Oral Histories

Roger Fulling served as a division superintendent in DuPont’s War Construction Program. In this interview, he discusses the priority that the Manhattan Project received in the industrial sector, especially with materials like aluminum. He talks about coordinating production with the armed forces, including General Douglas MacArthur. He explains how General Leslie R. Groves would intervene if a company was having difficulty acquiring materials or producing products to certain specifications. Fulling also mentions meeting some of the top scientists, including Eugene Wigner, who thought that scientists alone, not DuPont and their engineers, should work on the project, and how DuPont persuaded them otherwise. He remembers his interactions with General Groves after the war, and explains why Groves chose DuPont to work on the Manhattan Project.

Gwen Groves Robinson is the daughter of General Leslie Groves, who served as the head of the Manhattan Project. A teenager during the project, she recalls visiting Gen. Groves in his office in Washington, DC, playing tennis with him, and his interactions with his trusted secretary, Jean O’Leary. Gwen explains why her family nicknamed her father “DNO,” and talks about the many games she would play with her father – including games where he was the “baby.” She discusses how her father was raised and the high standards to which he held both himself and his family. She learned about her father’s important role in the development of the atomic bomb from the radio after the bombing of Hiroshima.