Colonel Franklin Matthias

[To see an edited version of the interview published by S. L. Sanger in Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995, click here.] Roger Fulling: Well, to identify myself, I was the Division Superintendent of Construction responsible – I reported to the Assistant Chief Engineer. I was responsible for procurement from the […]

[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 […]

Russ Fabre: Tell us a little bit about your family history, from where and when did you come to Washington State, and why settle here in White Bluffs? Ludwig Bruggemann: My father was born in Schwetzkingen, Germany in 1898. He took place in the First World War in Germany and after the war, he wanted […]

[At top is the edited version of the interview published by S. L. Sanger in Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995. For the full transcript that matches the audio of the interview, please scroll down.] Book Version: I was the ninth fitter hired on the Du Pont construction […]

[At top is the edited version of the interview published by S. L. Sanger in Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995. For the full transcript that matches the audio of the interview, please scroll down.] I came in November of ‘43. I started out in the Hanford Camp, […]

[Interviewed by S. L. Sanger, from Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995] Sis and I got on a bus in Coffeyville, Kansas, in August of ‘43 and we landed in Pasco. The bus depot was right in the center of this teeny-weeny little town and these weird-looking […]

Hanford, Washington, on the beautiful Columbia River, was the site selected for the full-scale plutonium production plant, the B Reactor. Today a popular tourist desination, the Hanford Site proved crucial to the success of the Manhattan Project.  Site Selection In December 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers worked with DuPont to establish criteria for the […]