December 23, 2020 Newsletter
This Saturday, December 26, 2020 at 5:00 PM ET American History TV on C-SPAN3 will air a one-hour webinar on the making of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. The program will be broadcast several additional times through January 3, 2021. See link for details.
AHF president and founder Cindy Kelly describes her odyssey starting in 1997 to preserve the Manhattan Project. Initial efforts focused on preserving the V Site (photo below) where the “Gadget” was assembled before it was tested at the Trinity Site. Kelly recounts how these first efforts led to the creation of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park in 2015.
Thanks to the Los Alamos County for filming the webinar as part of events to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. See lacnm.com/mapr for more about the events.
Manhattan Project Oral Histories
American History TV on C-SPAN3 is planning to televise some of the Atomic Heritage Foundation’s interviews from the “Voices of the Manhattan Project” collection. C-SPAN will select six or eight to air on weekends in January and February 2021. Here are some candidates from the “Voices of the Manhattan Project” collection of over 600 interviews.
Philip Abelson– Abelson begins his interview with a charming homage to his Norwegian immigrant parents. Working for the Navy, he invented a technique using thermal diffusion to enrich uranium. Abelson then designed the S-50 thermal diffusion plant in Oak Ridge which was built a record 69 days After the war, he directed the Geophysics Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, was Carnegie president from 1971-1978, and longtime editor of the journal Science.
Colleen Black-The second child in a family of ten, Colleen describes growing up during the Depression in Tennessee. When the war came, the family moved to Oak Ridge where they lived in a trailer in Happy Valley, sleeping and eating in shifts. Colleen describes her job, the security and secrecy, and her lively social life.
James Forde– At age 17, Forde was perhaps the youngest employee as well as the lone African-American in the midst of PhD scientists. Under the direction of a team at Columbia University, he worked on the gaseous diffusion process cleaning tubes at the Nash Garage facility. The K-25 plant incorporated the process on an industrial-scale in Oak Ridge to produce enriched uranium for atomic bombs.
Lawrence (“Larry”) S. O’Rourke Larry O’Rourke describes the mysterious journey he took from the Army infantry training to becoming part of the Manhattan Project as part of the Special Engineer Detachment. Working on barrier tubes in New York City where James Forde (above) also worked, he remembers a pep talk by General Groves saying, “Every tube may mean a life.” At Oak Ridge, he and his colleagues never talked about what they were working on, but Larry said they had enough science to guess.
Niels Bohr as Santa
Niels Bohr (1883-1962, photo above) was a Danish physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922. As World War II erupted in Europe, he narrowly escaped the Nazis and fled to the United States, consulting with scientists at Los Alamos and elsewhere on the Manhattan Project.
As early as April 1944, Bohr recognized that the new weapon “will completely change all future conditions of warfare.” Bohr advocated for peaceful applications of atomic energy and open exchange of information on nuclear science and technology.
Manhattan Project veteran Raymond Sheline got to know Niels Bohr when he was at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen from 1955-58. In AHF’s interview, Sheline recalls that “Niels Bohr was very kind and invited children to his magnificent home where he played Santa Claus every Christmas.”
Men, Write Home for Christmas!
Col. Kenneth B. Nichols worked directly for General Leslie R. Groves as Manhattan District Engineer. He recalled that Groves was demanding, driven and often abrasive, While he was “the biggest S.O.B.” he ever worked for, Nichols wrote that if he had to do it all over, he would pick Groves as his boss.
A member of the Special Engineer Detachment at Los Alamos, Norman Brown (above right) remembers the rather brusque remarks that Groves made to the at Christmastime 1945.
“In 1945, the Special Engineer Detachment and the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) Detachment, lined up outside the War Department Theater because we were going to be addressed by General Groves. The WACs went in first. We were all standing out there in the snow. When they came out, we asked them what had happened.
They said that after they sat down, General Groves was introduced to them and said, “Girls, take a good look because this is probably the closest you will ever come to seeing a general.” According to the WACs, that was the extent of his statement to them.
After we filed in, we sat down. The commandant of the post said to us, ‘Men, I want to introduce you to our common commander, Major General Leslie R. Groves.’
Then Groves came up and he said: ‘Men, write home for Christmas. Even if you put your name on a slip of paper and put it in an envelope, write home for Christmas! Thank you.’
And that was General Groves’ speech to the Special Engineer Detachment at Christmastime in 1945.”
What To Do For A Christmas Tree?
Curator and exhibit developer Jackie Peterson recounts that when new recruits for Hanford first arrived they were often surprised by the lack of evergreens and snow-capped mountains.
“It’s funny, what little people heard about Washington State before they arrived was that it’s called the “Evergreen State.” Everything is green and beautiful.
But no one really ever talks about what it’s like east of the Cascades, which is desert. It gets very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. I think a lot of people were not prepared for that.
There are a lot of anecdotes about people showing up in November and December. ‘It’s dry and brown. What are we going to do for a Christmas tree? There are no evergreens out here.’
It was really shocking. In fact, there were several people who left because the landscape was so depressing. They weren’t at all mentally or physically prepared for that.”
In October of 1943, James Schoke (above) joined the Special Engineer Detachment in Chicago. Here Schoke recounts how his magic show at Christmas was upstaged in 1944.
“Somebody ran across my Army folder and saw that I had done magic tricks in high school. In November a gentleman invited me to perform at Army Christmas party at the Chicago armory and do a magic show as part of the entertainment.
The magic show went well and the following year I was asked to give another magic show for the Christmas party. But only about half the people showed up. I could not understand why.
About two weeks later I learned that the Army had gotten a rumor that the Germans had an A bomb and were going to drop it on Chicago on Christmas Day. So that is why the officers were not there at the Christmas party! They all left town.”
A-Bomb Trumps Magic Tricks
In October of 1943, James Schoke (above) joined the Special Engineer Detachment in Chicago. Here Schoke recounts how his magic show at Christmas was upstaged in 1944.
“Somebody ran across my Army folder and saw that I had done magic tricks in high school. In November a gentleman invited me to perform at Army Christmas party at the Chicago armory and do a magic show as part of the entertainment.
The magic show went well and the following year I was asked to give another magic show for the Christmas party. But only about half the people showed up. I could not understand why.
About two weeks later I learned that the Army had gotten a rumor that the Germans had an A bomb and were going to drop it on Chicago on Christmas Day. So that is why the officers were not there at the Christmas party! They all left town.”
We hope you find joy over the holidays even as the pandemic may preclude family gatherings and many other traditions. Most of all, we wish you good health and happiness in the New Year!