Life in the Secret Cities

Richard Rhodes: Would you say your name and then spell it to start with? Jane Yantis: It’s Jane Yantis, J-A-N-E, Y-A-N-T-I-S. Rhodes: Good, thank you. Where were you born and when, if you want to tell me? Yantis: I was born in Center, Texas. Rhodes: When? Yantis: In 1920. Rhodes: Good. Yantis: March the 23rd, 1920. […]

Harold Hoover: My name is Harold E. Hoover, that’s H-O-O-V-E-R, commonly known as Hal, H-A-L. Cindy Kelly: Why don’t you start by telling me how you got into the SED [Special Engineer Detachment]? How you happened to get into the SED, and then what you found when you got to Oak Ridge? Hoover: All right. […]

Stephane Groueff: Start from the beginning and if you can give me in a few words the history of how it started, who actually came into contract, and how?  Leroy Jackson: With respect to the construction of the City of Oak Ridge, Stone & Webster was retained. I believe it is what we classify as […]

[Audio distortion occurs throughout the interview.] Stephane Groueff: Recording interview with Mr. Leon Love at Oak Ridge July 15, 1963. Mr. Love works with Y-12. Would you mind repeating sort of some of the characteristics of Y-12, some of the figures? For instance, how many buildings? How many magnets? How many Alpha [calutrons] and Beta […]

Robert JS Brown: I’m Robert JS Brown. Robert S. Norris: You are recording this oral history for the Atomic Heritage Foundation on June third, two thousand fifteen in Washington, DC. Brown: Yes, right. Robert S. Norris: How did you become involved in the Manhattan Project? Can you tell us about that? Robert JS Brown: Like most […]

Kai Bird: Let us begin at the beginning and I think the viewers of this will want to know first about your own background. What year were you born? Bob Carter: I was born in 1920 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bird: On what day? Carter: February 3, 1920. Bird: 1920. Carter: Yes. Bird: Okay, 1920, what was sort of before modern physics, quantum […]

Hunt: I started working for DuPont in 1937 at Old Hickory [in Tennessee] in the power department. I was very anxious to do the best I could, so I made a special effort to learn everything. Where were you when you were told to return to Wilmington? Hunt: At that point I was a power […]

Dorothy Wilkinson: My name is Dorothy Wilkinson, D-o-r-o-t-h-y W-i-l-k-i-n-s-o-n. Cindy Kelly: Okay, if you could just tell a little bit about where you were born and how you happened to come Oak Ridge. Wilkinson: I was born in west Tennessee, which is what I count my home. I came right out of high school when I graduated because […]

Paul Wilkinson: My name is Paul Wilkinson, spelled P-a-u-l W-i-l-k-i-n-s-o-n. Cindy Kelly: Great, and we will start the same way, by your telling us where you are from and how you ended up at Oak Ridge. Wilkinson: I am from New Jersey. I graduated from Williams College in November of ’43. Eastman Kodak was the […]

Paul Wilkinson got a job at the Y-12 Plant Oak Ridge after graduating college. He supervised calutron work and some of the “calutron girls,” including his future wife, Dorothy. Wilkinson.