Longing for the bomb : Oak Ridge and atomic nostalgia

281 Pages·2016·3.62 MB·English

by  Lindsey A. Freeman

Longing for the Bomb
Longing for the Bomb
Oak Ridge and Atomic Nostalgia
Lindsey A. Freeman
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill
This book was published with the assistance of the Authors Fund of the University of North Carolina Press.
© 2015 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Set in Utopia and Aller
by codeMantra
Manufactured in the United States of America An earlier version of chapter 6 appeared as “Happy
Memories under the Mushroom Cloud: Utopia and Memory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” in Memory and the
Future: Transnational Politics, Ethics and Society, ed. Yifat Gutman, Adam Brown, and Amy Sodaro
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 158–76. An earlier version of chapter 7 appeared as “Manhattan Project Time
Machine,” in Death Tourism: Disaster Sites as Recreational Landscape, ed. Brigitte Sion (Seagull Books,
2014). Each is reprinted with permission of the publisher. “Atomic City Boogie,” by Willie “Little Red”
Honeycutt, © 2014 Phyllis Honeycutt Simpson and The Honeycutt Family. Reprinted with permission.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production
Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina
Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Cover illustration: Postcard of Jackson Square, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, published by Werner News Agency,
Knoxville, and seal of the city of Oak Ridge Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Longing for the bomb : Oak Ridge and atomic nostalgia / Lindsey A. Freeman. — First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4696-2237-8 (paperback : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-1-4696-2238-5 (e-book)
1. Oak Ridge (Tenn.)—History—20th century. 2. Oak Ridge (Tenn.)—Social life and customs—20th
century. 3. Oak Ridge National Laboratory—History—20th century. 4. Official secrets—United States—
History—20th century. 5. Atomic bomb—Social aspects—United States—History. 6. Manhattan Project
(U.S.)—History. 7. World War, 1939–1945—Tennessee—Oak Ridge. 8. Popular culture—United States—
History—20th century. I. Title.
F444.O3F74 2015
355.8’25119097309044—dc23
2014038124
For Nan
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
1 / The Atomic Prophecy
2 / Brahms and Bombs on the Atomic Frontier
3 / At Work in the Atomic Beehive
4 / We Didn’t Exactly Live in a Democracy
5 / From Hiroshima to Normalization
6 / Happy Memories under the Mushroom Cloud
7 / Manhattan Project Time Machine
8 / Atomic Snapshots
9 / Longing for the Bomb
Notes
References
Index
Illustrations
Joe and Dorathy Moneymaker, 29
Seal of the City of Oak Ridge, 42
Lie-detector test, 81
Billboard in Oak Ridge, 1943, 82
Santa going through security at Elza Gate, 1944, 88
“The Beginning or the End,” Grove Theater, Oak Ridge, 1947, 103
Gate-opening celebration, Elza Gate, 1949, 115
Opening-day float, 1949, 116
Rod Cameron, Marie McDonald, and Adele Jergens with mechanical hands,
1949, 123
The Secret, 2004, 128
Calutron Girls, 132
Greetings from the Atomic City, 1960s, 139
J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Oak Ridge Guest House, 1946, 157
Oak Ridge High School science class, 1950s, 158
Author’s grandfather in uniform, 159
Acknowledgments
One of the most beautiful gifts I have ever received was a vigorously annotated
early draft that became this book. I remember when Vera Zolberg handed it over
to me, full of seemingly endless, multi-colored post-it notes sticking out from
every angle. The mass of text resembled a stegosaurus with a rare disease.
Slowly and methodically I worked from these notes to try to cure the ills of my
creaturely text. I cannot thank my professors at the New School for Social
Research enough—Vera, Jeff Goldfarb, Elzbieta Matynia, and Oz Frankel.
Without their close reading, support, and wrangling, this book would not have
been possible. I’m also grateful to Oz for pointing out that doing academic work
is not the same thing as joining the Navy.
I’m thankful for the intellectual community in and around the NSSR, where
the ideas for this book emerged and gradually came to take shape. Special thanks
to Monica Brannon, Linsey Ly, Aysel Madra, Ritchie Savage, Dan Sherwood,
Sam Tobin, and Hector Vera for the years of camaraderie and support,
intellectual and otherwise. Work on this project was also encouraged and
enriched by the New School Memory Group, especially Naomi Angel (who left
too soon), Adam Brown, Rachel Daniell, Yifat Gutman, Laliv Melamed,
Benjamin Nienass, and Amy Sodaro. Long live the octopus of memory!
Throughout the years of work on this book, in between pushing around my
own paragraphs, I taught in the sociology and social science departments of FIT,
Pratt, Eugene Lang College, Rutgers-Newark University, and SUNY-Buffalo
State. At Rutgers, I taught evening classes in social theory, reading drafts and
pounding out notes for this manuscript on the most beautiful train route from
New York City to Newark: marshes and rusting industrial ruins provided the
backdrop for new insights and turns of phrase. In the first-year writing
department at Eugene Lang College, I taught classes on utopia and memory, the
two poles of this work. Special thanks are due to Sherri-Ann Butterfield and
Kate Eichhorn, who led those departments, and to all my sharp students who
pushed my thinking. I would also like to thank Jonathan Veitch, whose interest
in utopias and nuclear spaces fortuitously lined up with my own.
The social geography department at the Université de Caen, where I presented
earlier versions of this work, provided a space for thinking, spirited collegiality,
and calvados. Thanks go to Pierre Bergel, Patrice Caro, Jean-Marc Fournier,
Benoît Raoulx, and especially to Stéphane Valognes, who introduced me to
nuclear Normandy. The folks at the Center for the United States and the Cold
War at New York University offered valuable feedback and endured my non-
linear approach to the nuclear past. I am also grateful to my new students and
colleagues in the sociology department at SUNY-Buffalo State, where I was able
to put the finishing touches on the manuscript. Special thanks go to Allen
Shelton, who tolerated my long sentences and gave valuable advice to a
greenhorn writer and professor.
I am forever indebted to Sara Jo Cohen, who picked me out of the wilds of the
Association of American Geographers’ program; to copyeditor Eric Schramm;
and to all the hardworking and talented folks at UNC Press: Stephanie Wenzel,
Alison Shay, and my wonderful and charming editor Joseph Parsons, whose
support, smarts, and good humor constantly exceed expectation. I would also
like to thank Karen Engle, Hugh Gusterson, and Bruce Hevly, who carefully
read earlier drafts of this book and provided helpful critical insight. The book is
much improved for your efforts. Additional thanks to Karen and Yoke-Sum
Wong for their support of the secret telephone.
And much love and appreciation to Jessi Lee Jackson, who abided all the bees
in my bonnet, encouraged me when I felt blue, read endless scraps of texts, and
listened to so much talk about the atomic bomb, even allowing me to read pieces
of the text to her at Rockaway Beach.
Finally, most of all I would like to thank all the Oak Ridgers who took the
time to talk with me and to share their stories. Without you, of course, none of
this work would have been possible. Special recognition goes to the late Bill
Wilcox, D. Ray Smith, Jay Searcy, Earline Banic, Jim Comish at the AMSE,
Phyllis Simpson and the Honeycutt family, reference librarian Teresa Fortney at
the Oak Ridge Library, the folks at the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History, my
mother, Bobbie Freeman, my uncle Frank McLemore, and my grandmother Nan
McLemore. I would also like to thank my father, Dennis Freeman, who began
his career as a clinical psychologist at the Oak Ridge Mental Health Center when
he was a young PhD.