Abstract
August 6, 1945. Hiroshima, Japan. Little Boy.
August 9, 1945. Nagasaki, Japan. Fat Man.
In Lindsey Freeman’s Longing for the Bomb: Oak Ridge and Atomic Nostalgia, we see how these dates, places, and benignly named weapons of mass destruction are both the end and the beginning of the story of atomic America. With the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorated this year, we are reminded how the world was forever changed in August 1945. While an atomic weapon has never again been used for warfare, the technology that the United States used to obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to consume contemporary attention.
In Longing for the Bomb, Freeman grabs readers by the hand and takes them for a hike through the Appalachian hills and the history of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the rural atomic outpost that produced Little Boy. On first blush, it seems absurd to think that anyone would be nostalgic for the good ole’ days of The Manhattan Project and the race to nuclear domination. Yet, Freeman challenges this notion and offers a complicated history that, in the end, illuminates why many residents and descendants, herself included, would wear T-shirts proudly announcing, “I’m from Oak Ridge. I glow in the dark” (p. xiii).
Weaving threads together from lesser known texts, previously classified documents and photographs, biographical and archival research, letters, interviews, and even culling her own family history, Freeman highlights and forefronts the story of one of three top-secret locations racing to produce an atomic weapon. The result is a story of perspectives, as we see Oak Ridge, its residents, employees of the top-secret facility situated in the government-constructed city, and the legacy of the atomic bomb from more than simply a twenty-first-century anti-nuclear perspective. In line with Michel Foucault’s efforts of archeology, Freeman traces the narratives of the past to write a “history of the present.” In a more firmly geographic sense, Freeman summons and enacts the words of Eudora Welty, demonstrating that “one place comprehended can make understanding other places better” (p. xv). In this way, Longing for the Bomb makes sense of the “rise and fall of the Atomic Age” and narrates its “trajectory from atomic utopianism to atomic nostalgia” (p. xv).
The direction of the text works somewhat chronologically, beginning in 1942 with an introduction to Oak Ridge, and the “magic geography” that created the scientific city of the future, taking readers through the detonation of the first atomic weapon (1945) and ending with a discussion of the impending domestic aftermath. Through a critical lens, Freeman explores how, in the twenty-first century, a community can engage in a nostalgic remembrance of its “sacrifice to the nation” critically examining the question “[A]re good memories of the Project and its resulting mushroom clouds still possible, amidst all the terrible nightmares and the mounting evidence of destruction?” (p. 10). At the same time, this is not just a story about a small Appalachian city as much as it is a story about America and the nation’s “relationship to the decline of the Atomic Age” (p. 13) and the feeling of loss that accompanied the closure of The Manhattan Project site in Oak Ridge.
Chapter 1 lays out the study from a “cultural sociological perspective” (p. 4) introducing the story of the “Atomic Prophet”—John Hendrix. Legend has it Hendrix predicted that the land that would become Oak Ridge would one day “be filled with great buildings and factories, and they will help toward winning the greatest war that will ever be” (p. 14). It is fitting for Freeman to inaugurate the book with the tale of a mythic prophesy, as it sets the stage for the amorphous and ephemeral story that is America’s atomic footprint. As Freeman notes, it is the story of Hendrix that “creates a prophetic spectacle … by circumventing and screening out other, more complicated and ruthless histories of the area …” (p. 15). Freeman uses the Hendrix story as a place for readers to begin to understand how Oak Ridge, a manufactured town in the middle of Appalachia, became a scientific epicenter, could celebrate the detonation of an atomic weapon, and eventually how residents became nostalgic for their atomic past. Perhaps the only other figure that comes to represent Oak Ridge more than, or on equal footing with Hendrix, is Albert Einstein, who is often situated as a parallel figure in the collective memory of Oak Ridge. Freeman plays upon this dichotomy—Appalachian hillbilly and great scientific mind—to draw out the tension and controversy between the “myth” of the local history and “reality” of scientific discovery and atomic power, and how the space between tells the story of Oak Ridge and as a result America’s experience as an atomic superpower (p. 31).
Diving the remaining chapters into two eras—pre-detonation (1942–1945) and post-detonation (1945–present)—the first half of the book (chapters 2–4) brings readers into the “atomic Levittown” and introduces us to the “atomic pioneers” who hitched their dreams in Oak Ridge, drawing upon a tradition of “an ever-evolving America that is a place of constant and dramatic change” (p. 39). These early chapters do the significant work of critical sociology by attending to the everyday experiences, or, as de Certeau suggests, the tiny “footprints” on the ground, that come to define the global picture of the atomic age.
In chapters 2–4, Freeman extrapolates that the Oak Ridge narrative is dependent on the tropes of the “frontier” and “utopia.” In fact, it was utopia on the scientific frontier that was to be achieved in Oak Ridge through “fulfilling its atomic manifest destiny as predicted by its own prophet …” (p. 42). Yet, even America’s first scientific community could not achieve harmony and Freeman critically documents the social inequality that was built into the framework of the city, with scientist living aloft what would become known as “Snob Hill” and unskilled Black (and some white) workers lived in flimsy plywood housing called “hutments.” Specifically, chapter 3 brings readers into the massive factories that operated day and night “to produce nothing that could be seen or touched” (p. 64) and continues the tale of a world divided between “haves” and “have-nots.” Men and women came in droves from around the country to work in Oak Ridge and “sacrifice” for home and country. Yet, even with more equality than afforded to women prior to the war, the social stratification of the 1950s easily trespassed the fences surrounding Oak Ridge that were designed to hide the function of the secret city.
In the post-detonation chapters (chapters 5–8), the “atomic prophesy” comes to fruition, and on 6 August 1945, Little Boy, “the bomb containing fissionable uranium from the atomic factories of Oak Ridge, caused massive devastation to Hiroshima and its residents” detonates in Hiroshima, to the great pleasure of the residents of Oak Ridge (p. 93). Chapter 5 is the one chapter of the book that specifically addresses the actual use of an atomic weapon and turns on its head what might be experienced as a somber/morbid day in American history. In Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the day was “a day of jubilation, of celebration, of back pats, of kissing stranger and offering congratulations” (p. 94). It was celebration of the world’s greatest minds and strongest bodies coming together to “win.” Yet, this victory was also the beginning of the end for Oak Ridge and its residents and soon they were faced with the prospect of a loss of identity. Oak Ridge, once a prototype planned city that would be replicated across the country in the 1950s and a community that was on the forefront of science and technology that would continue to grip the country, the city was disappearing before its very eyes.
In the domestic aftermath of the detonation of Little Boy and Fat Man, Freeman shows the intricate contradiction that has always represented America’s relationship with atomic weapons—where the absolute focus of an entire nation culminated in what they consider a “victory.” Chapters 6–8 chronicle the efforts of Oak Ridgers to shape the legacy of the city even before the dust had settled. The domestic aftermath of an atomic America begins with the museumification of the atomic age, captured in the 1949 opening of The American Museum of Atomic Energy. The museum helped crystallize “atomic socialization” and the slight of hand that allow the community and the country to continue to prioritize celebrating their collective atomic accomplishment.
What Freeman illustrates through these chapters is the veracity of the collective memory of Oak Ridgers and their insistence to live within the framework of atomic utopianism and nostalgia. Both are what Freeman calls “mystifying positions” having the ability to “thwart critical analysis of the use of atomic bombs against Japan, as well as the problematics of the Cold War legacy such as nuclear energy and nuclear waste” (p. 121). Memory becomes so significant in this effort because there was literally no aftermath from Hiroshima or Nagasaki to figuratively “sweep under the rug.” In the United States, all that remained were the memory, photographs, and stories of those who turned the unmarked knobs, drove the trucks containing unknown substances, and constructed the mathematical equations that contributed to the production of an atomic arsenal. Through tracing these experiences, Freeman illustrates how the memory of “American victory culture” was in part upholding the myth of American innocence that continues to perpetuate into the twenty-first century.
In chapter 9, Freeman brings together what she has deftly managed throughout the text—a balance between theory, ethnography data, and critical argument, seamlessly weaving each thread to build her case. In general, the text is accessible and at the same time rigorous and unpredictable in delightful ways. While Freeman reminds readers that she approached the project as a sociologist, Longing for the Bomb is suited for academic and public audiences with an interest in the United States and world history, American popular culture and cultural studies, ethnographic and place-based studies, and globalization and global politics. In light of the recent diplomatic efforts surrounding Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon as well as continued pressures on nations around the world to limit nuclear proliferation, perhaps there is no more important narrative to know than that of Oak Ridge.