Hanford: The Secret City

If you were to return to your hometown one day and found yourself standing outside a giant, armed security gate, what would you do?  How would you feel if you were turned away and told you couldn’t cross into your old neighborhood or see your former house because it was no longer there?  This would have been the scenario that greeted several returning veterans who made their way back to the grassy plains of the Hanford and White Bluffs town sites in Eastern Washington in 1945, as the last stages of WWII were drawing to a close.  With nothing but censored communication from their friends and families back home, these men, who had fought and served their country, would have had no idea what was happening back on the home front.  And the truth was, until August 9, 1945, most Americans would not have known what had happened to these towns.  The secret city that replaced these towns sustained an integral piece of the Manhattan Project, however, it was at the expense of the homes and livelihoods of the residents of this area along the Columbia River.

All that remains today is the charred skeleton of the Hanford High School, the White Bluffs Bank building, and the overgrown outlines of formerly busy roads leading to homes, businesses, and communities that are no longer there.   This small corner of the world has been all but forgotten by history and nearly overshadowed by the legacy of the atomic bomb that was built at this site during the war.   I want to tell this story, to bring it to light, and to explore what the people involved, from both sides of the scenario, would have felt and experienced during those tumultuous, tense, and dark war years.  What would have motivated the federal decision makers to evict these citizens from their land and take such drastic measures?  How did they decide on these 500 square miles of desert earth when they had so much land in the continental United States to choose from?  And how did these people continue on with their lives? They had given up sons, brothers, father, and husbands just like every other household in America.  Was it not enough to ration their lifestyles, buy war bonds, support the draft, and be good, conscientious citizens?  Must they also give up their own land, shelter, their means for income and survival? 

I first began asking these questions as a young high school student growing up in the Tri-Cities in eastern WA.  My family had been working for three generations at the nuclear site that was built on top of the land where the original Hanford and White Bluffs town sites were located, so I had the unique opportunity to visit the site itself. I was able to go beyond the gates to view the remains of what was once a thriving community of homesteaders with a pioneering spirit, and was immediately struck by the derelict, crumbling ruins of the Hanford High School.  The building itself was destroyed by fire and only the shell remains today, however, it makes an ominous and imposing silhouette against the river meandering by. The lone remains stand stark against the tawny, brown colors of the prairie landscape and the lack of trees only highlight the fact that it is the only structure for miles.  This sight made a big impression on me at that young age, because it was so strange and unexpected to find amidst the white domes of the nuclear reactors and government facilities.  This strange evidence of a former way of life was literally begging for questions to be answered and a story to be told.