Swords to
Plowshares
The Forties
half century after the fact, even those who were
there--a part of the events--have irretrievably lost details, nuances,
even the dreadful intensity of the experience; those who weren't there
cannot begin to grasp the fear and urgency in all their enormity. 
To say that war raged across much of the
world would be coldly abstract; to say that millions had died and
millions more were yet to die is nearly as abstract, leaving out as it
does the real suffering of real people. Amid all the pain and fear came an even darker
omen, one known only to a relative handful of people: physicists
knowledgeable enough to see the implications of the discovery of
uranium fission in 1939 by two German scientists. The fissioning, or
splitting, of uranium's nucleus could unleash energy of unprecedented
might and destructiveness, these physicists realized, if it could be
harnessed for a bomb. Scientifically, Germany had a head start;
pragmatically, with the 1940 conquest of Belgium, Hitler appeared
poised to tap the abundant uranium ore of the Belgian Congo. But first things must come first. To
understand the story of Oak Ridge fully--that is to say, to grasp not
just the facts but also the deeper truths and symbols--you must first
know the story of John Hendrix, a mystic who roamed the East Tennessee
woods around the turn of the century, more than 40 years before Oak
Ridge existed. One day, after weeks
of absence, Hendrix reappeared at a crossroads store and told a group
of neighbors he'd seen a startling vision. ``In the woods, as I lay on the ground and looked
up into the sky, there came to me a voice as loud and as sharp as
thunder,'' Hendrix reported. ``The voice told me to sleep with my head
on the ground for 40 nights and I would be shown visions of what the
future holds for this land.... And I tell you, Bear Creek Valley
someday will be filled with great buildings and factories, and they
will help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be. And there
will be a city on Black Oak Ridge.... Big engines will dig big ditches,
and thousands of people will be running to and fro. They will be
building things, and there will be great noise and confusion and the
earth will shake.'' ``I've seen
it,'' he concluded. ``It's coming.'' And so it was.
Swords to
Plowshares
The Forties
Date posted 5/10/94 (cel)