IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

Heretik posted on Munch. Below “The Sun” 1909-1911. One of my favorites now. Obviously related to “The Scream.”

Plutonium Page posts at DKos the UN nuclear arms conference began on Monday. The countdown to midnight has been moved forward again to 7 minutes to midnight, the same setting as when the clock debuted 55 years ago.

Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/trinity/articles/part1.html
Hanford B reactor, source of the plutonium for Fatman

In 1960 I was three years old and we lived on a street called Blue in a government housing development that was a different kind of government housing development than what will immediately spring to most people’s minds. It was in the middle of an American desert that at that time not many Americans knew existed.

The Japanese transistor-culture had moved in and along with the portable pocket radios came western lamps and furnishings with pseudo-Japanese aesthetic. On the living room wall above the black and white tweed sofa was a print of a painting of Mt. Fuji framed in ebony and gold, gray volcano rising out of a wash of pink cloud and mist, a scene which to me complemented the lampshades of the slim black lamps on the paired white and ebony sofa endtables. The lampshades were double-tier and gave the appearance of parchment decorated with hills of seeming spare black and white brushstrokes converging and were probably not intended to be evocative of Asian art, but when I looked at them I saw Japan.

We moved to Seattle for about two and a half years and then back to Richland. I remember standing in the desert, some mornings when I was seven, at our place on Everest Street, looking over at the distant white cap of another volcano. Mt. Rainier. My second grade teacher’s name was also Rainier.

We still had the picture of Mt. Fuji only now it was hung above a Russian vase my mother had picked up in British Columbia. My teacher in kindergarden had been Russian.

By now I also had a little geisha doll in a glass case my father had bought as a souvenir for me at conference he’d attended in Japan to do with radiation issues. He had also returned with a kimono for my mother, hapi coats for us kids, and a picture book on Japan which I spent many hours perusing. The images were by Takeji Iwamiya and the book was published, I believe, by Bayer as a gift for conference attendees. At least that’s what it reads. Prepared and presented by Bayer.

Many years later, in the 1980s, my father went to Russia, with my mother and a sister of mine, as part of a conference for International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

He also visited China, invited to give a talk in Bejing by an international organization referred to then mainly as People to People.

I love that picture and want to do a painting of it.

I have now two nieces adopted from China, and more recent pictures of family standing atop the Great Wall.

In the 2005 news was an AP-IPSOS poll that appears to show most Americans don’t believe any country, including the U.S., should have nuclear weapons. The first paragraph concluded, “That sentiment is at odds with current efforts by some nations that are trying to develop the weapons and by terrorists seeking to add them to their arsenal.”

The article then revealed how older Americans are more likely to approve of the use of The Bomb against Japan at the end of WWII. It talked about the problems of Korea and nukes and old nuclear material scattered across the countries of the old USSR and the worry of terrorists using a nuke of some type but that most people aren’t losing any sleep over the issue. It’s not a nail-biter for most.

It said,

The Bush administration repeatedly warns about nuclear weapons and is using diplomacy - and force - to try to limit the threat.

I thought it interesting what wasn’t mentioned in the article.

The article said nothing about the funding the Bush administration is seeking for their “Bunker Buster”, a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) that the White House hopes to start field testing next year.

The Union of Concerned Scientists reported in 2002,

A US decision to develop new nuclear earth-penetrating weapons would have several negative political implications internationally. First, such weapons are explicitly designed to be more “usable” and to be used in what would otherwise be a non-nuclear conflict. As a result, they blur the line between conventional and nuclear weapons and lower the threshold for nuclear use. Second, by contravening US pledges under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) not to target non-nuclear weapon states with nuclear weapons, such weapons undermine the non-proliferation regime.

In the meanwhile, a $9 million project is underway involving a redesign of new nuclear warheads.

The Arms Control Association states,

The existing stockpile is safe and reliable by all standards, so to design a new warhead that is even more robust is a redundant activity that could be a pretext for designing a weapon that has a new military mission.”
This is the crux of the matter – that the Bush administration seems to have found a way of circumventing Congress’s decision to cut funding for what were clearly intended to be major new nuclear weapons programmes.

But back to idyllic childhood kingdom.

Beyond the neatly plotted streets of “Our Town” was easily spied the sheep ranching and farming heritage of the area that, in 1942, after review of various locations with requisite hydroelectric power, isolation and long construction season, was elected by the Masters of the Manhattan Project for what would become the Hanford Engineer Works. Code name, Site W.

Even when I was a child, the sense of secrecy persisted. My father…

…a radiation research scientist whose field was bioengineering, went out every morning to catch the bus that delivered him to Hanford and in the evening returned him to our peculiar neighborhood which existed only because of Fat Man and Little Boy. During WWII all the employees at Hanford had fake job titles, secret agent time, if a stranger sat beside them on the bus and asked what their work was they each had pre-determined occupations to give, shoe repairman etc. At least, so I heard. In the late 50s througoh late 60s we were well past that stage but I have read that for up to 50 years after Fat Man, people didn’t begin to speak about their roles at Hanford. One didn’t feel comfortable asking what the parents of others did for a living. At least I didn’t. There was no question of dropping by to see where dad worked. I would spend my days thinking when the bomb drops my dad will be at Hanford and I will be at school and my mother and siblings will be at home and who would survive in what fallout shelter. I remember one time driving through the Hanford Reservation and past the reactors. Finally, there they were, the source of so much fear in my life. They seemed a strange, alien grafting into the vast, surrounding desert. Fascinating and horrible. Terrifying.

The desert wanted nothing to do with them.

Where Hanford was located were sites which had been traditionally used for spirit quests among the American Indian Nations of the area. It was at Rattlesnake Mountain that Smohalla received his vision of Washani practices. With the instutition of the Hanford Project, the area of course was closed off entirely to Indian access.

These are the Horse Heaven Hills where large bands of wild horses once roamed. When I was a child, playing daily in the desert with the hills and Rattlesnake Mountain on the near horizon, they exerted a powerful influence. I had the idea that it was at Horse Heaven Hills and Rattlesnake Mountain that the spirits of the area resided. I envisioned the Hills in the morning covered with ghostly horses which disappeared into the mist as soon as Anglo-European civilization came into sight at dawn. I imagined skeletal remains of horses here and there on the Hills as being the only clue to their sacredness during the daylight hours. I imagined over the Horse Heaven Hills and Rattlesnake Mountain the Ancient Spirits of the area still watched. And yet we never discussed the are in our household. I recall drawing once a picture of it all after I woke up from a dream in which I had seen them all on the Hills, had seen them disappear at dawn. The area had been covered with desert flowers.

Temporary quarters for more than 45,000 construction workers had to be established at Hanford and “down the road in Richland” permanent facilites for other personnel “safely removed from the production and separation plants”. By the summer of 1944, Hanford’s population was 50,000.

All the private property in Richland was acquired through condemnation.

I read the suburban ideal of Richland, its plotting and architecture, had its roots in Ebenzer Howards’ late 19th century Garden City concepts and the “communitarian” experiments of the 1930s. I can say that in its early post WWII days, the haste and extra-social/class manner in which the Village was erected could still be felt throughout. The initial plan was for 6500 residents which was intended to expand to 12,000, then ended up being 16,000. The architect had to provide the plans and specifications for the intial duplex type design of houseing in one week. The remainder was to be supplied within two and a half months. Construction began in April of 1943. The architect was Swedish-born Gustave Albin Pehrson.

The reason for the location of the site was not divulged, although the specifications precluded the possibility of locating the work near any existing town of a size sufficient to accommodate the people required…the planners could not weigh any of the sociological or ecological factors involved. Under the circumstances, they were without information as to the anticipated future use, ownership, administration, economic or industrial base of the village, or the probable population shifts after the war. In the actual laying out of the site, therefore, many important decisions were deferred to those with more thorough understanding of the scope and objectives of the project.

This is the reason, I imagine, for there being so little in Richland, in the 60s, which was a clear demarcation of social class.

In addition to these factors, G.A. Pehrson was simultaneously pressured by DuPont to provide good quality housing for their employees and by the military for an economical approach that would provide only the most basic and minimal forms of housing. Debates ensued regarding the inclusion and utility of basements, fireplaces and enclosed porches and brought about frustration and ultimately compromise for both Pehrson as well as DuPont officials.

In other words, the barest minimum. What resulted was comfortable but was also small, boxy, entirely utilitarian with almost no ornamental detailing. The layout of the village endeavored some harmony with the terrain to the extent that they attempted to follow existing land contours and to preserve the few existing shade trees and orchards. There were many open spaces and common areas. The streets were oriented on a curvilinear system and designed to accommodate the Hanford buses and the commercial areas of the village. The commercial and residential areas were separated and because Richland was a small as it was it worked, for foot and bicycle traffic was easy and the streets were lined with spacious sidewalks. In a short ten minutes or so, as a child, I could bicycle anywhere.

There were initially 8 basic housing types, all wood frame. First there were duplexes and then single family homes. “The intent was to achieve a mixture of income levels in each of the neighborhood districts. Despite these intentions, specifications called for higher cost houses to be given more favorable locations, concentrated in the district nearest the Columbia River. Indeed, the majority of the duplexes were concentrated in the western portion of the town, with a greater number of single family homes located east of the old County Road (now George Washington Way), and nearer to the river.”

Which is true. Those with more money lived near the Columbia River. But Perhson’s following ideal was clearly evident in the village and I suppose is a reason why the places we moved to subsequent Richland were all strange to me with their clear social/class distinctions evident in neighborhood location, materials and ornamental accoutrements.

G.A. Perhson stated: “High morale cannot be achieved by crowding skilled and veteran workers into inadequate dwellings. Neither can it be predicated upon salary, position or caste distinction. No village can eliminate such distinctions entirely for it is the .American tradition to aspire to executive status and where such men locate will undoubtedly be considered favored territory; but in so far as the planners could arrange these matters, all types of houses were scattered throughout the project.”

The creation of the Village had been one of the largest undertakings of its kind and, after the war, its sale was reported as the largest single-package real estate transaction in US history.

Fat Man and Little Boy

The plutonium used for the Fat Man bomb was produced at Hanford. Its testing was code named Trinity, at Alamogordo Bombing Range south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was the test that ushered in the nuclear age. 16 July 1945.

Trinity. Image from the web

Fat Man destroyed Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 . it is said that 22,000 died the first day and another 17,000 in the following four months.

The Nagasaki cloud. Image from the web

In 1953, a report by the US Strategic Bombing Survey put the number of deaths at 35,000, wounded at 60,000 and 5,000 missing. In 1960, the Japanese put the number of dead at Nagasaki at 20,000 and the number of wounded at 50,000. Later, the Nagasaki Prefectural Office put the figure for deaths alone at 87,000 with 70% of the city’s industrial zone destroyed.

Source: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nagasaki.htm

Nagasaki several days before. Image from the web.

Nagasaki several days after. Image from the web.

This is the Avalon Project’s report on Nagasaki. The report breaks it down into the number of deaths per square mile, from 25,000 per square mile within the first 1640 feet of the blast to 20 per square mile at 6550 to 9850 feet.

This is Nagasaki Journey. The photographs of Yosuke Yamahata.

Here is the Safeway which I passed daily on my walk to school down George Washington Road in Richland.

This is, I believe, the old movie house where I saw “The Sound of Music”.

This is the Catholic Church we attended.

Some great photos of the Richland area are here, including a link to a marvelous panoramic shot.

When I was eight years of age scientists rolled their white trailers onto our schoolyard. We were sent home with a white sheet on which we were to list certain area foods that we consumed and how much. They were primarily interested in dairy products, though also produce consumed which was from the area. At the end of that period, classroom by classroom, child by child, we were each taken to one of the trailers and placed on the flatbed of the device that would measure the amount of radiation our bodies may have absorbed from area products.

It was a slow process. The trailers sat in the schoolyard for weeks, maybe several months We played around them. Lying on the flatbed and moving through the great body of the machine was eerie.

From the “Bomber Memories” forum

L —– ——-(77)
Like J—- H— (77), I recall the “Whole Body Counter” trailer. Does anyone remember keeping track of our diets for a week or two prior to the test in 4th or 5th grade at Jason Lee? I do wonder about the results of the study, since a few of the original elementary school group were recalled later at Chief Jo and RHS. I seem to remember D— G—- and I being pulled out of Mrs. Bishop’s algebra class in 7th grade at Chief Jo and perhaps again in my sophomore year at RHS. I do remember going through the tube really slowly and there were lots of little clicking noises. In junior high and high school, I don’t remember any advance notice, explanation or consent forms. The whole thing was strange… I explained it to some friends at a dinner party once and was accused of telling a story.

M —– ——– (77)
To JH (77) Not only do I remember the whole body counter that came to school - I still have the “Certificate of Appreciation” that they gave me afterwards. I just dug it out of my old scrapbook, and it states: “Battelle Northwest expresses appreciation to Marjorie ——– for contributing to the study of influence of diet on radioactivity in people.” It is dated October 4, 1966 (which was second grade for us), and has a sketch of the “mobile laboratory” on it. As I recall, I didn’t have a clue as to what it was all about at the time, but I was certainly impressed by the certificate!

P—- R—- (71)
My dad, Bill R—-, is the one who “invented” the Whole Body Counter. I remember, early on, that my mother and sisters (Carol ‘68, Judy ‘75) and I were “guinea pigs” as it was being built. At first, it was the size of a small room. By the time I was in high school (’71), it fit in the back of a semi. The purpose of the WBC was to measure the kinds and amounts of radiation emitted by the body, both natural and from contamination. It was used in Alaska, found the trace amounts of radiation that found their way through the food chain into the
Eskimo bellies.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Oaks/7824/memories62.html

I forget how long it took for us each to be run through the counters but it seemed a long while.

I had the same experience as one of the above individuals as far as telling people about the whole body counter and having them look at me like I was making it up. It would create a queer hostile vibe when I’d talk about Hanford, especially around conservatives, people with great faith in government. I’d have the feeling I could give shown them wall-size pictures and they would still decide I had to be lying.

In 1990 a group working against The Bomb and reactors came knocking on my door building public awareness and wanting support. The two men started their spiel. They mentioned Hanford. When I told them I knew a bit about these things, that I was from Hanford/Richland and my father had been a scientist at Hanford, they said they were sorry and backed off my porch in a way that made me feel as uncomfortable with their reaction as I was with the reaction from conservatives. I was telling them that I was interested in what they were doing and they were all eager to give me more information, then I told them about being from Hanford and the next second they were backing off from me like I’d just popped up out of a coffin, shaking their heads, saying they were sorry to hear I was from the area, and then they were gone. It was a very short conversation. Maybe it spooked them that my father had worked at Hanford.

Whole Body Counter - The basis of the design was the research of Palmer and Roesch at the Hanford Laboratories
Source: http://www.canberra.com/products/624.asp

My father was researching the effect of low level radiation on miniature livestock at Hanford but didn’t know about this test. Years later, when I described the machines to him, he conceded yes that would have been what they were testing for as he was also involved in early construction design of these devices, which can only use steel minted before WWII as after WWII all such metal is contaminated with radiation that throws off the readings. So these machines were often times made of metal used for WWII ships.

Daily, at school, I would stare out the window and wait for the flash of light that would mean the bomb had arrived. We monthly had drills. The sirens in the town would go off. We filed out into the school’s main hallway and lay down on the floor, hands over our heads, and the great metal doors would slowly, automatically slide shut leaving us in absolute dark. When I moved down south to the nation’s other plutonium reactor, at the Savannah River Plant near Augusta, and our bomb drill consisted of us getting under our desks, I laughed so hard I thought I’d be sick. “You idiots,” I thought. “You total, backwards, government-believing-trusting, foolish, outrageous, asinine idiots.”

I didn’t endear myself to teachers or classmates.

So many people are worried about what other countries can do to us. I have always been worried about what we have done to ourselves. Studies now report radioactive bioaccumulation in clams along the Hanford beach. Radioactive tumbleweeds blow around Hanford. There is increasing radioactivity under the Hanford Reach, vital salmon spawning grounds in nature.

Like milk?

You may have been exposed to radiation released from Hanford if you lived in certain areas of Washington, Oregon or Idaho between 1944 and 1972. This does not mean that radiation harmed the health of everyone living in these areas. It does mean that you may be more at risk for health problems related to radiation than people who did not live in these areas…According to HEDR, the main way people were exposed to radiation released to the air was through drinking contaminated milk.The map also includes counties along the Columbia River downstream from Hanford. People were exposed to radioactive material through use of the river or from consuming contaminated food from the river and adjacent Pacific coastal areas.

When we lived on Everest Street in Richland, milk was still delivered in glass bottles by the milkman. In the winter the glass bottles would be freezing cold when you went to get them. As children, we drank a lot of milk. Good for you. And ours perhaps was as it was not milk from “downwind”.

1986. After almost 40 years of cover-ups, the U.S. Government released 19,000 pages of previously classified documents which revealed that the Hanford Engineer Works was responsible for the release of significant amounts of radioactive materials into the atmosphere and the adjacent Columbia River. Between 1944 and 1966, the eight reactors, a source of plutonium production for atomic weapons, discharged billions of gallons of liquids and billions of cubic meters of gases containing plutonium and other radioactive contaminants into the Columbia River, and the soil and air of the Columbia Basin. Although detrimental effects were noticed as early as 1948, all reports critical of the facilities remained classified. By the summer of 1987, the cost of cleaning up Hanford was estimated to be $48.5 billion. The Technical Steering Panel of the government-sponsored Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project released the following statistics in July 1990: Of the 270,000 people living in the affected area, most received low doses of radiation from Iodine, but about 13,500 received a total dose some 1,300 times the annual amount of airborne radiation considered safe for civilians by the Department of Energy. Approximately 1,200 children received doses far in excess of this number, and many more received additional doses from contaminants other than Iodine.

Source: http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html

The Savannah River Plant had its own cover-ups.

1988. The National Research Council panel released a report listing 30 “significant unreported incidents” at the Savannah River production plants over the previous 30 years. As at Hanford (see 1986), ground water contamination resulted from pushing production of radioactive materials past safe limits at this weapons complex. In January 1989, scientists discovered a fault running under the entire site through which contaminants reached the underground aquifer, a major source of drinking water for the southeast. Turtles in nearby ponds were found to contain radioactive strontium of up to 1,000 times the normal background level.

Some while back I drove through Richland with my husband. I went to the graveyard to look for the graves of the twin brothers that my mother lost in Richland, when I was about 18 months old, during a period of time when there was a reported rise of miscarriages and infant mortality in the area.

The Bellingham Herald
May 11, 1997 pg. B 1
3 new Hanford studies started

RICHLAND-Three new studies of the health effects of radiation releases from Hanford nuclear reservation—including a look at the deaths of 4,000 babies and fetuses—have been authorized by the federal government.

The studies stem from radiation releases from Hanford between 1944 and the early 1970s, the major years of plutonium production there.

The Hanford Health Effects Subcommittee, a group of state, Indian and public interests, was briefed about the studies last week.

Scientists have said children were at special risk of radiation exposure because they drank a lot of milk from cows that fed on contaminated grass.

The new studies are separate from a continuing study of 3,200 down-wind residents to see if exposure to the Iodine-131 can be linked to thyroid cancer.

Source

A lot had changed and not much at all had changed. The desert was more pristine when I was a child. A lot of the open areas in the town had been built up it seemed or hemmed in and belabored with fences and trash. The sense of space was gone. When I had been a child the desert was my backyard. Daily, for hours and hours, I would roam in it. A huge meditation garden. With snakes. But I was careful. Every so often a rattler would wander into the street and be run over by a car.

It would get so hot in the summer that the tar on the streets would melt and spray your legs as you rode your bike.

I had been hoping my husband might witness a good sandstorm, but the weather was clear, sunny, many people jogging. Then when we stopped at the Columbia River Park and I stood looking out over the broad river, the weather began to change. The winds gathered force. The temperature plummeted. The sandstorm came rolling in as we drove out of town. Which is the way of sandstorms. One moment the weather is brilliant and the next it is rolling dark and you fight to stay on your feet, pummeled with stinging grit seeking out mouth and eyes and nose.

As I mentioned earlier, when I was seven my father went to a conference to do with radiation in Japan and returned with a small glass-case enclosed geisha doll for me, which of course didn’t survive childhood and younger siblings, but I have kept to this day the book he brought back. I used to try to study Japanese, hoping I’d one day go to Japan, and consumed a great deal of Japanese literature. I have long since dropped attempting to learn the language and retain no knowledge of it.

I love the desert and sometimes think I would like to live in it again. I try to imagine the west as it was before the arrival of the tumbleweed, native to the Ural Mountains, which was first reported in the US in 1877 in South Dakota, carried in perhaps with flax seed imported by Ukrainian farmers. It took less than twenty-five years to reach the Pacific Coast.

Grabbed this from over at Dkos. It’s a poster placed by MARC, the metro rail between Baltimore and DC.

As is pointed out, the “Watch, Ride, Report” poster, requesting all to keep look-out for suspicious objects, overwhelmingly recalls Socialist Realism or what many retain in their memory as Socialist Realism.

On the web we tend to associate Socialist Realism more with this bold style, so easily parodied…

And this…

Than this.

The similarity between “Watch, Ride, Report” and Socialist Realism have some questioning if this was a parody, despite its real function as a call to every individual to do exactly as the poster says. At least, it seems a take-off of the style of Social Realism that has filtered down to us, which is a bastardization decked up in retro deco. A purist is going to say, “That’s not Social Realism”, but it’s what people experience when they look at the poster that’s key, and a good many are going to look and see what appears to be a version of old USSR propaganda poster art or simply nationalistic poster art (while I suppose also a fair amount of the white population may just see cliff-jawed super white he man demanding they look out for their red white and blue interests). Perhaps it is a casual, “Let’s grab attention.” But I think instead of the web’s wealth of parody of BushCo. and Homeland Security that has been a rewriting of WWII propaganda posters and works in the style of Socialist Realism and wonder if it is an attempt instead to purchase back the styles.

There are several bizarre things going on in the poster.

One is how much the poster recalls white nationalism. A man, a woman, a person of color–it begs to convey equality of sex and race. But diversity has been lost in the melting pot. Profiles and coloring of the three aren’t identical but are much the same.

Pecking order. The teutonic white male is foremost and in white collar, then the white female, while the person of color is to the rear and in blue collar. It even occurred to me that despite the person of color being one who is shown as watching, he could also be one to be watched. As this thought was something that occurred to me about a split second after my first seeing the image, I do wonder if a message of this sort may be intentionally conveyed but is supposed to stay on the subconscious level.

The stance. Look at how the hands are clenched and look at the colors in the pic again. Red, white and blue. Sure, they’re on the Metro and holding onto supports–but that’s gloss. The positioning, the clenching of the hands, it directly recalls the carrying of flags. Which is one reason this poster’s militant nationalistic feel is so strong.

Fact is, the encouragement to “Watch, ride and report” doesn’t have to demand patriotic vigilance and certainly doesn’t have to be nationalistic. A choice has been made to carry it there. And, perhaps, an attempt to co-opt and defuse the anti-nationalistic rewriting of propaganda posters of yesteryear. Retro, political, socialist chic, which is interesting considering America’s eager disdain for social programs. The message is one of an overall philosophy of tight controls and conformity moving from passive compliance to active gatekeeping.

I doubt that the artist was an individual who saw an opportunity to work in their message of “Homeland Security Hell” that bypassed command central.

Hi Spot High School Dancers, Declassified
Tinted photo
Photo from the Hanford Historical Photo Declassification Project

Teenage angst and love and fear and wonder at a blossoming new world.

The teenage wish to stand apart, to be individual, and the desire to identify with the pack.

The Hi Spot was a high school dance club.

The mascot of the Richland high school is a bomb, the students are known as The Bombers and the emblem of the school is a mushroom cloud.

Atom imagery was prominent in Richland. Such as When you went with your girl or guy to watch a movie you were watched over by the atom.

There has been conflict as to the name, The Bombers. Some hold it was for Richland’s part of the production of the plutonium that obliterated Nagasaki. Others say that the name was in honor of the B-17 Bomber, “Day’s Pay”, which was purchased by the employees at Hanford Engineer Works for the war effort, every employee contributing a day’s pay. Joe Barber, a teacher in 1945 who became vice principal in 1946 and principal in 1947, says that the name was intended to honor the atomic bomb and Richland’s roll in its production, which was only revealed after the dropping of the bomb, after which the change to the name Bombers.

Cheerleaders, the mushroom cloud emblazoned on their chests, cart a bomb onto the field during games. They were carting the bomb onto the field at least in the early 50s. The mushroom cloud on the chest of the cheerleaders is a proud later addition, made during the 70s.

Here’s a picture of some Hanford people playing football with the bomb.

A Japanese delegation visited the high school and asked for a name change. They were denied it. A name change has been put to vote and has been turned down. Many remain fiercely proud of the Bomber name and mascot, and protest any name change as ill-conceived political correctness that would deny them their pride in Richland’s secret role in the building of the bomb which they believe contributed significantly to the end of WWII. As one such individual writes, “Plane or Bomb? Really what difference does is make? We’re all Bombers and proud of our connection to the atomic bomb, and also proud of Day’s Pay.”

I look at the girl gazing toward the camera which was recording a moment that would be classified as secret for decades, and wonder if and to whom she married. Was it to the faceless boy? To what song were they dancing? If she is still alive, where is she now? What are her feelings on Brigadier General Bonnie Fellers’ remark, made shortly after V-J Day, that, “Neither the atomic bombing nor the entry of the Soviet Union into the war forced Japan’s unconditional surrender. She was defeated before either these events took place.”

I wonder if the girl felt a moment’s doubt on the righteousness of the bomb, would she swing back to belief out of loyalty to her school and its mascot?

Hanford Tap Dancer, Declassified
Digital painting
2005-2006

Original photo from the “Hanford Historical Photo Declassification Project”.

I don’t know anything about this woman and am assuming she is tap dancing, perhaps in a talent contest. Whether she’s concentrating or uncomfortable is difficult to tell. Either she is focused on and straining to push out those beats and has forgotten to smile or she’s not the first act and knew before taking the stage she didn’t have a chance, that it was a senseless exercise , but the show must go on and while it runs her legs begin to feel too long, too naked, too short, too heavy, her feet sweat, her hands sweat, her shoulders chill, they prickle with goosebumps. She’d wanted to be Shirley Temple, Ginger Rogers, Ann Miller, but her time is up and she’s on a stage sponsored by the atomic bomb rather than in Hollywood.

Or the photo could have been taken at a wrong moment and a couple seconds in the future she had blasted a hole in the floor with her mighty shoes.

But I doubt it. She reminds of the humiliated, red-head singer in Altman’s “Nashville”, whose slumped shoulders begged the timid removal of her bra during a disastrous performance turned impromptu striptease, which had less to do with her pursuit of stardom and everything to do with submission to the demands of the group of wolves in which she found herself, then rationalizing a fair exchange afterward. Indeed, if I remember correctly, Altman had her dressed in a cape with hood. She was Suleen Gay, played by Gwen Welles, and one of the more heartening moments in film is when she returns home after the failed gig and Wade, played by Robert Doqui, runs off the wolf who’s carted her home, then risks Suleen’s rejection when he tells her she can’t sing and that her only pay will be to be abused and demeaned, her soul ripped to shreds if she continues. Suleen tells Wade that he’s wrong, that she’s been promised she’ll be singing at the Parthenon and stalks off. Left alone on the steps to the building, Wade says to himself, “I don’t know why I stick around. She just makes me so god-damned mad.” And it’s not sad. Wade is a dishwasher who happens to be black and knows the game and Suleen is a white Red Riding Hood and it feels like one of the more hopeful relationships in a film where betrayal is the daily diet.

This photo was numbered 5437. The photo of a group of black dancers was number 5347. They were taken on the same stage, which I know from another photo was the stage of the Hanford Theater. Perhaps they were taken the same night.

There are over 127,000 documents in the Hanford Declassification Project, and over 70,000 images. That means there are about 50,000 print documents. After some searching I don’t believe anything is in there about the radiation survey to which I was subjected in the 4th grade along with my schoolmates, nor have I so far found any pictures concerning it.

Hanford was part of the Manhattan Project, and as Oppenheimer directed the Los Alamos end where the bombs were manufactured, one would think there would be documents in the project concerning Oppenheimer, but a search only shows one document, dated November 1, 1944, and is a paraphrase of an October 1 teletype message sent to him. The document concerns the start-up of a reactor following a communication from Oppenheimer. It is largely illegible and seems to have been scanned without much thought given to legibility.

There are however pictures of dancers and a community going about what seems to be a mundane, daily life in which music played an important part, easing the stress of war.

Certainly music eased the stress of war on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, as well

Originally I had just tinted the image. In the Winter of 2006 my husband had the pleasure of recording a world-renowned koto player of an age to have experienced WWII. While he was recording her, I pulled out this image, decided to paint it, and added the koto player.

A Little Cheesecake with that A-Bomb, Declassified
2005
Tinted photo
Film poster held by Jean Nelson, from the “Hanford Historical Photo Declassification Project”. The original is black-and-white.

Don’t miss this vital film! “You can beat the A-bomb.” Free showings. Columbia High School, Feb. 19 thru 22. Get tickets for yourself and family from your supervisor today.

That’s what the promo reads. The woman smiling makes one feel hopeful about the bomb, and seems the movie says there’s good reason to be hopeful according to a review at PicPal’s.

You Can Beat the A-Bomb (b&w) is an amazing piece of atomic propoganda that basically says a nuclear attack may be a tad inconvenient but it’s nothing to get too upset over. Just close the windows, hide under some furniture, stay inside for about an hour, then start to clean up. It also contains some hilarious what if? scenes in which Mom unplugs the iron before taking shelter. Dad, however, is the big know-it-all who can spout off a credible sounding yet suspect answer to any nukie question thrown his way. For example, when his kids ask, Can we catch radiation from you, Daddy? Daddy answers, No, I’m keeping it all to myself! as he scrubs the fallout off with a quick soap lather! And remember, if you get radiation poisoning, lie down and rest.

As a child, I likely saw You Can Beat the A-Bomb. I believe I did as I think I remember mom’s unplugging the iron and how that made me paranoid about irons. I also likely saw Duck and Cover (which you can catch over at The Internet Archive) in which children are exhorted to keep on mind at all times the FLASH that will clue them in to unannounced atomic warfare. Keep it on mind as you walk to school, as you play at school, never let the knowledge go, so that when the moment comes you’ll reflexively dive under your nearest schoolmate. If you’re out on your bike and no schoolmate is available as a shield, pull your coat over your head to save yourself from the bomb’s knack for delivering a scorching sunburn (the film doesn’t mention you better be wearing a light-reflecting coat) and wait for your nearest Civil Defense worker to tap you on the shoulder when all’s safe. Eluding harm is just about that simple.

Which it was not and is not and watching the propaganda it’s clear that the film existed not to save your hide with sticks-and-stones era measures, but to dedicate Citizens John Jr. and Sally to a lifetime of fear and trembling.

In the pic’s background, out the window, it seems a desert duststorm may be blowing so I colored it brown. There appeared to be dark streaks of mold staining the all beneath the window. On the desk, which was likely Jean’s, was a coffee cup beside a thermos. That thermos and the inviting smile on Jean Nelson’s face make the room seem almost as cozy as Jean Nelson appears confident that she can beat the A-bomb. One wonders how she got stuck with the duty of cheesecaking this sham of a comforter, or instead of a promo was it a cynical or satirical comment on the film by Jean and the photographer and was never intended for use, just a photo on the tag end of a nearly used-up roll of film.

All Boomers will remember the terror of the atom bomb dropping at any time. In Richland, plutonium being its excuse, that fear was a little more focused than in a place like Get Yer Beef Here, Texas. 80% of the jobs in the Tri-City area of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick were dependent on Hanford, directly or indirectly. A bright face was put on plutonium and at one time the idea for a Nuclear Industrial Park with up to 50 reactors was being talked about as a good idea. But the regular air-raid drills reinforced the knowledge you were part of something kind of, uhmm, dicey special, and I imagine was a little reflected in the following child’s bike safety poster.

Child’s bike safety poster, from the “Hanford Historical Photo Declassification Project”.

We were targets.

That’ll do something to a kid’s psyche, being raised as a target. We thought the Cold War would never end. Fear would be eternal as the U.S. of A’s supposedly eternally established and ordained-by-god borders. There was no other way. The end of America would be apocalypse for everyone. There would be no world on the far side.

Bad bombs were always launched by another power. At some point the Uptown Theater showed a movie called “And A Voice Shall Be Heard”. It was produced by “The March of Time” and presented by General Electric. A poster for it reads, “See how Syracuse NY intends to fight back against the A-Bomb.” I guess that means the bad A-Bomb belonged to someone else, while America had good A-Bombs that only served for defense.

The government spends a fair amount of time telling today’s children they’re targets. In the 1950s and 1960s, the dread was a retina-scorching flash on the horizon followed by a mushroom cloud billowing in the sky. Today the threat is any time, any where. The person seated next to you on the bus might have been a cold war spy, a commie infiltrator in the 50s and 60s. Today, the person seated next to you, the envelope in your mail box, the knapsack on the train may be instead the carrier of certain and immediate death. The intention, as before, could be nothing but to instill fear, not to train in safety measures, as duck and cover was just as absurd as today’s duct tape and plastic.

If you didn’t have an outfit to protect you against The Bomb, hopefully you would have a hard hat and canned goods and a shovel of sand. The below display shows “Items Recommended for Every Richland Home” included tomato juice, Spam, formula, a battery radio, a can opener and first aid kit. One’s local grocery would “soon be able to quote you prices and take your order for canned water.”

We ate a good deal of Spam in Richland but I think that’s because my dad liked Spam and it was easy to fix.

The government spends a fair amount of time telling today’s children they’re targets. In the 1950s and 1960s, the dread was a retina-scorching flash on the horizon followed by a mushroom cloud billowing in the sky. Today the threat is any time, any where. The person seated next to you on the bus might have been a cold war spy, a commie infiltrator in the 50s and 60s. Today, the person seated next to you, the envelope in your mail box, the knapsack on the train may be instead the carrier of certain and immediate death. The intention, as before, could be nothing but to instill fear, not to train in safety measures, as duck and cover was just as absurd as today’s duct tape and plastic.

H.o.p., my seven-year-old son, saw Duck and Cover tonight. He came in as I was watching it and was immediately attracted by the Bert the Turtle whose security is his shell out of which he is reluctant to emerge. And he didn’t say a word until the end. Just stood silent by my side, watching. No fidgeting, no playing with anything else while he watched.

We may laugh about these films now, but that’s some captivating and thus effective piece of child-targeted propaganda.