Hanford and other Manhattan Project sites deserve national park protection
All over the world, from Gettysburg to Pompeii to Auschwitz, historical sites are preserved not as monuments to glory, but as living museums to help future generations remember and understand the history that occurred there. That point seems lost on the anti-nuclear activists who pledged this week to fight a proposal to create a national historical park at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and two other sites where the first nuclear bombs were developed.
However one feels about the devastating bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed more than 200,000 people but ended World War II without a massive U.S. and allied invasion of the Japanese mainland, they changed both the nature of war and the course of world history. By any standard, these are historical places that should be set aside and protected for future generations to visit and contemplate the events that occurred there.
We also believe that all of the major sites that contributed to the Manhattan Project, including Hanford's B Reactor, should be included in a Manhattan Project Historical Park. The B Reactor supplied the plutonium used in the first nuclear test explosion on July 16, 1945, and for the bomb later dropped on Nagasaki. Like Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, Hanford was an integral part of the Manhattan Project, and should be a part of the park commemorating its history.
Even many Northwesterners who have lived in the shadow of Hanford all their lives know precious little about the place. Few people in Portland, for example, have ever set foot on the reservation. Few know that Hanford already is federally protected as a national monument managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Most of Hanford has been untouched by development or agriculture since 1943, when the United States closed the area to begin work on the B Reactor. The Hanford Reach, where the reservation borders the Columbia River, is one of the most productive salmon-spawning areas in the United States. At least 48 rare, threatened or endangered species of animals are found at Hanford, as well as some insect species found nowhere else in the world.
But it's the history, not the wildlife, that makes Hanford such a compelling and necessary place for a national historical park. No one is talking about a park to celebrate or glorify the dropping of the atomic bomb, as anti-nuclear activists claim.
On the contrary, a Manhattan Project Historical Park would be a place for future generations to learn about the development of the atomic bomb, to hear the competing arguments raised in 1945 and ever since over its use, ponder the massive loss of life and consider how the bomb changed the course of history, and all of our lives.