New park offers glimpse at life working on the Manhattan Project
'It was a very serious time, and it was a matter of survival, really,' service member says
In the early 1940s, Roger Rasmussen embarked on a mysterious mission. He didn't know where he was going and ended up in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
"Nobody told us exactly what we were working on but it didn't take us long to figure out," Rasmussen said.
Rasmussen, scientists and other service members quickly realized they were working on the world's first nuclear bombs, which would eventually be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II.
Now, 70 years later, Rasmussen returned for the formal opening of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. It includes three sites: Hanford, Washington; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Los Alamos, New Mexico.
It's designed to help people understand how it felt to live in America back then.
"It was a very serious time and it was a matter of survival, really," Rasmussen said.
At each site visitors can walk through the historic spots, take tours and hear the Japanese perspective. Rasmussen said years after the bombs were dropped there were a lot of people who weren't happy with him or the other people who worked on the Manhattan Project.
But he said knowing what it did for the country made it worthwhile.
"You do what you have to do," he said. "Whatever is in your lifespan, you do that. It's just life."