Sausalito author to discuss family’s role in atomic bomb

Sausalito resident Deborah Leah Steinberg published her book about seven years ago, but a new movie has infused it with fresh relevance.

Steinberg is the author of “Raised in the Shadow of the Bomb: Children of the Manhattan Project,” which chronicles the work of her father and her uncle in developing the atomic bomb.

Steinberg plans to discuss the book from 6 to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Falkirk Cultural Center at 1408 Mission Ave. in San Rafael. The city library is organizing the event, which is free to the public.

The event coincides with the recent release of “Oppenheimer,” a film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who led the U.S. effort to create the atomic bomb during World War II.

Steinberg’s father, Ellis Steinberg, and her uncle, Bernard Abraham, were graduate students at the University of Chicago when they and other scientists were recruited for the bomb project, according to Steinberg. Their focus was on the process of separating plutonium, she said.

Her book involves not just the work of her relatives, but the impacts of such a monumental and controversial undertaking on the children of those scientists.

“I had the feeling like I was carrying this weight around a lot of my life,” she said. “It’s part memoir, part history and part interviews of other people who had parents involved. There’s a healing process to talk to other people whose parents were brilliant scientists too.”

A group of scientists involved in the project sent President Harry Truman a petition against dropping the bombs. Steinberg says her father signed it and her uncle did not.

The United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945, killing about 100,000 people and bringing the war to an end.

Steinberg said she still feels conflicted about the bomb deployments and her family’s role in the project, but writing the book helped her gain perspective on why scientists chose to participate in the wartime effort.

“It doesn’t mean I think it’s good at all,” she said. “I think the scientists should have kept the information for themselves, but through the process of that I understand how more people ended up working on it.”

Steinberg is retired from a career in sleep medicine and counseling. She has lived in the Bay Area for about 20 years, the last three in Sausalito.

Margaret Stawowy, a librarian at the San Rafael Public Library, said she met Steinberg at an event the library held in December for self-published or independent authors.

“We felt that Steinberg had a compelling story,” Stawowy said. “She well understands the intergenerational reverberations and documented her experience and those of other children of scientists who worked on the project.”

The perspective of the book is unique and unexpected, Stawowy said.

“Nobody thinks of the effect that the development and secrecy surrounding nuclear weapons had upon the families of those scientists,” she said. “And yet, there were repercussions that they still must reconcile with.”

Steinberg’s appearance at the Falkirk center coincides with the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing. Stawowy said the event was scheduled before the release of “Oppenheimer.”

The great interest in the film will likely increase interest in the history surrounding the bomb, Stawowy said.

“Steinberg approaches her topic from a fresh, unique angle that keeps the issue current,” she said.