BY LOU RICCIUTI
Aside from the heart-string-tugging stories of the veterans, their families, their lives and sacrifices, Michelle Ann Kratts’ Niagara Falls in World War II is technically a historical fiction at best. Single-sourced references scream that this book was rushed, or more accurately perhaps “pushed” as the author stated in a recent interview.
In doing so, this amateur attempt at documenting military-industrial activities here at Niagara Falls, is riddled with historic and technical inaccuracies regarding Niagara’s participation in the Manhattan A-bomb Project.
For example: Carborundum produced or handled less than < 5000 pounds of radioactive materials and is listed in the book as a predominant local facility for the Manhattan Project. While Union Carbide’s “Electrometallurgical Works” located at 47th St. & Royal Ave., Niagara Falls, NY, handled and produced literally hundreds of thousands of pounds of Uranium metal — and is listed by the government as the free world’s largest production center for these materials.
On the subject of the company known as Electromet, the author devotes but four sentences. Another interesting aside from a link associated with this book, and a subject that I have written about in the past: The Carborundum building on Buffalo Avenue that was demolished now about a decade past or so, under the Elia administration, without permits or any environmental oversight, is one-in-the-same that handled PLUTONIUM with known and documented releases at this site.
I apologize for ‘panning’ this book but when there are so many glaring errors, contradictions and connections to politicians, including, mayor Paul Dyster, as well as the use of unattributed (plagiarized) research information, the book needs to be looked at perhaps with a very different “eye” and viewpoint — one that perhaps this is an “Orwellian history” being rewritten right before our very eyes!
After reading the first few pages and select passages of the “work,” I wish that I hadn’t spent the $6.75 for the E-book.” Dear Ms. Kratts: I’d like a full refund.
Lou Ricciuti is an environmental activist and investigative journalist who has published extensively on the nuclear waste crisis that has engulfed the City of Niagara Falls.
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