I was pretty shocked when I read a short article in today’s news about the Birthplace of the A-bomb being restored.
preservationists have gone behind the security fences to preserve for the first time a structure in which the Manhattan Project scientists did their work at Los Alamos National Laboratory. They contend the building is as significant as George Washington’s home or a Civil War battlefield.
This past weekend, a series of events marked the restoration of a wooden, garage-like building where the world’s first plutonium bombs were assembled.
Cynthia Kelly is president of Washington, D.C.-based Atomic Heritage Foundation, which is leading a drive to preserve key atomic-age sites at Los Alamos; Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and Hanford, Wash.
”It doesn’t look like much,” she said. ”It’s what happened there. It takes you back in time.”
It’s pretty sad when money is spent to idolize the history of death and destruction and in particular, the most devastating events of death and destruction (by the U.S.) in history.
What is wrong with this picture?
Anti-nuclear activist Greg Mello, who heads the Los Alamos Study Group, objects to the celebratory aura surrounding the events. He said the events should have a ”tone of grief and remorse” since they commemorate work that led to the bombing of the Japanese cities.
”The legacy is fear and . . . enormous national efforts devoted to weapons of mass destruction, and we’re still struggling with that today,” he said.
The simple structure is a reminder of the urgency with which scientists gathered in New Mexico in 1943 to design and assemble the first atomic weapons. There was no futuristic laboratory or sophisticated equipment on the mesa top where the federal government took over a boys’ ranch school.
The preservation project is quite costly, with most of the funds coming from our tax dollars.
The ”high bay” building, which Kelly said cost about $1 million to restore, is still behind security fences. Kelly said although the building is inaccessible to the public, she hopes that will change.
Funding for restoration of the ”high bay” building came from the federal government, $700,000 of it through the ”Save America’s Treasures” program. Several other sites at Los Alamos also are slated for preservation.
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 