Interesting stuff from the New York Times.

John Ismay
Staff writer

Dear reader,

Since 1943, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in the Mojave Desert has served as a testing ground for the Navy’s research and development of munitions. Karen Piper spent part of her childhood there, from 1971 to 1982, amid the explosions, the roar of low-flying jet aircraft and the secrecy that came with her parents’ jobs. The base was closed to outsiders, but its million-acre expanse was a playground for Piper, her sister and their friends. Now a professor of English at the University of Missouri, Piper has folded stories from her childhood at China Lake into a new memoir called “A Girl’s Guide to Missiles: Growing Up in America’s Secret Desert,” which was published by Viking in August. I spoke with Piper about what it was like growing up with weapons engineers as parents.

Your book starts with your returning to China Lake with your mother as members of an archaeological tour group to see ancient petroglyphs on the base. Your guide tells you and everybody else not to touch any unexploded ordnance. Did you ever come across any unexploded munitions there as a kid?

No, no, no. I never did. I thought it was kind of funny that it said that in the brochure for the petroglyph tour. My mom and I got a laugh out of that. Of course it’s a possibility, but you don’t think about it growing up there as much. You find weird metal pieces in the desert, but you don’t know what they are.

Can you tell me what your parents did on base?

My mom and dad went to work on base from 7:30 to 4:30 every day. My dad worked on the Sidewinder missile. My mom worked on the Tomahawk. She was a computer scientist, and my dad was an aerodynamicist who worked on getting the missile to fly straight. My dad was a real perfectionist and obsessed with getting the job right. And his worry was that if he didn’t get it right, the missile would hit the wrong people. He didn’t feel bad about working for the war industry, but he felt very anxious about what would happen if the missiles didn’t work right.

And that came to a head when your father found out about the secret bombing campaign in Cambodia, right?

When he found out that the United States was illegally bombing Cambodia, he assumed they bombed the wrong place by accident, or that the bombs had malfunctioned, or the pilots had gotten lost. He was a navigator in World War II, and he knew that could happen. When he finally found out that President Nixon was lying to him, that was a powerful moment in his life. He seemed angry and discouraged at the same time. Because he was extremely ethical almost to the point of naîveté. My father didn’t lie, and he assumed other people didn’t lie, either. It messed with that belief system of his. The world wasn’t as honest as it seemed.

You say in your book, “People don’t become weapons developers because they want to kill people,” but “once people end up in the world of weapons, they tend to stay.” Can you explain what you mean by that?

Nobody consciously wants to be in an industry about killing people. But when it’s between that and you being unemployed and can’t feed your kids, you take the job. To this day, my mom has better benefits than I do. There’s more job security in the weapons industry. And to my dad, after getting laid off from Boeing, the world looked a little risky with two kids. The pay wasn’t great, though.

You describe the flora and fauna of the desert as an even bigger concern than bombs at China Lake. Tell me more about it.

There wasn’t much for kids to do there, and my mom was scared about all the little critters in the desert. Sometimes they got in your house, too. We never had rattlesnakes in the house, but we did have scorpions and spiders. There were rattlesnakes outside, and we loved to chase them. The desert was really our babysitter.

Interview has been condensed and edited.
Did you live or work at China Lake? Email me to get in touch: John.Ismay@nytimes.com.
--
John Ismay is a staff writer who covers armed conflict for The New York Times Magazine. He is based in Washington, D.C.