“Growing Up with the Bomb: Childhood, Health, and Family Life in the Manhattan Project” is the first in depth historical study of childhood and memory on Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Focusing specifically on the childhood perspective of the development of American domesticity at the very core of the national security state. During the Second World War, America rushed to develop the bombs to drop on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and with that thousands of workers were recruited for the Manhattan Project. Oak Ridge soon developed into a city, as when workers moved there, they also brought their families. This led to the building of homes large enough for families, schools for their children’s education and places for people to practice their worship. The reservation became this typical family site developed by the military. Yet, this perfectly constructed family site soon came to a halt, as at the end of the Manhattan Project, radioactive contamination was harming the environment and the health of its citizens, leading people to alter their innocent childhood memories.
The first chapter of this dissertation explores the creation of American domesticity through a childhood perspective, while the second chapter examines how this American domesticity within Oak Ridge has changed. This has been carefully examined through oral histories previously ignored, to include the childhood perspective into this debate, as it is the children of the Manhattan Project that have had to live with the consequences of the bomb longer. This project argues that the once thriving formation of American domesticity in Oak Ridge during the 40s’ and 50s’, ultimately failed by the end of the Manhattan Project due to the discovery of radioactive contamination, affecting their health and the environment surrounding them.
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