Reflections on the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ralph Gates is a chemical and electrical engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project as a part of the Special Engineer Detachment. His primary job was casting shape charges for the plutonium bombs.

Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly, Atomic Heritage Foundation, and it’s Friday, May 15, 2015, and I’m in Middlebury, Vermont, with Irwin P. Sharpe. And, my first question for him is to tell us your name and spell it. Irwin Sharpe: Oh, I know that. Okay. It’s Irwin, I-r-w-i-n, initial P, Sharpe, S-h-a-r-p-e. Kelly:  Terrific. Very […]

Murray Peshkin:  Well, how did I get involved in the Manhattan Project? I was an undergraduate student at Cornell University. A group of about ten, who were studying physics. It was clear that we could not be kept out of the Army very long. They were looking for programs in which we could serve usefully. […]

Murray Peshkin is a Manhattan Project veteran and a physicist. He was recruited by the Army to assist the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos when he was an undergraduate student studying physics at Cornell.

Irwin P. Sharpe was born in 1921. He was recruited for the Manhattan Project by his employer, General Electric, after he graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in engineering in 1942. His work took place in the Woolworth Building in Manhattan, where he played a key role in developing pumps and seals […]

Anthony French: This Anthony French. I was born and raised in Brighton, England, south of London. I went to Cambridge as a student in Upping, which is more or less northeast of London in 1939, just a couple of weeks after the war was declared. I’d just finished my secondary school, and helped in the […]

Ed Gerjuoy: My name is Edward Gerjuoy, G-E-R-J-U-O-Y. I’m presently a retired Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. I think I should begin by telling you how I came to go to Berkeley and to Oppenheimer. I graduated from City College in 1937 and actually looked for a job, didn’t want to […]

Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly, Atomic Heritage Foundation. This is Monday, February 16, 2015. We are in Pompano Beach, Florida with Dieter Gruen. I’m going to ask him to please say his name and spell it. Dieter Gruen: I am Dieter Martin Gruen. D-I-E-T-E-R, M-A-R-T-I-N, G-R-U-E-N. Kelly: Very good. Anyway, this is an interview about […]

Mench: I am John Mench and sixty years ago I was a young man with a wife and a baby girl, a good job in industrial deferment, a brand new home and a mortgage. Inside of a week or two, I had in my hand a ticket to a camp, an Army camp, an industrial […]

Freeman Dyson: I’m Freeman Dyson, F-R-E-E-M-A-N D-Y-S-O-N, retired professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Cynthia Kelly: Why don’t we start with your experience in World War II? Maybe you could tell us what your role was. Dyson:  In World War II, I was given the job of operations research, which […]