B Reactor

Cynthia Kelly: Start by telling us your name and spelling it. Carol Roberts: Okay, my name is Carol B. Roberts. C-A-R-O-L, initial B, as in Bobby, R-O-B-E-R-T-S. I came here in June 1944 with my mother and my sisters because my dad had been sent by DuPont out here. That is how I came to be […]

CJ Mitchell: It’s CJ Mitchell, Junior. That’s just CJ. No periods or anything. It doesn’t stand for anything. And Mitchell – M-I-T-C-H-E-L-L. Kelly: Great. I would have made that mistake. Just like Harry Truman. It’s Harry S Truman, no period. Mitchell: Yeah, my dad was a CJ as well. Kelly: Was he? Mitchell: Yes. Kelly: You’re a junior. […]

[Many thanks to Claude Lyneis for donating this footage to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.] Narrator: About seventy-five miles northwest of Walla Walla, Washington, in an isolated expanse of open desert, civilization entered into a new age, an age from which it would never emerge the same. Here, in the home of the Wanapum Indians, the […]

General Kenneth Nichols: —found we did not have the authority to satisfy DuPont. Stephane Groueff: But why did DuPont challenge your authority? Nichols: Because they had trouble, in World War I, being called munitions makers and investigated after World War I, so they are more conservative than most companies. And they wanted to have in their […]

Stephane Groueff: Hello. Colonel Matthias, if you can tell me the story of how the plutonium was shipped. Colonel Franklin Matthias: Is this good enough. Groueff: Yeah, it is good enough. The plutonium was shipped from Hanford to—? Matthias: To Los Alamos. Groueff: To Los Alamos. Matthias: We spent a lot of time trying to […]

Jack Keen: My father was an engineering draftsman at Hanford. I was—depending on what the months were—probably three or four years old. Richard Rhodes: When you went there? Keen: Right, when I lived there in one of those big, duplex houses. My mother, father and I lived in those duplexes for a time when I […]

Stephane Groueff: Okay, now it’s recording. Dr. Foote, you started telling me from the beginning— Frank G. Foote: Knowing nothing about the uranium, and this was supposed to be my new business; I’d go over to the library to find out what was known. Groueff: In 1942? Foote: In 1942, August. Ordinarily, you’d expect this […]

Michele Gerber: My name is Michele Gerber, M-I-C-H-E-L-E G-E-R-B-E-R. Why should people today care about the Manhattan Project? Gerber: I think there are three reasons why people today should care about the Manhattan Project today, even in the 21St century. One reason has to do with money. The events set in motion by the Manhattan […]

Tell us your name. Roger Rohrbacher: I’m Roger Rohrbacher. That’s R-O-H-R-B-A-C-H-E-R. How did you come to Hanford? Rohrbacher: In 1942 and ’43, I was working for DuPont in an acid plant in Illinois and my buddies were disappearing. They ended up in Richland, so I got the map out and Richland, Pasco weren’t even recorded […]

Stephane Groueff: Hello, Dr. Wigner? Eugene Wigner: Yes. Groueff: Good morning sir. I am calling from New York. I am the correspondent of “Paris Match” magazine. My name is Groueff. Wigner: Groueff? Groueff: Groueff, G-R-O-U-E-F-F. Wigner: I see, Mr. Groueff. Groueff: Groueff. I will tell you what it is about. I am doing the research […]