With funding from an EWU Eagle grant and grants from the National Park Service, EWU students are digging in to Washington State’s nuclear past.
During World War II, the Hanford Engineer Works near Richland, WA, played a crucial role in the Manhattan Project, the United States’ race with Nazi Germany to create an atomic weapon. Hanford produced the plutonium used in the Trinity atomic bomb test and the plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. Hanford’s massive reactor complex went on to produce most of the plutonium for the United States’ Cold War nuclear weapons arsenal. Today, Hanford is the nation’s largest Superfund site and the most toxic nuclear weapons facility outside of the former Soviet Union.
Hundreds of oral histories from Native Americans, Hispanic farm workers, and small-town Eastern Washington residents are giving student researchers a glimpse into how Hanford’s nuclear waste permanently harmed their health and disrupted their lives. Those students are turning these historical documents into published articles that tell the stories of Hanford’s lasting environmental legacy.
EWU History Professor, Ann Le Bar, collaborating with the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, guides this historical research.
Saul Bautista. “Working on the Hanford project was a great experience in which I got the opportunity to put my historical research skills and writing ideas to the test. It got me the chance to understand the way in which historical research is continued from one generation to the next.”