Page 55 - WTP Vol. IX #2

role in the war, he said, “We were fighting an enemy that had a reputation for never surrendering, never accepting defeat. It’s really hard to talk about moral- ity and war in the same sentence. Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bomb- ing of Dresden, or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? I believe that when you’re in a war, a nation must have the courage to do what it must to win the war with a minimum loss of lives.”
Oak Ridge Tour Fact: Gaseous diffusion plant K25 was, during the war, the world’s largest building under
one roof.
re-shelves those horses into circulation, she inspects for the interior damage of marginal notes, things scribbled as code. Satisfied, she runs her finger along the tape before pressing it to the boy’s damp forehead as if she were knighting him.
Oak Ridge Trivia: In September 1944, test runs were conducted with dummy bombs simulated to be the top- secret weapon. They were painted orange. The bomber crews called them pumpkins.
After leaving the displays behind, I drive to the Chapel on the Hill, where services were held on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the war, one after the other to cover all of the denominations who were repre- sented among the people who lived in Oak Ridge. It looks like a movie set for a musical about Oak Ridge, one starring a perky Doris Day and a handsome Gor- don MacRae.
Enola Gay memorabilia is highly valued by collectors. The detailed chart carried by copilot Robert A. Lewis was sold, in 2005, for $72,000 at Christie’s auction house. In 2016, Sotheby’s sold the navigational charts detailed by “Dutch” Van Kirk for $372,500.
Oak Ridge Tour Fact: Cattle exposed to fallout from the A-Bomb test in Socorro were shipped to Oak Ridge for study.
Westcott Photo #7: The New Mexico Cattle, 1946
What’s striking, at first, is that every cow inside the rough-hewn corral is facing the camera, curious as just-discovered political prisoners. Slatted fencing reveals an open landscape unlike where those cattle absorbed the consequences of the first atomic bomb. Scientists are listening to Inevitable’s preliminary re- port. Everything they observe and record is essential, vital work, heavy with imperatives. Not one of them has ever touched a cow, but now they will care for them, especially the yearling in the foreground who confirms there is no limit to our emptiness.
I once had an atomic bomb ring that cost 15 cents and one Kix box top. My mother bought the cereal, but
I had to part with three nickels. “See atoms split to smithereens” and a mushroom cloud were in the advertisement. Like everything that I could buy with less than a week’s allowance, it was disappointing.
During the 1970s my father-in-law showed me the blueprints for a cooling tower. He was an engineer,
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cow inside the rough-hewn corral is facing the camera, curious as just-discovered political prisoners.”
Westcott Photo #6: The Traveling Library in Oak Ridge, 1946
The children are eager for more pictures. They scramble for warriors and princesses who will some- times meet and love each other before or during or after battles. Illustrated or not, none of the books mentions Oak Ridge, where those children’s par-
ents have begun to learn how they ended war with obedience, discipline, and care. Because science is a workday subject, because research never ends, these children will remain, three years yet, before the gates will open, all of them with time to learn the new definition of infinite. One of the boys is returning a book of horses, its gold-bordered cover torn through two pintos whose faces his mother has taped while he sobbed out apology. Now, 11 before the librarian
hat’s striking, at
first, is that every
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