Comparative Annihilation 101
Sep. 17th, 2006 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyWhen I was a senior in high school, as part of the civic pageantry of Oak Ridge's 50th birthday, I had to go interview a man who'd worked as an engineer in the gaseous diffusion plant during World War II. He was a lovely man, very patient with his shy, gauche, and reluctant interviewer.
He still called the Japanese "Japs"--just casually, you know. Conversationally. And he gave me an anecdote.
Famously, the people working in Oak Ridge, as in the other "secret cities" of the Manhattan Project, had only the vaguest idea of what they were working on. But when America dropped its atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the people of Oak Ridge knew that it was their doing.
They celebrated. They danced on the tennis courts all night long.
They knew they'd done the morally right and heroic thing.
He still called the Japanese "Japs"--just casually, you know. Conversationally. And he gave me an anecdote.
Famously, the people working in Oak Ridge, as in the other "secret cities" of the Manhattan Project, had only the vaguest idea of what they were working on. But when America dropped its atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the people of Oak Ridge knew that it was their doing.
They celebrated. They danced on the tennis courts all night long.
They knew they'd done the morally right and heroic thing.
