Robert Jacobs (Professor)
1. Outline
During this project I was able to gather significant oral histories from archives and from interviews that I conducted myself, all related to American hibakusha. I visited oral history archives of the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado where the United States fashioned manufactured plutonium into nuclear weapon cores during the Cold War, and also existing archives of the Nevada Test Site housed in the Nuclear Weapon Testing Museum in Las Vegas. I also conducted oral history interviews with downwinders of the Nevada Test Site and also of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where the United States manufactured most of its plutonium in nuclear reactors. I also then conducted oral history interviews with members of the National Association of Atomic Veterans, an advocacy group for former US military personnel who participated in nuclear weapon tests.
2. Contributions
These oral histories will help me to complete primary sections of the book manuscript that I am currently completing on my research as part of the Global Hibakusha Project, and what this research has shown about the history of the Cold War. The book is currently under contract to Yale University Press and is expected in print in 2021.