Library panel puts the spotlight back on Hanford and its effects

“On this street designed by idealists

neighbors lead parallel lives

though at work

one wears ties

one whites

one calculates exposure

one is exposed…”

Simple and vivid, these lines from the poem “Map of Childhood” by Richland poet Kathleen Flenniken allow readers to step into life in the midst of Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s plutonium production. It is one of many poems in her collection titled, “Plume” and one of many other written works that explore the relationship between Hanford’s incredible scientific history and the human experiences surrounding it.

It is this dynamic between the stories and the histories of Hanford’s nuclear program that will be featured in a panel discussion at the Central Library on Saturday from 3 to 4:30 p.m., bringing together four writers who have explored Hanford from the factual and the personal.

Authors Trisha Pritikin, Kay Smith-Blum and James Patrick Thomas, alongside renowned former Spokesman-Review journalist Karen Dorn Steele, will join in conversation moderated by Eastern Washington University professor of history, Dr. Ann Le Bar.

Pritikin published “The Hanford Plaintiffs: Voices from the Fight for Atomic Justice,” in 2020. It is an account informed by a lifetime of personal and community illness caused by the site’s downwind spread of radiation. As an advocate and lawyer of her fellow downwinders, she collected stories and evidence, culminating in a full picture of the vast public health betrayal that took place in central Washington.

When news proliferated about the recent waste leaks at the Hanford site, Smith-Blum felt a story emerge. Her debut novel, “Tangles,” follows a young scientist’s suspenseful journey as evidence of nuclear waste surfaces all around him despite government efforts for secrecy.

“Atomic Pilgrim: How Walking Thousands of Miles for Peace Led to Uncovering Some of America’s Darkest Nuclear Secrets” is the title of Thomas’s life story, following his journey of over 6,700 miles walked for the end of the arms race and the decades he spent afterward uncovering the reach of Hanford’s toxic impact.

It was in July 1985 when The Spokesman-Review published Dorn Steele’s report of a region coined the “Death Mile,” 11 miles east of Hanford, that had been marked by an alarming concentration of cancer occurrences. This was only the beginning of her work that would uncover the truth of the “Green Run,” a secret experiment conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission and the U.S. Air Force in 1949 to test the travel of radiation through the air.

Although her focus is not American history, Le Bar became interested in the history of Hanford in part due to her students, many of whom hail from the Tri-Cities area but have surprisingly little knowledge of its nuclear history. As a region with such critical oral histories, she found it an opportunity to teach the value of personal account and historical interpretation.

Each have different backgrounds and approaches, but were all captivated by the same events. Hanford’s history continues to be up for discussion.

“We’re coming at these topics from a lot of different perspectives, which I think is one of the things that’s going to make this panel really valuable,” said Le Bar.

“I think the public will get an interesting insight, not only into the debates about Hanford’s past, but why novelists are still writing about it,” said Dorn Steele.

Hanford stands in history as the site that developed the plutonium needed to create the “Fat Man” bomb, which the United States dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. But its ramifications are still part of Washington’s present, as well as its future.

“We are now a community that lives in the shadow of nuclear waste and nuclear power, and we will never not be that. And the presence of Hanford as a very toxic and hugely problematic site – that’s not going away. Our state budgets have to be spent on it, people have to be protected from it, the water of the Columbia River and the groundwater in the region has to be constantly monitored, because there are leaking tanks. All of those realities shape the choices that Washingtonians can make about their collective future,” said Le Bar.

For a subject of such grave impact, Hanford doesn’t get as much attention as it used to.

“I think the spotlight has been taken off Hanford, and I think we need to know more about what’s going on down there,” said Dorn Steele.

But it has not evaded the interest of Washington’s storytellers, and their imaginations have helped reconnect Hanford’s history with today’s public conscience.

“Narrative engages our emotions. If we empathize with a character and their situation in a story, we can better reimagine the historical setting,” said Sharma Shields, writing education specialist at Spokane Public Library and author of “The Cassandra,” a historical fiction novel set at Hanford in the 1940s.

“Hanford is a big subject to discuss and I’m glad so many people are discussing it in so many different narrative forms,” Shields said.

“Personal perspectives that are informed by experiences and facts, that’s what history is. That’s what holds our stories together, is how we as individuals emotionally and intellectually process what’s happening. When you read fiction, poetry, and memoir, you get foreground, you get the emotional and intellectual processing that individuals do,” Le Bar said.

The Hanford story is complex, bound up in national pride for scientific innovation as well as anti-government sentiment for its public deceit.

“I think there’s a number of lessons that can be learned from Hanford, and one is the bigger lesson of, you know, we’re capable as a nation of unprecedented technological feats … And then, also I think, at least I learned, a lot of people learned, that unchecked power in a mission-driven bureaucracy can lead to cover-ups and harm, and just basically hubris,” Dorn Steele said.

Shields said there is a lot to discuss, including violence, power, secrecy and health.

“I hope we all ask ourselves, ‘Where are we complicit? And where do we want to change so we can build a safer world?’” she said.

In an interview last week, Le Bar said a downwinder told them, “I believe in nuclear power. I think that developing the bomb was the right thing. But I’m also sorry, very sorry, about what the government did to us.”

In addition to the panel discussion, the Central Library currently houses an exhibit showcasing archival materials on Hanford, including clippings of the reports that brought light to the health concerns of the region. Auntie’s Bookstore and Latah Books will be available during the event for book sales. To learn more visit spokanelibrary.org or call (509) 444-5300.