283 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
283 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2014-10-02T12:53:24.000Z'
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title: Why They Called It the Manhattan Project (2007)
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url: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/science/30manh.html?pagewanted=all
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author: wglb
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points: 70
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 21
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1412254404
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_wglb
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- story_8400512
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objectID: '8400512'
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year: 2007
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---
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“The story is so rich,” Dr. Norris enthused. “There’s layer upon layer
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of good stuff, interesting characters.”
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Still, more than six decades after the project’s start, the Manhattan
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side of the atom bomb story seems to be a well-preserved secret.
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Dr. Norris recently visited Manhattan at the request of The New York
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Times for a daylong tour of the Manhattan Project’s roots. Only one site
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he visited displayed a public sign noting its role in the epochal
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events. And most people who encountered his entourage, which included a
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photographer and videographer, knew little or nothing of the atomic
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labors in Manhattan.
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“That’s amazing,” Alexandra Ghitelman said after learning that the
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buildings she had just passed on inline skates once held tons of uranium
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destined for atomic weapons. “That’s unbelievable.”
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While shock tended to be the main reaction, some people hinted at
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feelings of pride. More than one person said they knew someone who had
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worked on the secret project, which formally got under way in August
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1942 and three years later culminated in the atomic bombing of Japan. In
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all, it employed more than 130,000 people.
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Dr. Norris is also the author of “Racing for the Bomb” (Steerforth,
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2002), a biography of Gen. Leslie R. Groves, the project’s military
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leader. As his protagonist had done during the war, Dr. Norris works in
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Washington. At the Natural Resources Defense Council, he studies and
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writes about the nation’s atomic facilities.
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Dr. Norris began his day of exploration by taking the train to New York
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from Washington, coming into Pennsylvania Station just as General Groves
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had done dozens of times during the war to visit project sites.
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Advertisement
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[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-4)
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“Groves didn’t want the job,” Dr. Norris remarked outside the station.
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“But his foot hit the accelerator and he didn’t let up for 1,000
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days.”
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For tour assistance, Dr. Norris brought along his own books as well as
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printouts from “The Traveler’s Guide to Nuclear Weapons,” a CD by James
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M. Maroncelli and Timothy L. Karpin that features little-known history
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of the nation’s atom endeavors.
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We headed north to the childhood home of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the
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eccentric genius whom General Groves hired to run the project’s
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scientific side as well as its sprawling New Mexico laboratory. Last
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year, a biography of Oppenheimer, “American Prometheus” (Knopf, 2005),
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won the Pulitzer Prize.
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“One of the most famous scientists of the 20th century,” Dr. Norris
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noted, got his start “walking these streets” and attending the nearby
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Ethical Culture School.
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Oppenheimer and his parents lived at 155 Riverside Drive, an elegant
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apartment building at West 88th Street. The superintendent, Joe
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Gugulski, said the family lived on the 11th floor, overlooking the
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Hudson River.
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“One of my tenants read the book,” Mr. Gugulski told us. “So I looked it
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up.” To his knowledge, Mr. Gugulski added, no other atomic tourists had
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visited the building.
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The Oppenheimers decorated their apartment with original artwork by
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Picasso, Rembrandt, Renoir, Van Gogh and Cézanne, according to “American
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Prometheus.” His mother encouraged young Robert to paint.
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By the late 1930s and early 1940s, blocks away at Columbia University,
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scientists were laboring to split the atom and release its titanic
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energies. We made our way across campus — with difficulty because of
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protests over the visit of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, which
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is widely suspected of harboring its own bomb program.
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Advertisement
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[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-5)
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Dr. Norris noted that the Manhattan Project led to “many of our problems
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today.”
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The Pupin Physics Laboratories housed the early atom experiments, Dr.
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Norris said. But the tall building, topped by observatory domes, has no
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plaque in its foyer describing its nuclear ties.
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Passing students and pedestrians answered “no” and “kind of” when asked
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if they knew of the atom breakthroughs at Pupin Hall. Dr. Norris said
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the Manhattan Project, at its peak, employed 700 people at Columbia. At
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one point, the football team was recruited to move tons of uranium. That
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work, he said, eventually led to the world’s first nuclear reactor.
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After lunch, we headed to West 20th Street just off the West Side
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Highway. The block, on the fringe of Chelsea, bristled with new
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galleries, and Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. On its north side,
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three tall buildings once made up the Baker and Williams Warehouses,
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which held tons of uranium.
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Two women taking a cigarette break said they had no idea of their
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building’s atomic past. “It’s horrible,” said one.
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Photo
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Dr. Norris’s “Traveler’s Guide” fact sheet said the federal government
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in the late 1980s and early 1990s cleaned the buildings of residual
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uranium. Workers removed more than a dozen drums of radioactive waste,
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according to the Department of Energy in Washington. “Radiological
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surveys show that the site now meets applicable requirements for
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unrestricted use,” a federal document said in 1995.
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We moved to Manhattan’s southern tip and worked our way up Broadway
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along the route known as the Canyon of Heroes, the scene of many
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ticker-tape parades amid the skyscrapers.
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At 25 Broadway, we visited a minor but important site — the Cunard
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Building. Edgar Sengier, a Belgian with an office here, had his company
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mine about 1,200 tons of high-grade uranium ore and store it on Staten
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Island in the shadow of the Bayonne Bridge. Though a civilian, he knew
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of the atomic possibilities and feared the invading Germans might
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confiscate his mines.
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Dr. Norris said General Groves, on his first day in charge, sent an
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assistant to buy all that uranium for a dollar a pound — or $2.5
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million. “The Manhattan Project was off to a flying start,” he said,
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adding that the Belgian entrepreneur in time supplied two-thirds of all
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the project’s uranium.
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We walked past St. Paul’s Chapel and proceeded to the soaring grandeur
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of the Woolworth Building, once the world’s tallest, at 233 Broadway.
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Advertisement
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[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-6)
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A major site, it housed a front company that devised one of the
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project’s main ways of concentrating uranium’s rare isotope — a secret
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of bomb making. On the 11th, 12th and 14th floors, the company drew on
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the nation’s scientific best and brightest, including teams from
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Columbia.
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Dr. Norris said the front company’s 3,700 employees included Klaus
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Fuchs, a Soviet spy. “He was a substantial physicist in his own right,”
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Dr. Norris said. “He contributed to the American atom bomb, the Soviet
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atom bomb and the British atom bomb.”
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So how did the Manhattan Project get its name, and why was Manhattan
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chosen as its first headquarters?
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Dr. Norris said the answer lay at our next stop, 270 Broadway. There, at
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Chambers Street, on the southwest corner, we found a nondescript
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building overlooking City Hall Park.
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It was here, Dr. Norris said, that the Army Corps of Engineers had its
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North Atlantic Division, which built ports and airfields. When the Corps
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got the responsibility of making the atom bomb, it put the headquarters
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in the same building, on the 18th floor.
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“That way he didn’t need to reinvent the wheel,” Dr. Norris said of
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General Groves. “He used what he had at his fingertips — the entire
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Corps of Engineers infrastructure.”
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Dr. Norris added that the Corps at that time included “extraordinary
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people, the best and brightest of West Point.”
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In time, the office at 270 Broadway ran not only atom research and
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materials acquisition but also the building of whole nuclear cities in
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Tennessee, New Mexico and Washington State.
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Advertisement
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[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-7)
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The first proposed name for the project, Dr. Norris said, was the
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Laboratory for the Development of Substitute Materials. But General
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Groves feared that would draw undo attention.
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Instead, General Groves called for the bureaucratically dull approach of
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adopting the standard Corps procedure for naming new regional
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organizations. That method simply noted the unit’s geographical area, as
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in the Pittsburgh Engineer District.
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So the top-secret endeavor to build the atom bomb got the most boring of
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cover names: the Manhattan Engineer District, in time shortened to the
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Manhattan Project. Unlike other Corps districts, however, it had no
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territorial limits. “He was nuts about not attracting attention,” Dr.
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Norris said.
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Manhattan’s role shrank as secretive outposts for the endeavor sprouted
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across the country and quickly grew into major enterprises. By the late
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summer of 1943, little more than a year after its establishment, the
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headquarters of the Manhattan Project moved to Oak Ridge, Tenn.
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Despite this dispersal, Dr. Norris said, scientists and businesses in
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Manhattan, including The New York Times, continued to aid the atomic
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project.
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In April 1945, General Groves traveled to the newspaper’s offices on
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West 43rd Street. He asked that a science writer, William L. Laurence,
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be allowed to go on leave to report on a major wartime story involving
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science.
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As early as 1940, before wartime secrecy, Mr. Laurence had reported on
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the atomic breakthroughs at Pupin Hall.
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Now, Dr. Norris said, Mr. Laurence went to work for the Manhattan
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Project and became the only reporter to witness the Trinity test in the
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New Mexican desert in July 1945, and, shortly thereafter, the nuclear
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bombing of Japan.
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Advertisement
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[Continue reading the main story](#story-continues-8)
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The atomic age, Mr. Laurence wrote in the first article of a series,
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began in the New Mexico desert before dawn in a burst of flame that
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illuminated “earth and sky for a brief span that seemed eternal.”
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In Manhattan, the one location that has memorialized its atomic
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connection had nothing to do with making or witnessing the bomb, but
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rather with managing to survive its fury.
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The spot is on Riverside Drive between 105th and 106th Streets. There,
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in a residential neighborhood, in front of the New York Buddhist Church,
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is a tall statue of a Japanese Buddhist monk, Shinran Shonin, who lived
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in the 12th and 13th centuries. In peasant hat and sandals, holding a
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wooden staff, the saint peers down on the sidewalk.
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The statue survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, standing a little
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more than a mile from ground zero. It was brought to New York in 1955.
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The plaque calls the statue “a testimonial to the atomic bomb
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devastation and a symbol of lasting hope for world peace.”
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The statue stands a few blocks from Columbia University, where much of
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the bomb program began.
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“I wonder how many New Yorkers know about it,” Dr. Norris said of the
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statue, “and know the history.”
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[Continue reading the main story](#whats-next)
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