Greenspun and other city elders tried to allay fear and generate buzz to keep visitors coming to Vegas and parking along Highway 95 to watch the tests. One of their solutions was âMiss Atomic Bomb of 1957,â aka Lee Merlin, a beaming bathing beauty whose outstretched arms welcomed fellow Americans to Vegas, her swimsuit covered demurely by a mushroom cloud.
Even after our family left Vegas for Miami Beach and then Los Angeles, my fascination with all things nuclear continued. I tore labels off Kix cereal boxes to send away for atomic bomb rings and other nuclear paraphernalia. Mom drew the line on Christmas tree ornaments, refusing to let me order the silver bulbs decorated with symbols of the atom. Christmas was about peace, not death. She also nixed the salt and pepper shakers that topped the Formica breakfast tables of many Vegas families: Fat Man and Little Boy, Americaâs bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There was little debate about President Trumanâs decision to drop âthe Bomb,â never mind two. Analysts declared that the use of nuclear weapons had forced Japan to surrender and saved a million American soldiers. Many Americans like me grew up believing that stockpiles of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons were unsettling, but essential. Only decades later did I begin to doubt their utility, and the secrecy surrounding them.
In 2005, when I went to Las Vegas to write an article for the Times about the new Atomic Testing Museum, I was flooded with memories. The museum featured a collection of the iconic postcards that had drawn a record number of tourists to Las Vegas. My favorite was a black-and-white photo of the mushroom cloud rising behind Wilbur Clarkâs Desert Innâthe D.I., as everyone called it. I tasted my first cocktail there: a Shirley Temple with two cherries. At bars at the Sahara, the Flamingo, the Dunes, and the Sands, tourists and residents had sampled other âAtomic Cocktailsâ from the recipe book my mother favored, Mixed Drinks for Modern Times .
I was fascinated by a blowup from the June 21, 1952, edition of Collierâs magazine. A dozen children were lying facedown in a schoolyard, hands cupped over their heads, abandoned bikes nearby. âA is for Atom,â the cover declared. I instantly recalled the drills at John S. Park Elementary. We âatomic kidsâ sure knew how to protect ourselves against âthe big one.â
In the 1950s, most Americans trusted the government. Las Vegas was proud of its status as the capital of skin and sin. Vegas glorified the testing program and the scientists and technicians who worked at the Nevada Test Site, barely noticing that they had less and less interaction with the cityâs residents. Many of them would relocate for months on end to a top-secret test site town, appropriately named Mercury.
I spent the night in Mercury when I visited NTS as a Times reporter after 9/11 to report on the nationâs biodefense and nuclear weapons complex. It was almost as empty as the growing list of Nevada ghost towns. Its pool hall, bowling alley, and movie theater, where scientists and other weaponeers once relaxed, were closed.
The Testing Museum displayed photographs of life at the site. By 2005, we had learned disturbing information about the tests. âHarryâ was part of an eleven-shot testing series called Operation Upshot-Knothole. Beginning on March 17, 1953, and ending June 4, the climax was a sixty-one-kiloton test aptly called âClimax.â The eleven blasts unleashed a total force of over 250 kilotons in less than three monthsâabout twenty times that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Several of its âdirtyâ blasts had rained radioactive debris on the sparsely populated downwind towns of southernUtah and Nevada, according to an early, comprehensive account of the testing, killing about 25 percent of the sheep. 5
In 1982, in a wrongful death suit filed
Even after our family left Vegas for Miami Beach and then Los Angeles, my fascination with all things nuclear continued. I tore labels off Kix cereal boxes to send away for atomic bomb rings and other nuclear paraphernalia. Mom drew the line on Christmas tree ornaments, refusing to let me order the silver bulbs decorated with symbols of the atom. Christmas was about peace, not death. She also nixed the salt and pepper shakers that topped the Formica breakfast tables of many Vegas families: Fat Man and Little Boy, Americaâs bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There was little debate about President Trumanâs decision to drop âthe Bomb,â never mind two. Analysts declared that the use of nuclear weapons had forced Japan to surrender and saved a million American soldiers. Many Americans like me grew up believing that stockpiles of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons were unsettling, but essential. Only decades later did I begin to doubt their utility, and the secrecy surrounding them.
In 2005, when I went to Las Vegas to write an article for the Times about the new Atomic Testing Museum, I was flooded with memories. The museum featured a collection of the iconic postcards that had drawn a record number of tourists to Las Vegas. My favorite was a black-and-white photo of the mushroom cloud rising behind Wilbur Clarkâs Desert Innâthe D.I., as everyone called it. I tasted my first cocktail there: a Shirley Temple with two cherries. At bars at the Sahara, the Flamingo, the Dunes, and the Sands, tourists and residents had sampled other âAtomic Cocktailsâ from the recipe book my mother favored, Mixed Drinks for Modern Times .
I was fascinated by a blowup from the June 21, 1952, edition of Collierâs magazine. A dozen children were lying facedown in a schoolyard, hands cupped over their heads, abandoned bikes nearby. âA is for Atom,â the cover declared. I instantly recalled the drills at John S. Park Elementary. We âatomic kidsâ sure knew how to protect ourselves against âthe big one.â
In the 1950s, most Americans trusted the government. Las Vegas was proud of its status as the capital of skin and sin. Vegas glorified the testing program and the scientists and technicians who worked at the Nevada Test Site, barely noticing that they had less and less interaction with the cityâs residents. Many of them would relocate for months on end to a top-secret test site town, appropriately named Mercury.
I spent the night in Mercury when I visited NTS as a Times reporter after 9/11 to report on the nationâs biodefense and nuclear weapons complex. It was almost as empty as the growing list of Nevada ghost towns. Its pool hall, bowling alley, and movie theater, where scientists and other weaponeers once relaxed, were closed.
The Testing Museum displayed photographs of life at the site. By 2005, we had learned disturbing information about the tests. âHarryâ was part of an eleven-shot testing series called Operation Upshot-Knothole. Beginning on March 17, 1953, and ending June 4, the climax was a sixty-one-kiloton test aptly called âClimax.â The eleven blasts unleashed a total force of over 250 kilotons in less than three monthsâabout twenty times that of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Several of its âdirtyâ blasts had rained radioactive debris on the sparsely populated downwind towns of southernUtah and Nevada, according to an early, comprehensive account of the testing, killing about 25 percent of the sheep. 5
In 1982, in a wrongful death suit filed
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