Civilian Life

[Interviewed by Robert W. Mull, from S.L. Sanger’s Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995] It came like a bombshell. They announced they were taking the whole valley. For what? We didn’t know. At that time, the farmers were short of money and didn‘t have any place to go, […]

[Interviewed by Robert W. Mull, from S.L. Sanger’s Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995] We came from the Waterville area. My parents moved down to White Bluffs to develop a fruit orchard. They bought a 10-acre place that had been planted to apples. They really pioneered. This had […]

[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‘m Joe Holt and I was born and raised in Kentucky. […]

[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 […]

[Interviewed by S. L. Sanger, from Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995] I was on a train on New Year‘s 1943 coming to Hanford, traveling with another gal, a WAC. We had stopped in Oak Ridge for a little indoctrination, and then came out here. Mr. Carpenter, […]

[Interviewed by S. L. Sanger, from Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995] VAN: I’m sure the Richland Players, which we helped found, was instrumen­tal in our early adjustment to life here, because it gave us something to do. Di right away won the lead in a production. […]

[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: At the peak, in July, 1944, we had 1,395 patrolmen, which […]

[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 working in a Mobile shipyard when a friend told […]

[Interviewed by Robert W. Mull, from S.L. Sanger’s Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995] The sight of military vehicles cruising through the valley started the talk. Upriver, a large parcel of land had been acquired for an artillery range and down at Pasco there was a Naval Air […]