The Firecracker Boys is back; movie "in development"

An interview with the author, Dan O'Neill

By Susan B. Andrews and John Creed - Originally published in 1994 by St. Martin's Press, The Firecracker Boys was recently reissued by Basic Books (New York).

www.firecrackerboys.com

O'Neill is also the author of The Last Giant of Beringia and A Land Gone Lonesome. He was interviewed recently by Susan Andrews and John Creed, who are journalism/humanities professors at the University of Alaska's Kotzebue-based Chukchi College in Northwest Alaska. The subject of The Firecracker Boys is Project Chariot, a nuclear blast that was to take place on Alaska's Northwest Arctic coast in the early 1960s.

The Firecracker Boys is one of the most discussed books in Alaska history. It's on everybody's list of the most important books ever published on our state. Did you know when you started it would have such an impact?

I did think it was a great story and a generally unknown one, even among long-time Alaskans. It looked to me like a story that had been, in a sense, deliberately buried, which further sparked my interest to dig it out and shine some light on it. I assumed that if I did a good job, people would find it as interesting as I had.

Briefly, what is The Firecracker Boys all about?

It's about Project Chariot, a scheme by the federal government to create a deep-water harbor on Alaska's Northwest Arctic coast in the late 1950s and early 1960s by detonating up to six thermonuclear bombs. In 1958, Edward Teller-the Father of the H-bomb-came up to Alaska and proposed to excavate an instant harbor up near Point Hope by burying a string of H-bombs and touching them off. Almost the whole state signed on. With enthusiasm! Except the people of Point Hope and a few scientists and conservationists. To put it glibly, the firecracker boys came up here with nuclear bombs in their back pockets, and they were faced down by guys with harpoons. To be serious, the story illustrates pretty well the dangers of secret and unaccountable science when it is abetted by a historically sycophantic press and self-serving business interests. But it also shows the power of a dedicated grassroots protest armed with facts.

Was it easy to sell to a New York publisher?

Actually, it was easy to sell it in New York. But that is far from the usual case. When the author is an Alaskan and he is writing about Alaska, it always seems to raise a cautionary flag labeled "regional interest." A national publisher will tend to think such a book must be more suited to a "regional publisher."

That's why so many books on Alaska are conceived and written by people freshly up from Outside. They're here briefly on assignment. You know, it's, "Fly low, I'm writing a book." I was very lucky. The first literary agent I approached took me on, and the first publisher to see the book proposal made an offer.

The book is a sort of historical exposé, as you suggest. To what extent were you motivated to expose "evil doers," to use a current term? And why stir up and inflame old controversies long since put to rest?

First of all, I think everybody is a mixture of wonderful qualities and silly foibles. So it's more honest to render people who may have done foolish things as also possessing admirable traits, and to render people who showed better judgment as not wholly perfect. It's not only true, it makes for better drama. I tried to do that. So, nobody is all "evil doer."

But I also had a guideline that I followed. It was this. If the thing I uncovered was, let's say, highly unflattering to a person or an institution, but met three criteria, I put it in the book. The three criteria were: it had to be true, important, and unknown. "True" meant that I had to have good, solid evidence. "Important" meant that publicizing it should have value to society-should help us learn a lesson and take us farther. Its value as a lesson simply overrode any embarrassment to the perpetrator. And finally, it had to be news. I mean, if the thing was A) true and B) important, but already widely known, then why bother?

Also-and to the core of your question-I happen to think that history and journalism are important work. And both enterprises are premised on discovering and publicizing the truth about what happened. I don't apologize for doing that.

We estimate the book has something like 1,500 footnotes. How long did it take you to do the research and writing, and how did you eat in the meanwhile?

Seven years, actually. Well, let's see, over the course of seven years I probably spent-rough guess-four full-time years at work on it. I had a grant from the Alaska Humanities Forum, so I got paid for some of the research. It was a nice grant, but the work took so long that minimum wage would have been a raise.

The publishing contract brought an advance-which was $10,000, minus the agent's 15 percent, so $8,500. That covered the next year-and-a-half while I did the actual writing. On the one hand the finances I just described are absurd. On the other, that's the nature of this kind of work. I shot moose and grew potatoes. I'd built my own house-no debt.

We noticed you made a lot of use of oral history in your research. Is there a reason for that?

Yeah. For one thing, you know, not everybody is going to write their memoirs. But most people will talk about their lives into a tape recorder, even for a couple of hours. So, it allows historians and writers to include people who otherwise aren't given much attention in formal historical writing. In that way, it democratizes history, opens it up to more perspectives.

Also, oral history accounts are often much more obtainable than the paper record. Government agencies that deal with defense, intelligence, and nuclear matters operate in a profound culture of secrecy. Much of our historical record is needlessly classified-hidden from scholars and writers and filmmakers-and not for legitimate national security reasons. Occasionally, you can prove that the agencies classify to protect their public image-and their budget-by concealing from the public the more embarrassing or incriminating episodes in their history. And this has gotten much, much worse under Bush, of course.

You have a new subtitle ("H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement") and a new cover. What else is new? Have you added much to the original text?

Yes, there's new material; things have happened. The decision to deploy National Missile Defense interceptors in Alaska, for example, happened after the book came out in 1994. It, like Project Chariot, is a Teller-inspired, Alaska-based, nuclear-bomb-related, hugely expensive, high-tech boondoggle. It fit right in, so wrote a section on it.

People died since the book first came out: Teller, William Wood. Other things, like the Amchitka workers' successful plea for government compensation.

And I wrote a bit in the methodology section about the increased secrecy under Bush. It's unprecedented in our history. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was lucky to have been writing during the Clinton administration. Clinton was instructing his people to declassify documents. I'm not sure I could have written this book during the current administration.

Also, I think that if you do anything steadily for thirteen years you get better at it. I've become a better writer. So, I went through the whole thing and tweaked the prose. And I got the benefit of a good edit from my new publisher. And then a copy edit after that. Every stage improved it further.

Oh, one more big thing. The footnotes were originally done in such a way that they were very difficult to use. Now that's fixed.

We understand there is some interest in Hollywood. A feature Film? Leonardo DiCaprio?

Yeah, it's "in development," as they say. At HBO in association with Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appien Way. I understand they have a script that the moguls like and are showing to directors. Also, they've attached an actress who is both a Native and has deep Alaskan roots-Q'Orianka Kilcher. She played Pocahontas in the movie The New World. Part of the Kilcher clan from down Kachemak Bay. Cousin to Jewel.

Do you think the chances are good the movie will get made?

I don't know but I have this daydream: One day my neighbors see a white stretch-limo coming up my gravel road, and there's three or four certified Hollywood bimbos hanging out the skylight-hanging out of everything-raucous, spilling champagne. And there's this scruffy, gray-bearded guy in there in a ratty flannel shirt. That'll be me.

Meanwhile, you're going to launch the reissue with some speaking engagements around the state?

Yes, I was at Gulliver's in Fairbanks on Oct. 26, then Title Wave in Anchorage on October 30th, at Old Inlet Books in Homer on November 1st, and at Fireside Books in Palmer on the 2nd. Then I'm going to Nome and Kotzebue on Nov. 5, 6 & 7. The National Park Service and the University of Alaska are bringing me out. I'm very excited about that. The last time I was in Nome was 25 years ago, and I went there by dog sled with my wife Sarah from Fairbanks. It will be good to talk to the people out there.

Published on AlaskaReport.com on November 3, 2007

Susan B. Andrews and John Creed are humanities professors at the University of Alaska's branch campus in Kotzebue, located 26 miles above the Arctic Circle in Northwest Alaska. Susan Andrews is a former news director and evening news co-anchor at KTVF-Channel 11 in Fairbanks, John Creed a former reporter for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

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