A Little Girl and a Great Big Bomb

Once upon a time, two stern-looking military police knocked on the door of my grandparents' house. Their visit was ominous. They had questions about something my mother, age ten, had said on the school bus about blowing up her school.

In this day and age, comments of that kind would certainly be noticed and followed up on.

Now imagine that comment being made in 1944 at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where research on the atomic bomb was taking place under strict secrecy.

Secret work

Mom had been miffed with one of her schoolteachers. Her comment on the school bus was only an offhand remark and an angry wish. But you don't talk about explosions if your father (my grandfather, Grady Webb) is working at a secret facility building the most powerful weapon the world had yet to see.

Grady, like everyone else he worked alongside, did not know the true purpose of the Oak Ridge facility. He was a millwright, tasked with keeping machinery working, even if he had no knowledge of the final product of all that machinery. Every morning, though, as he and the others entered the factory, guards would wave Geiger counters up and down each arm and leg, head and chest. Few of them knew what a Geiger counter was. If anyone's radiation exposure was too high, they were reassigned to another part of the facility.

Mom got off with a stern warning. In time, my grandparents would better understand why these officials came to their door. Grady discovered, on a tragic day in early August 1945, the role Oak Ridge had played in bringing an end to World War II. He was not a government employee but instead worked for one of the contractors responsible for maintaining the facility, Carbide & Carbon Chemical Corporation (later known as Union Carbide). After the war he was presented with a certificate for contributing to the Manhattan Project.

Recognition for contributing to the end of World War II

"United States of America, War Department, Army Service Forces - Corps of Engineers, Manhattan District -

"This is to certify that Grady W. Webb, Carbide & Carbon Chemicals Corp., has participated in work essential to the production of the Atomic Bomb, thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of World War II. This certificate is awarded in appreciation of effective service."

The certificate was signed by Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War, and dated 6 August 1945, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, at Hiroshima.

There are important ethical questions regarding the use of nuclear weapons against Japan in World War II. Was this use of the atomic bomb necessary, or was it avoidable? I am not a scholar of World War II history, so I can't really take a side. But it does cause some real cognitive dissonance. I am proud of my grandfather for his contribution to the end of a terrible war, and at the same time, I lament that this contribution and the work of thousands of other people led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians.

Comic relief

I hope you can forgive me for ending this post on a lighter note: I'm grateful my mother was not jailed for "subversive" childhood comments. And that her most serious offense over her long life was nothing worse than backing out of her driveway into a parked police car. ("But he shouldn't have parked there!")