August 5, 2024 Newsletter
This month, the Atomic Heritage Foundation recognizes the 79th anniversary of the first atomic bombs and the National Park Service’s “Days of Peace and Remembrance” at the three Manhattan Project National Historical Park sites.
Other activities in August include a variety of programs at Oak Ridge, an Oppenheimer Festival 2024 at Los Alamos, and tours of the B Reactor at Hanford.
This issue honors four people who were important to the Atomic Heritage Foundation and its mission. Each deserves special recognition for their unique contributions to preserving the Manhattan Project heritage.
On the 79th anniversary, let us remember the Manhattan Project veterans who worked to bring an end to World War II. While only a few are still with us, we are proud to have captured the oral histories of more than 600 of them for future generations.
COMMEMORATING THE 79TH
To commemorate the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan in August 1945, the Manhattan Project National Historical Park (MAPR), in partnership with Pearl Harbor National Memorial (NM), is hosting “Days of Peace and Remembrance.” Click here to read about what each site has planned for “Days of Peace and Remembrance.”
The program acknowledges the conflicting viewpoints that surround the development and use of the world’s first atomic weapons. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has an interesting article by Scott D. Sagan and Gina Sinclair, “What do Americans really think about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?” Asking respondents probing follow-up questions, the authors tried to determine what Americans really think, now, about using nuclear weapons in 1945. The results were somewhat surprising.
FIGHTING TO THE BITTER END
Above are two leaflets among hundreds that were dropped by B-29s warning the Japanese and urging them to surrender. However, relatively few surrendered until the end of war. As historian John W. Dower describes in Embracing Defeat (1999),
“Through the long years of war, [Japanese] fighting men had been forbidden to surrender. There was no greater shame than this…As the war drew closer home, civilians had also been indoctrinated to fight to the bitter end and die ‘like shattered jewels.’”
Most Japanese military personnel were told that they would be killed or tortured by the Allies if they were taken prisoner. While this was contrary to the 1929 Geneva Convention, the Japanese treatment of their POWs was often inhumane and Japanese soldiers may have anticipated similar treatment.
Of the12,000 American soldiers captured on Bataan, only 1,500 were alive three years later. A tank commander with the 192nd Tank Battalion, Lester Tenney barely survived the Bataan Death March. For 32 days, he was imprisoned on a “hell ship” that transported POWs to Japan. For the next three years, he was forced to work in a coal mine for the Mitsui Coal Mining Company.
In February 2010, at Tenney’s urging, the Japanese government agreed to apologize to the American POWs. At Japan’s expense, Lester Tenney and seven other surviving American POWs traveled to Japan where the Minister of Foreign Affairs apologized for the inhuman treatment they received. See Tenney’s personal account here.
REMEMBERING LEO SZILARD AT 125
On the 125th anniversary of Leo Szilard’s birth, Szilard’s biographer William Lanouette and geneticist Matthew Meselson participated in a webinar hosted by the University of California San Diego Library. The two describe Szilard’s contrarian approach to science and public policy.
In August 1939, Szilard drafted the letter that Albert Einstein signed warning President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the German effort to build an atomic bomb. This letter led to Roosevelt’s authorization of the Manhattan Project. By the end of the war, Szilard was advocating against use of the bomb. In June 1945, Szilard led fellow scientists to sign a petition to President Truman urging him not to drop the bombs on Japan.
After the war, Szilard worked tirelessly for arms control but was not equipped to deal with the burgeoning military and diplomatic bureaucracies in the US government. As Hans Bethe said, “He was always ahead of his time.”
FROM VANNEVAR BUSH TO MAXINE SINGER
The connections between the Manhattan Project and Carnegie Science run deep. In 1941, Vannevar Bush, then President of the Carnegie Institution (later “Carnegie Science”), became director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and personally oversaw the Manhattan Project for President Roosevelt. His offices remained at the Carnegie Institution’s grand Greek revival building on 16 Street in Washington, DC.
Thanks to the late Maxine Singer who was President of Carnegie from 1988 to 2002, the Atomic Heritage Foundation hosted numerous events at the Carnegie. On April 27, 2002, a day-long symposium on the Manhattan Project featured Richard Rhodes and Stephane Groueff. On June 8, 2005, “An Evening with Oppie” hosted Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin talking about American Prometheus, and on June 2, 2015, AHF’s 70th Anniversary of the Manhattan Project had over a dozen Manhattan Project veterans.
Maxine Singer also introduced AHF to one of our most important supporters, the late Irénée du Pont. Irénée was steeped in Manhattan Project history as a DuPont Company scion and brother-in-law of Crawford Greenewalt who oversaw Hanford’s construction. We are deeply indebted to Irénée who was instrumental in funding AHF’s “Voices of the Manhattan Project,” an online collection of more than 600 oral histories.
Finally, Maxine recognized the importance of preserving the Carnegie’s Van de Graaff generator built in 1937 in “an atomic physics observatory.” On January 29, 1939, Niels Bohr announced the discovery of “fission” at an international conference at George Washington University. Immediately, an illustrious group of physicists led by Bohr and Enrico Fermi used the Carnegie facility to recreate the “fission” experiment. It worked and the race to harness the energy of the atom began.
JOHN WAGONER: A NUCLEAR PIONEER
An invaluable advisor for over 20 years, John D. Wagoner was a charter member of the Board of Directors of the Atomic Heritage Foundation. His illustrious career in nuclear energy spanned decades. In 1965, he was a nuclear pioneer working under Admiral H. G. Rickover, father of the Nuclear Navy. From there, he worked at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Schenectady, NY (1968-1976) before joining the US Department of Energy (DOE).
At DOE, John worked on cutting-edge energy technologies and was responsible for contracts for the Clinch Breeder Reactor Plant Project at Oak Ridge, TN, and the Interim Synthetic Fuels Project.
In May 1990, John became Manager of Richland Operations responsible for all aspects of the Hanford site. From World War II through the shutdown of the last reactor in 1987, the site’s nine reactors produced more than 67 tons of plutonium. John began Hanford’s extensive cleanup of the reactors and millions of tons of radioactive and hazardous waste left behind. He served under four DOE Secretaries, managing 19,000 employees and an annual budget of $3 billion. Retiring from Hanford in 1999, he joined Archimedes Technology Group in August 2002.
In retirement, John kept up with a broad range of issues. Most recently he enjoyed Bret Baier’s To Rescue the Constitution: George Washington and the Fragile American Experiment. We will greatly miss his wisdom, encyclopedic knowledge of the nuclear world, and unfailing good humor.
UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF ARMS CONTROL
The last major nuclear arms control agreement expires in February 2026 with no replacement in sight. Since 2010, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, called New START, has limited Russia and the USA to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons and required 18 onsite inspections per year. Inspections have been suspended and no discussions about reviving New START have been held since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The demise of the treaty would eliminate one of the last remaining forums for dialogue tween Moscow and Washington to address nuclear weapons control. Such dialogue was critical in the post-Cold War period to achieve dramatic reductions in the USA and former Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenals. Former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (1986-1997), Sig Hecker led exchanges among US and Russian scientists and government officials, as documented in Hecker’s Doomed to Cooperate.
In September 2023, Hecker commented “Russia’s actions since it invaded Ukraine 18 months ago have fractured what I call the Global Nuclear Order. Russia has threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons to settle the [Ukrainian] war.”
Rose Gottemoeller said in a recent interview with The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “We are at a dangerous moment now when [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is behaving unpredictably….We need to ensure that an existential threat to humanity does not get out of hand.”
AN OAK RIDGE HERO: MICK WIEST
Mick (Merritt C. Wiest) worked tirelessly to preserve the Manhattan Project history at Oak Ridge and create the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. His love of Oak Ridge’s history was bred in the bone. In 1943, his parents moved from North Dakota to work on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge. I first met Mick in the 1990’s when he led a group tour of the Freels Bend Cabin, the oldest structure in Oak Ridge.
In 1999, he founded and became President of the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association (ORHPA), recruiting many original Oak Ridgers including Ed Westcott, Colleen Black, Bill Henry, Bill Wilcox, Bill Tewes, and Helen Jernigan. The first thing ORHPA did was save the Wild Cat Den, an iconic Manhattan Project community center. ORHPA convinced the City Council to sell it for $1. The building is now home to the Oak Ridge History Museum.
In her heartfelt tribute, Bobbie Martin remembers working closely with Mick. He played a pivotal role in preserving Ed Westcott’s remarkable photography and the Alexander Guest House. Thanks to Mick, I was honored to give the keynote address for the 80th anniversary of the founding of Oak Ridge in 2022. Mick’s leadership and enthusiasm for preserving Oak Ridge’s heritage will be greatly missed.
NUCLEAR POWER GENERATION NEWS
This June, the nuclear power industry in the USA achieved two milestones. In Waynesboro, GA, the first US nuclear reactors in a generation that were built from scratch began operation. The two first-of-a-kind Plant Vogtle reactors cost $35 billion, more than double the initial $14 billion estimate, making them the most expensive power plants ever built. While the plants are capable of producing emission-free energy for up to one million homes for the next 60 to 80 years, opponents predict a 20% increase in Georgia Power customers’ electricity bills.
More promising economically is the experimental reactor that Bill Gates has supported in Kemmerer, Wyoming. Groundbreaking for TerraPower’s first Natrium reactor was heralded as the beginning of a new era of nuclear energy. Designed with innovative technology in partnership with GE Hitachi, the plant is an advanced reactor demonstration project.
Located near a coal-fired power plant that will soon be retired, the 345 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor has a molten salt-based energy storage system that can store energy produced from renewable energy sources. The estimated cost of construction is $4 billion. The reactor is designed to produce 500 MW of energy, enough to support 400,000 homes, and is projected to be operational in seven years.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said that the United States needs 98 more rectors to reach net zero climate-changing carbon emissions by 2050. We’ve a long way to go!
KNOW BEFORE YOU GO
Harlan Ray “Hank” Kosmata (above) was passionate about the B Reactor at Hanford. While he worked on several interpretive exhibits at the B Reactor, his signature contribution is a series of educational videos on the reactor called “Know Before You Go!”
Born on May 28, 1930, in Ord, Nebraska, he grew up in Idaho and earned a BS in Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah. After a stint in the Air Force, he moved to Richland, WA in 1954 where he lived for the next 70 years. Most of his career was in nuclear power and reactor design. After retiring in 1990, he dedicated himself to civic activities including the B Reactor Museum Association.
Hank had a magnetic smile and loved Hawaiian shirts and living by the Columbia River. Hank knew how to stay young and vigorous well beyond his 70s, an inspiration to us all.
NOTABLE BOOK
Ellen Wilder Bradbury-Reid and her brother E. Marshall Wilder co-authored A Nuclear Family, a charming book about growing up in Los Alamos, NM where their father was working on the first atomic bombs. The book is told through the eyes of Ellen Wilder, a precocious 6-year-old who is intently curious about the secrets of Los Alamos.
Ellen’s father was sent to Los Alamos by the Navy in 1944 and worked on the explosive lenses that surrounded the plutonium core in the “Fat Man” bomb design. In the book, Ellen and her brother share numerous stories of the people they knew growing up in Los Alamos, from eminent scientists to people from the nearby Pueblos and Hispanic communities.
As a youngster, Ellen often spoke her mind, leading to some awkward moments. At one cocktail party, she told Oppenheimer that he was a saint “for having second thoughts,” prompting him to leave the room.
For a preview of some stories, listen to AHF’s recording of Ellen Bradbury-Reid here. A Nuclear Family is available on Amazon.com.
NUCLEAR MUSEUM NEWS
Read about new exhibits and upcoming events at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. President and CEO Jennifer Hayden reflects on her 15 years at the Museum and shares plans for an opening reception for the Museum Artifact Center on September 27, 2024.
Since June 2019, the Atomic Heritage Foundation has partnered with the Museum. It has been wonderful to have a first-class team to steward AHF’s resources, from websites, documentary photographs, and videos to artifacts. We look forward to a long and productive alliance.