LAHS News:

Tinian Island historian Don Farrell will present “Fat Man: The Peacemaker” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 16 at Fuller Lodge.

His special lecture, part of the series of events commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and co-sponsored by the Los Alamos Historical Society, will deal specifically with the trials and tribulations faced by the Los Alamos team, under the code name Project Alberta, on the island of Tinian in the Pacific toward the end of World War II.

In the middle of the rainy season, the men attempted to complete scientific tests on the atomic bombs to get them ready for the successful launching on an isolated tropical island, surrounded by 400 B-29s, whose mission was to rain destruction on Japan.

On July 16, 1945, other Los Alamos scientists were testing the atomic weapon named Fat Man near White Sands, while the ill-fated USS Indianapolis dropped off parts of the atomic weapons at the island.

Don Farrell moved to Tinian in 1987 and published the first History of the Northern Mariana Islands in 1991, after having taught for ten years in Guam. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1965-1971, after having earned degrees in Biology and Secondary education in California. He is author of about dozen books about the Marianas.

His book Tinian: A Brief History, has been reissued with material from the Los Alamos Historical Society and LANL archives and is being sold at the Historical Society Book Store.