New national park marks development of nuclear bomb

The park will have three locations in Los Alamos, New Mexico; Hanford, Washington; and in Oak Ridge.

“You can trust us with the story”, he said. “It’s not necessarily a celebration of the consequences of that, but rather an opportunity to tell that story to a broader audience”.

With a couple of pen strokes, two top officials in President Barack Obama’s administration signed an agreement formally establishing the Manhattan Project National Historic Park. A handful of anti-nuclear activists attended the grand opening ceremony, standing silent with posters detailing the effects of the bomb on Japan.

The complex emotions the new park evokes were evident at Tuesday’s ceremony. The three senators represent the each of the park’s three locations. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Sen. Kenneth McKellar to the White House in 1942.

Alexander continued: “Almost everyone in the Knoxville area knows something about the Manhattan Project”.

The bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert in July 1945.

The park will be managed as a partnership between the Department of Energy – which owns and manages the properties – and Interior’s National Park Service, which will provide interpretation, visitor information, and assistance in the preservation of the historic buildings at the sites. Millions of people were in danger, he said, but one of the big concerns for the US were the soldiers who were waiting offshore to invade Japan. “As the National Park Service turns 100 next year and prepares for a second century of stewardship, this new addition to the National Park System will preserve and share one of our nation’s great stories of ingenuity and scientific endeavor, as well as the consequences of nuclear technology use”.

“It did mark the end of the war, but it left devastation in its wake”, Jewell said.

Jewell briefly teared up as she described her mother-in-law’s work as a nurse in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

WASHINGTON, D.C.-U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander on Tuesday was among those celebrating the formal establishment of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

The Manhattan Project was an American-led covert science program during World War II to develop an atomic bomb.