Commemorating Nuclear Legacies

There are few 20th century developments that redefined American life as much as the Atomic Age: from the technological contributions of decades of nuclear research and evolution of deterrence-based Cold War warfare, to the very local and devastating health and environmental impacts of the unsustainable management of hazardous nuclear waste. Due to this scope of influence, citizens have found various ways to commemorate the wide-ranging impacts of the nuclear complex, and to engage various audiences in awareness and debate over Cold War legacies. Sites of commemoration dot the landscape of the United States and beyond, and exhibit different narratives and mediums, including museums, memorials, historic parks, artworks, and events.

Narrative Frames

Commemorations have played an important role in presenting the Atomic Age through historical frameworks. Historic narratives prepared for popular atomic museums frequently depict the Cold War as a distant era with bygone mentalities and divisive ideological politics of “capitalism vs. communism.” Such presentations often zoom in on specific flashpoints and “close calls” like the Cuban Missile Crisis. The xenophobia, diversity of opinions, and destruction of the era are minimally engaged, in favor of topics like the space race, arms race, and missile gap. This archetypal framing of the Cold War as an important but long-over series of events positions the present in a relationship of indebtedness to a contained but unclear and curious old world.

A second narrative approach to the Cold War focuses on scientific and technological advancements. Such an approach typically orchestrates celebratory treatments of nuclear technology and weapons development, often presenting events, decisions, and facts as objective and value-neutral. Great men are heralded as the unquestioned leaders of American technological superiority, and ethical debates about radioactive experiments, political concerns about interventionism, and alarming environmental hazards are overlooked.

A variation of this framework foregrounds the mobilization of ordinary citizens and workers, who dedicated themselves to the nation’s call to action. Everyday life is depicted as serving the wartime agenda, with accounts of citizens ready to sacrifice their health to test and produce war equipment, ration their eating to save resources, and the like. U.S. civil defense propaganda campaigns like duck and cover drills and bunker culture are presented as unmatched feats of the American public. Such displays commemorate the “Cold War Warrior” as a model citizen that obeyed authority and served the “greater good” without dissidence.

A final narrative example confronts the controversies and protests during the Cold War era. These treatments attempt to shed light on the opposition to a broad-range of nuclear issues. Even so, they often fall into a number of rhetorical conventions, such as presenting domestic objections as NIMBYism or antiwar activism as young and idealistic counterculture. It is important to note that these treatments are rarely presented as independent accounts, but almost always complement dominant stories as the “other side” of history.   

Public Mediums

Such narratives take place through various mediums of commemoration and presentation to the public. These can include large-scale sites such as museums or historic parks, as well as small-scale and/or stand-alone sites, such as markers, monuments, community-based museums, or pieces of artwork. Commemorations are not all static; tours and events can work to convey Cold War stories in a dynamic way, just as traveling and virtual exhibitions can enhance accessibility and open up new audience engagements.

Museums, with their multiple exhibits and multifaceted use of pictures, text, and interactive displays, provide a relatively large audience with the opportunity to engage with the past. The Rocky Flats Cold War Museum, formerly located in Arvada, Colorado, is one such example. Established in the late 1990s, the Cold War-dedicated museum took physical form to commemorate the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility, which served as a prominent site for the production and machining of plutonium for the atomic bomb from 1952 to its closure. The museum displayed artifacts and objects, provided the public with archives of state and local documents from the Cold War era, gave tours to visitors and schools, and organized main exhibits; it sought to deliver a local narrative through sharing the stories of workers with that of a global understanding of Colorado’s role in the Cold War. In spite of the vicissitudes of the museum as a physical space, the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum continues to display oral histories, timelines, photo-documentation, and exhibits virtually.

Sometimes sites themselves become the arena of public commemoration. The National Park Service and Department of Energy have joined forces to create the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, which includes three sites: Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Hanford, Washington. Each of these sites have a combination of historic buildings, museums, or memorials available for visitors to explore. This multi-sited historical park offers various narratives in an attempt to present multiple sides of the nuclear complex’s story, including politics, science, ethics, national security, and the daily life of workers. The National Park Service aims to “U.S. National Park Service, “Manhattan Project National Historical Park: Los Alamos, New Mexico," accessed August 15, 2020, https://www.nps.gov/mapr/index.htm.[tell] the story about the people, the events, and the science and engineering that led to the creation of the atomic bomb, which helped end World War II.”

Furthermore, organizations and historical sites have established tours and events to help share the story of the U.S.’s nuclear complex. In Los Alamos, the National Park Service, Department of Energy, and Los Alamos County worked together to create a Los Alamos Walking Tour. This walking tour takes visitors past different museums, historic sites, memorials, and art that are significant to the Cold War community of Los Alamos, such as the Los Alamos History Museum and the Oppenheimer and Groves Sculpture. While tours focus on specific locations, mass events, such as remembrance days, can potentially reach a broader national audience. The organization Cold War Patriots advocated for a National Day of Remembrance to honor the Cold War workers who risked their lives to work on nuclear weapons for the purposes of national security. The Senate in 2009 passed a resolution that effectively made October 30th a national day for nuclear weapons and uranium workers that Cold War Patriots, “National Day of Remembrance," accessed August 15, 2020.“honors and recognizes the men and women who enhanced our nation’s security.”

Other commemorative formats include interpretive single objects, like a monument, smaller-scale site installations, or piece of artwork. These works can potentially galvanize more “charged” forms of commemoration of the past as controversial, ambiguous, and open to interpretation. For instance, the late Ed Grothus created a compound near Los Alamos known as The Black Hole, where he arranged antinuclear art. The Obelisk Project, one of these artworks, consists of two 40 foot tall obelisks with engraved text that warns its viewers about the dangers of nuclear weapons. Artist James Acord also used his unique talent of combining radioactive materials with stone carving to create Shiloh Krupar, Hot Spotter's Report: Military Fables of Toxic Waste (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 266-269.sculptures that advocate for the repurposing of the nuclear complex for metallurgical craft and material arts and sciences rather than warhead production. His sculpture Monstrance for a Grey Horse, installed at Southwestern University in Texas, seeks to warn individuals about nuclear waste and capture the tragic longevity and potential somber beauty of waste containerization as a practice and object.

Commemorating Rocky Flats: A Triptych

Within Colorado, commemorations of Rocky Flats have taken a variety of forms beyond the museum format, including markers, land-art installations, and stand-alone pieces of art that pointedly criticize the site’s history and nuclear waste clean up process. John Craig Freeman, for example, protested the site’s role in the nuclear weapons complex and mismanagement by displaying 11 awareness-raising billboards near Rocky Flats that demanded a more thorough remediation of the facility. One of his billboards read: “Building More Bombs Is a Nuclear Waste.” Reflecting on why he used billboards situated on popular roadways near the site for his art and criticism, Freeman has stated: Margot Lovejoy, Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age (Routledge, 2004), 84.“If people are too busy to go to the gallery or museum, it makes sense to bring art to them.”

Another Rocky Flats-based example, Jeff Gipe’s sculpture Cold War Horse depicts a life-sized horse in an emergency-red hazmat suit with a respirator over its muzzle standing solemnly near the original Rocky Flats site. Gipe, who grew up near the site and whose father now suffers from serious health conditions after working there for 20 years, aims to educate a larger audience about the largely untold history of contamination and health and environmental damage caused by Colorado’s nuclear facilities. A week after installation, the sculpture was knocked down and hammered. This act of vandalism along with sculpture's ability to garner national attention demonstrate the significant role that commemorations can play in challenging dominant narratives of the Cold War and revealing the ongoing legacies of the nuclear complex. Gipe has also organized and curated several exhibitions in Colorado of artworks that investigate the complex social, environmental, and political-economic effects of the Cold War and the ongoing presence and challenges of Rocky Flats to the future of the Front Range.

As part of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center and Naropa University, the Nuclear Guardianship program similarly endeavors to maintain knowledge and debate about the meaning of Rocky Flats and its remains. The Nuclear Guardianship website digitally archives technical resources as well as cultural artifacts that educate the public about the Rocky Flats site. The program publishes videos, articles, and educational material to commemorate Rocky Flats and, perhaps more centrally, to prevent development on its grounds. This latter point has been a matter of high contention at times, due to proposed real estate projects looking to develop the former nuclear waste site into a See, for example, the controversy and subsequent activism surrounding the Candelas housing development.residential area, as well as ongoing plans to build large roads and visitor facilities and trails on the former site that is now administered as a wildlife refuge.

This sample of the wide-ranging narrative themes and forms of commemoration of the Cold War and the nuclear complex demonstrates the diverse interpretations of this aspect of United States history and the complexity of considerations of our nuclear past and future.

Sources

Cold War Patriots. “National Day of Remembrance." Accessed August 15, 2020.

Kanouse, Sarah, and Shiloh Krupar. The National Cold War Monuments and Environmental Heritage Trail. Champaign, IL: National TLC Service, 2013. Accessed August 15, 2020.

Lovejoy, Margot. Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age. New York: Routlege, 2004.

Naropa University. “Nuclear Guardianship." Accessed August 15, 2020.

Paglia, Michael. "Vandals Damage a Powerful and Politicized Sculpture Near Rocky Flats." Westword, September 9, 2015. Accessed August 15, 2020.

Rocky Flats Cold War Museum. "Exhibits." Accessed August 15, 2020.

Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. "Who We Are." Accessed August 15, 2020.

U.S. National Park Service. “Manhattan Project National Historical Park." Accessed August 15, 2020.

"Warning of the Cold War Horse." ESPIONART. April 26, 2016. Accessed August 15, 2020.