Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War

Paper Info
Page count 2
Word count 567
Read time 2 min
Subject Warfare
Type Essay
Language 🇺🇸 US

This interview provides Rosemary Lane’s comprehensive account of her experiences during the Second World War in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Lane was born on September 8, 1921, in Holy Cross, Iowa. She was taken to a small Catholic school there, and when she was 18, she went to pursue nursing in Oak Park, Chicago. During the war, most of Lane’s friends and classmates decided to join the social service. Luckily, her former professor at the nursing school was called by her, who recruited her to the Manhattan Project as a nurse in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She accepted to work in that ultra-secret project to contribute to the war effort, and she started working there on August 15, 1943. The whole area was fenced and had big gates, and Lane felt lonely since her friends and family would not visit her. If there were any surprise visits, they would organize and meet at the gate, but in her case, she never had any visitors because most of her relatives lived in the Midwest.

They lived in dormitories, and they would eat in cafeterias surrounding their hostels. The place was isolated, and Lane says that the nearest town was over 28 miles away, and none of them had a car, but the project provided bus transportation for anyone wanting to go and do some shopping. In the beginning, the place was boring, but later the management of the Manhattan Project developed a recreational center, and Lane and her coworkers would listen to music and engage in various sporting activities. Initially, the hospital was small and had only 50 beds, and it had many departments. It had military doctors from all over the country, and later an outpatient department was built and staffed with all specialty doctors, but Lane fondly remembers their Nursing Director, Isabel Weber.

Rosemary Lane remembers the bombing of Hiroshima and the role the secret project played in the incident. She remembers having heard about several casualties from the tragedy and the awful destruction it caused. Oak Ridge hosted the secret base for organizing the bombing materials; uranium ore was processed in one of the plants within this project. Lane remembers most of them having a sigh of relief that the war was finally over, and she feels it was worth it to end the war that had claimed many lives and destroyed property. She does not regret the bombing because Japan had been warned on many occasions before.

Rosemary’s detailed account evokes emotions of empathy in me. They were working is a secret project that they did not have an idea it was processing uranium ore that would later be used in the Hiroshima bombing. I felt sad that the bombing even killed women and innocent children and not a part of the war. I would not have wanted to grow there because of the high risk involved in the project, but from Lane’s description of the recreational center there, it must have been a good place, full of fun. However, I am afraid the plants processing uranium ore for the bombing would have exploded and consumed all of Oak Ridge and its surroundings. Nevertheless, I would have liked to enjoy the fond outings and making many friends both at work and in the whole area. I like baseball, and I would probably have been very comfortable growing up in Oak Ridge despite the secret project’s risks.

Cite this paper

Reference

EduRaven. (2022, June 14). Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War. Retrieved from https://eduraven.com/rosemary-lanes-interview-on-the-second-world-war/

Reference

EduRaven. (2022, June 14). Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War. https://eduraven.com/rosemary-lanes-interview-on-the-second-world-war/

Work Cited

"Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War." EduRaven, 14 June 2022, eduraven.com/rosemary-lanes-interview-on-the-second-world-war/.

References

EduRaven. (2022) 'Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War'. 14 June.

References

EduRaven. 2022. "Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/rosemary-lanes-interview-on-the-second-world-war/.

1. EduRaven. "Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/rosemary-lanes-interview-on-the-second-world-war/.


Bibliography


EduRaven. "Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/rosemary-lanes-interview-on-the-second-world-war/.

References

EduRaven. 2022. "Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/rosemary-lanes-interview-on-the-second-world-war/.

1. EduRaven. "Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/rosemary-lanes-interview-on-the-second-world-war/.


Bibliography


EduRaven. "Rosemary Lane’s Interview on the Second World War." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/rosemary-lanes-interview-on-the-second-world-war/.