I think the idea that the boy could be a young Gordon Cole is very intriguing. Maybe the specific identity of the girl doesn't really matter at all, and she is merely a red herring.

Since Cole as an adult is obviously fascinated by the atomic bomb and the supernatural, perhaps the interest in the bomb was sparked by the history of the Trinity test in the recent past in his area (which I am sure would have been talked about in school).

Perhaps something very strange happened to the girl he kissed later on, that got him interested in the paranormal. Perhaps the fact he kissed her on the very same night a bunch of crazy people dressed as sooty lumberjacks terrorized the locals and killed people by crushing their skulls in a radio station before disappearing entirely, made him start questioning what the heck was going on around him.

We don't see the aftermath of the Woodsmen's visit to the town, but surely people getting terrorized to that degree while out driving at night, then having other people turning up dead with crushed heads while everyone else goes comatose while listening to the radio, would not be dismissed as an ordinary series of events.