Thursday is a day for celebration in Oak Ridge, as residents mark the creation of the country's newest national park. The secretaries of the Interior and Energy departments signed documents this week formally establishing Manhattan Project National Historical Park.
Manhattan Project NHP is actually three parks, each at or near sites significant to the design and creation of the first atomic bombs. The other sites are located at Hanford, Washington, and Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Y-12 historian Ray Smith served on a federal panel to plan the park's exhibits and information. The park is designed to introduce visitors to the massive technological accomplishments of the project, he said. It will also explore the tremendous human costs incurred when the bombs were used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Representatives from those cities helped advise the National Park Service.
Smith spoke with WUOTAll Things Considered host Brandon Hollingsworth about the park's goals and purpose.