John Ruminer
SALA News:
“The Decision to Drop the Bomb”, a presentation and conversation with John Ruminer and Nancy Bartlit Will be featured 7 p.m., Saturday, July 22, 2023 at SALA’s Oppenheimer Festival.
We are approaching 80 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and there continues to be debate over the necessity of using atomic bombs against Japan. Some argue strongly that the bombs ended the war and avoided an invasion that would have cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives. Others question that assumption, claiming that Japan was trying to surrender and the war would have ended without an invasion. This lecture will present historical arguments on both sides of the issue and will also give a perspective on how the Japanese expected the war to end.
Following the lecture there will be ample opportunity for questions, comments, and further conversation.
John Ruminer grew up in Los Alamos in the early 1950s when it was still a closed town. After high school he attended college at NMSU and the University of Michigan, where he received a PhD in Engineering Mechanics. After five years employment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, he moved back to Los Alamos with his family. There he began a rewarding thirty-year career with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Since retirement John has been an active volunteer with numerous nonprofit organizations. He frequently lectures and publishes on the histories of Los Alamos and Santa Fe. He has served as a docent, tour guide, and board of directors for the Los Alamos Historical Society. For 15 years he was responsible for the repair and maintenance of local historic properties, including the Romero Cabin, the Hans Bethe House, and the J Robert Oppenheimer House. John is now an active member of the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee.
Nancy R. Bartlit
Historian Nancy R. Bartlit presents, authors, preserves, publishes, and relates the WWII history of New Mexico, Japan, and Los Alamos to each other. Teaching in Japan thirteen years after the end of World War II (1958-60) began her lifelong visiting, attending, and connecting events and experiences between America and Asia. A champion of person and place in the telling of history, Nancy interviewed New Mexico WWII Navajo, National Guard, and Manhattan Project veterans as well as befriending a survivor of the Santa Fe Internment Camp for Japanese American males. Those stories appear in her book with Ev Rogers, Silent Voices of WWII.
Besides sharing these experiences for almost two decades while traveling to Pacific WWII battle sites, she stewarded Los Alamos’s iconic statues of Groves and Oppenheimer, oversaw the Historical Society’s purchase of Oppie’s Wartime house, and lobbied for ten years to preserve the Manhattan Project history through a National Park. She serves her community (former Chairman of the County Council and former Historical Society President) on the county’s Historic Preservation Advisory Board. Her company Pajarito Press LLC produces award winning books.
