2009 Teachers Workshop on the Manhattan Project

Atomic Heritage Foundation hosts Manhattan Project workshop for New Mexico teachers

Between Tuesday, June 9, 2009, and Friday, June 12, 2009, twenty five teachers attended the first-ever teachers’ workshop on the Manhattan Project hosted by the Atomic Heritage Foundation. They were housed at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The event was sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, National Nuclear Security Administration, The Kerr Foundation, Inc., Los Alamos County Council, Los Alamos National Bank, Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation, and the Albert I. Pierce Foundation.

On Wednesday, history professors Ferenc Szasz and Jon Hunner described the race for the atomic bomb and life at Los Alamos during the war. Science teacher Jay Shelton gave a prop-filled demonstration of the science behind the bomb. The Atomic Heritage Foundation plans to make videos of these lectures available through its website.


After lunch, the teachers shared their previous experiences teaching Manhattan Project history and exchanged curriculum ideas based on the morning’s lectures. They then visited the recently-opened New Mexico History Museum. Erica Garcia, the head of education at the museum, walked teachers through the new exhibition on the Manhattan Project. Afterwards, Jon Hunner led the group on a walking tour of Santa Fe sites (see left). He showed them 109 East Palace, the famous first stop for scientists recruited to work on the Manhattan Project.

The teachers returned to St. John’s for dinner with Jan Biella, deputy state historic preservation officer, and Ellen Bradbury Reid, who grew up in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. Reid described the Nagasaki bombing in detail (see right).


On Thursday morning, tour guide Georgia Strickfadden led the teachers to San Ildefonso Pueblo. There, workshop participants met San Ildefonso Governor Leon Roybal, who described his mother’s experience working at Los Alamos during the war. He concluded with a discussion of the pueblo’s current relationship with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Teachers then received a lesson on science education from the educational outreach coordinators at Los Alamos’ Bradbury Science Museum. The coordinators demonstrated how they use games and props to discuss the science of the bomb with students at a variety of age levels. Teachers received educational materials from the museum to put to use in their own classrooms.

The next stop was Fuller Lodge, where workshop participants shared a box lunch with Manhattan Project veterans George Cowan and Jay Wechsler. Wechsler and Cowan described their personal experiences at Los Alamos (see below).

Heather McClenahan, of the Los Alamos Historical Society, took the teachers on a walking tour of Bathtub Row and J. Robert Oppenheimer’s house (see right). Ellen McGehee brought the teachers “behind the fence” at Los Alamos, taking them on the first-ever public tour of the TA-18 site of the laboratory, which includes the historic Pond Cabin and the lab where Manhattan Project scientist Louis P. Slotin received a fatal dose of radiation during a criticality demonstration in 1946. After the tour of the Manhattan Project properties, teachers had dinner with members of the Los Alamos Historical Society and Los Alamos County Council at the Central Avenue Grill.

On the final morning of the workshop, Albuquerque Journal reporter John Fleck described his career as a science writer covering the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Afterwards, Greg Mello, from the Los Alamos Study Group, discussed the history of nuclear weapons opposition. Dr. Joseph Suina, the former governor of the Cochiti Pueblo, provided additional insight into the relationship between the pueblos and the Manhattan Project. Brandt Petrasek, Director of Tribal Programs and of the Department of Energy State and Tribal Government Working Group, and Los Alamos NNSA site officer Don Ami also contributed to the discussion.

A working lunch followed the morning’s session. Teachers drafted lesson plans alone and in pairs. After lunch, participants chose to attend one of three concurrent sessions on science with Jay Shelton, New Mexico in World War II with author Nancy Bartlit, or the New Mexico History Museum's Manhattan Project exhibition with museum educator Erica Garcia.

The workshop concluded as the teachers received honoraria for their participation and compensation for their travel expenses. All participants are now eligible to receive graduate credit from the University of New Mexico. A number of teachers expressed interest in returning to participate again. One wrote in her evaluation, “I’ve been attending educational workshops for 10 years, and this is by far the best I have ever attended.” The Atomic Heritage Foundation plans to offer this workshop in 2010 and 2011.

Santa Fe Japanese American Internment Camp

World War II was fought in order to save the world from Adolph Hitler’s ruthless Gestapo, the Nazis’ inhuman treatment of conquered people, and concentration camps in Europe, as well as from Japanese military aggression in Asia. How paradoxical that in fighting to prevent such barbaric behavior, the United States itself imprisoned 120,000 Japanese-Americans, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, in “concentration” camps during the war.

In 1942, during the months immediately after Pearl Harbor, there was widespread panic in the U.S. about possible attacks on the West Coast. The disaster at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was blamed by many Americans as due to espionage by Japanese Americans, rather than on the lack of preparedness by American military forces. Actually the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians declared after the war that “Not a single documented act of espionage, sabotage, or fifth column activity was committed by an American citizen of Japanese ancestry or by a resident Japanese alien on the West Coast.”

The Santa Fe Internment Detention Camp and later Internment Camp housed only male internees who were identified as “enemy aliens” and were separated from their families because of their potential to be spies because of their livelihoods or community leadership. Ironically, these “dangerous” detainees or internees were brought to Santa Fe, New Mexico, the gateway for persons working on the largest secret of World War II, the atomic bomb research in nearby Los Alamos.

On April 20, 2002, an historical marker was placed overlooking the site of the former camp to identify the internment camp life and internment camp conditions. It succinctly states:

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE SANTA FE INTERNMENT CAMP

At this site, due east and below the hill, 4555 men of Japanese ancestry were incarcerated in a Department of Justice Internment Camp from March 1942 to April 1946. Most were excluded by law from becoming United States citizens and were removed primarily from the West Coast and Hawaii.

During World War II, their loyalty to the Untied States was questioned. Many of the men held here without due process were long time resident religious leaders, businessmen, teachers, fishermen, farmers, and others. No person of Japanese ancestry in the U.S. was ever charged or convicted of espionage throughout the course of the war.

Many of the internees had relatives who served with distinction in the American Armed Forces in Europe and in the Pacific.

This marker is placed here as a reminder that history is a valuable teacher only if we do not forget our past.

Information about the Santa Fe Internment Camp is difficult to find, so the chapter in Silent Voices of World War II is rare, describing life in the Japanese American camp.

* * * * *

The following are sites where Japanese Americans were held, visited by N. Bartlit preparing for her second book about the Japanese American internment in Santa Fe, NM.

U.S. Department of Justice Camp Sites (three men-only sites; only one for family)

• Santa Fe, NM
• Missoula, MT

U.S. Army War Relocation Centers

• Minidoka, ID
• Amache, CO
• Replica of Manzanar, CA exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, CA

U.S. Army Camp

• Lordsburg, NM

Japanese American community

• San Jose, CA Little Tokyo, where museum and downtown has educational plaques about the internment camp evacuations
• Torrance, CA “Go For Broke” headquarters

N. Bartlit has been attending or presenting talks on her WWII research since 1997 at regional conferences on Asian affairs held from El Paso, TX; Boulder and Denver, CO; Salt Lake City and Ogden, UT; Phoenix and Tucson, AZ, Boise, ID; Long Beach, CA; Seattle, WA; and Albuquerque, NM. She attended a national Asian conference in Boston, MA and spoke about the Santa Fe camp at an international conference in Tokyo, Japan.

Contact Bartlit/Buy Silent Voices

Teaching Experience

Teaching in Japan:

September 1958 to September 1960

• Taught in Miyagi Gakuin Women’s Academy (Gakuin), Sendai, Miyagi-ken, Japan.• Taught English pronunciation and grammar to 9th and 10th grades as well as college freshmen and sophomores.

• Taught typing to English majors at the college level to prepare them for working in trading companies after graduation.

Extracurricular:

• Taught college students at UNESCO so they could practice English.
• Taught Tohoku University scientists at Institute for Scientific Instruments.

Teaching in U.S.:

• Tutored English as a second language to Japanese scientists and their families who came to Los Alamos to do joint research with Laboratory scientists beginning in the late 1970s. Families usually stayed for a year. Welcomed wives into Los Alamos Garden Club membership.

• Consultant to Los Alamos County to teach parliamentary procedure to Boards and Commissions. Presentation was filmed and shown to new board members for orientation.

After “Silent Voices” was published:

• Taught history class and teachers’ writing class at University of NM/Gallup, NM branch, 2008.
• Taught in one hour sessions each, 6th, 7th, 8th graders (about 100 students in each grade) at West Las Vegas, NM, spring 2008.
• Taught 9th graders using Silent Voices as a textbook in Los Alamos High School, Los Alamos, NM, history class, to help meet state requirement to teach contemporary NM history, 2007.
• Taught middle-school level classes (five sessions) for two days about Silent Voices in lieu of the Pojoaque school having a textbook. Later the teacher purchased textbooks for classes because of the level of the book and also comprehensiveness of the material for social studies goals to be covered, 2007.
• Taught NM teachers being trained to prepare lesson plans from kindergarten through high school to teach about internment and peoples’ displacement under a grant to the University of NM Education Department from the Japanese American National Museum, 2006.
• Taught 2-6th graders selected to help write and perform an opera about the Santa Fe Internment Camp at the Carlos Gilbert Elementary School, Santa Fe, with a grant from the History Channel and assistance from the Santa Fe Opera personnel. Was invited to make comments at the performance for parents, 2006.
• Taught several hundred elementary school students (3rd to 6th grade) in one lecture and several hundred students high school students (7th to 12th grade) at Fort Sumner, NM, home of the Atomic Admiral Deak Parsons, 2006.
• Taught Brigham Young University class on "Japanese-American Internment: Topaz Plus," Fall 2005, Ogden, Utah, Professor B. Daynes.
• Taught 4th graders about Santa Fe Internment Camp to Longfellow School, Albuquerque, NM to prepare them for writing and performing a play depicting the experiences of Japanese Americans evacuated under military order to leave the West Coast, 2004.
• Taught South Valley Academy teachers about the NM National Guard in the Philippines,
• Albuquerque, 2003.

New Mexico Humanities Council Chautauqua Speakers
Go to their web site and search for Nancy Bartlit to schedule her for a lecture

Contact Bartlit/Buy Silent Voices

Navajo Code Talkers

At the beginning of World War II, only 28 non-Navajos spoke Diné, the language of the Navajos. One of them was Philip Johnston whose missionary parents raised him on the Navajo reservation which overlaps New Mexico and Arizona. Johnston had served in the U.S. Army during WWI and was working as a civil engineer in Los Angeles at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

After the U.S. suffered devastating losses in the Pacific, the need for a coded language to prevent the Japanese from learning of American troop movements became paramount. In an article in the newspaper, Johnston was alerted to the challenge. Johnston located a few Navajos living in the Los Angeles area and arranged for them to demonstrate to the U.S. Marine commanders the utility of using Navajo and English languages in transmitting military communications.

After impressing the officers at the U.S. Marine base in San Diego, they obtained permission to enlist 30 young Navajos from their reservation. Willing to fulfill their patriotic duty, many recruits were younger than 18, the legal age of enlistment. They fibbed about their ages, since the Navajo custom was not to record birth certificates.

"They gave us two weeks to think about it. I did my own thinking; I didn’t inquire of my parents."

~ Cozy S. Brown, young Navajo soldier

The U.S. Marines recruited an initial 29 men intended to be code talkers, whose numbers grew to approximately 420 by the end of the war. Even so, 3,600 Navajos eventually served in the military forces during WWII—a sizable percentage of their population of 50,000.

Ironically, the young Navajos were assigned to make a code from the very language they were forbidden to speak in government-run BIA schools. The Navajo Code Talkers’ military success in preventing the Japanese from deciphering American military actions, helped to shorten the war in the Pacific. The code was never broken, nor no code talker ever captured. The Japanese military remained frustrated as they tortured captured Navajos who could not understand the code when the Japanese forced them to listen to it.

For many years after the war to protect the project’s secrecy, the code talkers were not publicly recognized for their bravery and unique contributions. Only within recent decades have the Navajo Code Talkers been honored, especially with long-deserved Congressional medals. In February 2000, the toy company Hasbro introduced a Navajo Code Talker GI Joe doll to honor the men. Their critical contributions to the preservation of this country had finally been recognized.

Contact Bartlit/Buy Silent Voices www.NancyBartlit.com

Bataan Death March

The Bataan March of Death began at dawn, April 9, 1942, after the three-month Battle of Bataan and against the orders of Generals Douglas MacArthur and Jonathan Wainwright. Major General Edward P. King, Jr., commanding Luzon Force, Bataan, Philippine Islands, surrendered more than 75,000 (66,000 Filipinos, 1,000 Chinese Filipinos, and 11,796 Americans) starving and disease-ridden men. King inquired of the Japanese colonel in charge if the prisoners would be well treated, to which he responded, “We’re not barbarians.” A month later, General Wainwright was forced to surrender Corregidor.

The prisoners-of-war immediately were forced to give up their belongings and to endure a 75-mile march to captivity at Camp O’Donnell. Thousands, already weakened by lack of food and medicine during their defense of the Philippines, died en route from disease, starvation, dehydration, heat prostration, untreated wounds, and random execution. If an item “Made in Japan” was found in their possession, they were immediately executed. To the Japanese military for whom surrender was not an option, the captives, surrendered by their commander, were considered cowards (“dogs”).

Anticipating 25,000 prisoners, the Japanese were not at all equipped to handle the numbers they encountered. Prisoners were beaten randomly and were often denied promised food and water. Those who fell behind were usually executed or left to die. The sides of the roads became littered with dead bodies and those begging for help.

Along the Death March, approximately 54,000 of the 75,000 prisoners reached their destination. The death toll of the March is difficult to assess. Approximately 5,000-10,000 Filipino and 600-650 American prisoners of war died before they could reach Camp O'Donnell.

On June 6, 1942, the Filipino soldiers were granted amnesty by the Japanese military and released while the American prisoners continued to be held. Camp O'Donnell was hell. They would line up once a day for water. Men were weak and dying from dysentery and beriberi. Eventually they were transferred to camps outside of the Philippines.

This process began with American prisoners moving from Camp O'Donnell to Camp Cabanatuan or to prison camps in Japan, Korea, Formosa (Taiwan), and Manchuria in transports known as "hell ships." Thousands were drowned because the ships were not marked as prison ships, a violation of the Geneva Convention, and were attacked.

The 511 prisoners-of-war who still remained at the Cabanatuan Prison Camp as of January 1945 were freed during an attack on the camp led by U.S. Army Rangers known as “Raid at Cabanatuan” or “The Great Raid.”

The Bataan Death March is commemorated during annual ceremonies in Santa Fe and Albuquerque because of the valor of the New Mexico National Guard. As the first state National Guard to be federalized and sent to defend the Philippines in the fall of 1941, they were the first to fire at the Japanese planes and the last to lay down their arms. Since 1989, a Bataan Memorial Death March, or Bataan marathon, is held every year in March at the White Sands Missile Range near Las Cruces, New Mexico.

“Riveting accounts of the Bataan Death March...”

~ Mike Wismer, member of the Los Alamos County Council

Major, USAF Retired Operation Desert Storm Veteran

Contact Bartlit/Buy Silent Voices www.NancyBartlit.com

Manhattan Project

Development of the atomic bombs was one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time, and the best kept secret of World War II. Because the Manhattan Project entailed a huge investment and the work of 129,000 people over a period of several years, it was also the largest scientific project in history. “Manhattan Project” was the code name for this nuclear research effort begun in Manhattan Island, NY.

In 1930, German-born Albert Einstein moved to the U.S. and settled at Princeton University. Einstein, as well as many scientists who were part of the Manhattan Project, had personal ties with European universities and laboratories. They knew the theories and discoveries in nuclear fission coming in 1938 from Berlin and elsewhere. They knew the scientists who remained in Hitler’s Germany and their capability to develop a nuclear weapon. In 1939, these scientists, many of them refugees, asked Einstein to write the letter he did, urging President Franklin Roosevelt to begin intense research on an atomic bomb. Roosevelt accelerated atomic research and the Manhattan Project was born. General Leslie R. Groves, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, became the Director in 1942.

American-born J. Robert Oppenheimer grew up on the isle of Manhattan, NY. He was a brilliant physicist with American and European schooling, who was teaching in California in October 1942, when Groves picked him to lead the research effort. From his early years, Dr. Oppenheimer knew firsthand of the remote Los Alamos Ranch School for Boys in New Mexico, and recommended it for the special site of the Manhattan Project for the duration of the war. In March 1943, the Project took over from the school. Santa Fe, New Mexico's capitol city, became the gateway for Manhattan Project scientists, both civilian and military, to come up to “The Hill.” A race ensued to develop a new kind of weapon, expected to be used on Hitler’s Germany. Many of the outstanding Jewish émigrés who had escaped from Hitler’s policies of exclusion, then extinction, became Manhattan Project scientists, contributing to the project’s success.

However, the war in Europe ended with Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945, before atomic weapons were available for use. The weapons were ready by mid-July 1945, and the focus turned to using them on Japan if that nation did not accept the Allies’ Potsdam Declaration. President Harry Truman warned of a “rain of ruin” if Japan did not surrender unconditionally. Only the use of two atomic bombs, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria, convinced the Emperor to end the war. The Japanese military leaders were ready to resist an allied invasion on Kyushu. Some leaders pursued a coup to stop the Emperor's surrender message. When that failed, they acquiesced and gave up their arms.

Research on the Manhattan Project required multiple production and research sites that operated secretly around the United States, involving scientists and resources from England and Canada. The results of that research were ultimately assembled and tested in New Mexico, then sent to Tinian Island in the Pacific and put aboard B-29 planes.

www.losalamoshistory.org, Los Alamos Historical Society, Los Alamos, NM
www.atomicheritage.org, Atomic Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.
http://www.lanl.gov/museum/, Bradbury Science Museum, Los Alamos, NM

Contact Bartlit/Buy Silent Voices
www.NancyBartlit.com