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Nuclear bombs and new national historic park

Students tour the control room of the B Reactor on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in south-central Washington. The reactor is now the centerpiece of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, where school children and tourists can visit the place that produced the plutonium used in the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.
Students tour the control room of the B Reactor on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in south-central Washington. The reactor is now the centerpiece of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, where school children and tourists can visit the place that produced the plutonium used in the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. Los Angeles Times

Students need to know truth about the atomic bomb

Re “New Manhattan Project park is sure to elicit a strong reaction” (Travel, May 8): As a teacher and a Japanese American, I’m concerned that the national historic park that created the nuclear weapon used in World War II has excluded the effects that the bombs had on the Japanese and Americans.

My mother was forced into internment camps. Her father chose to go back to Hiroshima for fear of being killed when he was released. When they arrived in Hiroshima, the city was gone and their family had perished. More than 129,000 people died there and in Nagasaki. The blasts melted skin off their bodies and their shadows were burned into the walls.

Ten years ago, I visited a small museum near the new Manhattan Project National Historic Park and asked if the effect of the bombs would be included. They didn’t know then, and now the park service says, “We can’t change everything overnight.”

Deana Wirth, Elk Grove

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This story was originally published May 12, 2016 at 12:01 AM with the headline "Nuclear bombs and new national historic park."

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