Will Nagasaki’s story be told at Hanford’s new national park?

The Hanford B Reactor, which produced the plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, has been open to group tours since 2009. It is now part of Manhattan Project National Historical Park, which also includes sites in New Mexico and Tennessee. 

National Park Service officials want exhibits to explore not only the high-stakes push to produce the bombs — dropped Aug. 6, 1945, on Hiroshima and three days later on Nagasaki — but the human costs and historical debate over the decision to unleash them.

A document released this year outlines basic themes for Manhattan Project National Historical Park, which in Hanford offers tours of a shuttered reactor and other sites. But it’s expected to take years to develop exhibits with artifacts and oral histories. Funds are tight, with sites in three states this year sharing a $680,000 budget.

Aside from money, this park also will take the political will to follow through with an ambitious agenda that includes exploring the darker side of the bomb. ...

“From the very beginning, we made a commitment that this would be a complete story, not only of the (bombs’) development but also their deployment,” said Jonathan Jarvis, who served as Park Service director until January this year. “There were some who thought that this was going to be a glorification of nuclear weapons. We wanted to … disabuse anybody of thinking that was our intent.”