World War II on Nagasaki, Japan.
Preserving the B Reactor has always had strong support. Twenty-five years ago, the B Reactor Museum Association (BRMA) formed, to save the site from demolition. In 2004 Congress instructed the National Parks Service to decide if it was appropriate to create an experience committed to telling the Manhattan Project story and in 2014, with support from Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Manhattan Project National Historic Park received congressional authorization. The Department of Energy and the National Park Service officially took joint ownership of the park in 2015.
The legitimization of the Manhattan Project in 2015 as a federally recognized national park has brought about complex scrutiny. Does the park pay sufficient homage to the thousands of lives lost in the bombings? Are themes of American ingenuity and engineering triumph trumped up? What about the Native Americans who were forcibly displaced from the chosen site? Are we ignoring the numerous radioactive leaks that continue to affect us today?
The official park tours attempt to address all these concerns. Whether they do so sufficiently is a matter of personal opinion. Politically loaded, morally ridden questions like these provide no clear-cut answers. A more approachable question rather is: what is the project’s intent?
Tracy Atkins, the interim superintendent for the Manhattan National Park, describes the National Park’s goal as “telling the complete and complex story of the Manhattan Project.” The historical backdrop, the controversial impacts the bombing had, and the related ethical questions that remain part of the site’s legacy are all featured.
There are three major divisions in touring the site. The first is a tour of the B Reactor itself. It is free to the public and provides an up close look at the world?s first full-scale plutonium production reactor.
The technical construction of building the reactor is one thing, but the logistics of constructing this complex facility in total secrecy cannot be overlooked.
“More than 600,000 Americans, including generals, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and engineers left their homes and families to work on a project where the only thing they knew was that it was vital to the war effort,” says Ms. Atkins.
To clear space for these transplants, the government displaced thousands of residents from the surrounding agricultural towns and Native American tribes. This tour focuses on the political landscape prior to the evictions and what life was like for workers of the Manhattan Project.
The less flashy story surrounding the Hanford site is its cleanup. Nuclear waste is not an easy thing to get rid of. In fact, it’s near impossible.
“The bomb tends to be represented in popular culture in its moment of impact–as the iconic mushroom cloud. What isn’t represented nearly as often is the slow violence of the bomb (its long-lived waste and associated health effects) and because of that, the broader impact of nuclear production at places like Hanford is often minimized or erased,” explains Shannon Cram, an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Bothell and published expert on the Hanford Site.
The Hanford Nuclear reservation is our nation’s most contaminated site. Nuclear material, such as plutonium, can last for tens of thousands of years and must be corralled safely to prevent spillage. Ms. Cram argues that the permanence of this material is sometimes lost in the verbiage used. The Department of Energy estimates the site will be ‘cleaned’ in 2060. However, the word cleaned is better understood as contained, and relies on the idea that the storage material will last longer than the waste.
The very designation of a site like this as a national park speaks to diversity of projects under the umbrella of this government entity.
Not all of the national parks are highlighted by jaw-dropping peaks, serene wilderness, and preserved wildlife. A growing number are historical, state-sponsored educational hubs, preserved for their political significance over their natural beauty.
“It is quite a bizarre and interesting thing to think that a zone full of nuclear waste rubs shoulders with the Grand Canyon in some way,” says Ted Alvarez, author of National Parks Coast To Coast: 100 Best Hikes and Northwest editor for Backpacker magazine.
The lines between nature and society are blurry, and the National Park Service has no reservations about expanding its reach. Historic sites commemorate the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Gettysburg National Military Park chronicles the most iconic battle of the American Civil War. These are just two examples, but both, like the Manhattan Project, deal with serious subject matter.
Japanese input on the park was sought by the National Park Service. In 2015, the NPS brought together scholars and experts from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Washington D.C. for a forum meant to broaden each other’s historical perspectives and ensure no voices were silenced.
Thousands of people died as a direct result from the Manhattan Project. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are estimated to have killed between 129,000 and 246,000 people. Six days after the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered. How many lives were saved as a result is a contentious debate. Assuming the responsibility of telling American history is no simple task as there are always multiple sides to the story and an array of viewpoints needing to be heard.
“Forgetting is usually bad — even if the thing in question inspires negative feelings,” says Mr. Alvarez. “There is good, there is bad, and it’s all part of the complex American tapestry.”
