Environmental Impact

[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 […]

Donald Ross: My name is Donald Ross, and I am about to begin my eightieth year on this planet. I was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and I left there with my parents at an early age. We moved to the southern tip of Texas, and had a little farm not too far from Edinburg, Texas, […]

Gerhart Friedlander: My name is Gerhart Friedlander. Interviewer: What was your role in the Manhattan Project? Friedlander: I got into the Manhattan Project very early; in fact, before there was an official Manhattan Project. I was a graduate student at Berkeley at the University of California. My thesis advisor was Glenn Seaborg, who later on […]

Hans Bethe: The other was M – A – D, MAD [Mutually Assured Destruction], which essentially says that nuclear weapons make sense only as a safeguard against nuclear weapons. As [Wolfgang] Panofsky has said recently, and there is actually an article by him, “It is not a doctrine. It is a fact of life. Nothing […]

Stephane Groueff: [Enrico] Fermi had the characteristics of a real genius. Colonel Franklin Matthias: Almost every time you would get in contact with him, something would come up that was impressive. Physically, he was a small man, unimpressive person, but he grew real large when he started talking about things he knew. Groueff: Was he […]

Walt Grisham: Okay, what you’re looking at is our old family well. It’s a little different than it used to be, because it’s sitting kind of up on the top of a bank here. After the project was built, they did a little roadwork out here and cut it way down. But where I am […]

Ralph Lapp:  I am Ralph Lapp, L-A-P-P. I am a physicist, nuclear physicist, an author, and a consultant. I have engaged in finance and technology. Interviewer: Great. What can you tell us about your role in the Manhattan Project? Lapp: Well, my role was quite a small one, but to me fascinating. I was in […]

[Interviewed by Cynthia Kelly, Tom Zannes, and Thomas E. Marceau.] Gabriel Bohnee: My name is Gabriel Bohnee. I’m Nez Perce tribal member, work for the Nez Perce’s tribe Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Office as an environmental specialist. How’d you first learn about the Hanford site? Bohnee: I first learned about the Hanford site through—I […]

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 […]