Reflections on the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Cindy Kelly: I am Cindy Kelly, Atomic Heritage Foundation, and today’s date is June 6, 2013. And we’re in Cambridge, Massachusetts with Priscilla McMillan. And I have a very easy question to begin with, which is, could you say your name, and spell it? Priscilla McMillan: My name is Priscilla, P-R-I-S-C-I-L-L-A McMillan, M-C-M-I-L-L-A-N. Kelly: I […]

I was in the SED, the Special Engineer Detachment and I worked in what was then called D-Building and with my college James Gergen I purified all the plutonium that went in the Nagasaki bomb.  That’s what I did. The purification that we used was purely in the liquid phase. We worked with solutions of […]

  Well I was very young at the time. I went down there in 1943, down to Oak Ridge, TN.   They were interviewing at Princeton where I was going to school. They guys said that they had a very important war project going on down there. And I said, “Oh what’s it all about?”  […]

Cindy Kelly: Okay, I am Cindy Kelly, Atomic Heritage Foundation. It is Sunday July 7th, 20 13 and I am in Scarborough, Maine, with Gwen Groves Robinson. And the first question I am going to ask her is to tell us her name and to spell it. Gwen Robinson: To spell my name? It is […]

Cindy Kelly: Okay. I am Cindy Kelly from the Atomic Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC. It is May 2, 2013 in Raleigh, North Carolina. I have with me Herb Depke. Could we start with you saying your full name, Herb, and spelling it?  Depke: My full name?  Kelly: Full name.  Depke: Herbert Walfred Depke, H-E-R-B-E-R-T, […]

Cindy Kelly: I am Cindy Kelly, the date is June 6, 2013, and we are here with Dr. Roy Glauber. And your first question is to tell me your name and spell it. Tough one, start with a tough one. Roy Glauber: I probably can even spell it! I am Roy Glauber and that is […]

Cindy Kelly: I am Cindy Kelly with Atomic Heritage Foundation and it is Wednesday, July 31, 2013 and I am with Ellen Bradbury Reid. My first question for Ellen is to please tell us your name and spell it.  Ellen Bradbury Reid: Ellen Bradbury Reid. Actually I was Ellen Wilder, and then I married John […]

Emily Efland: I’m Emily Efland and I am with the Atomic Heritage Foundation. Today is August 14, 2013, and we’re interviewing Marilyn Hanna.  So first, could you give me your name and spell it. Marilyn Hanna: My name is Marilyn Hanna. M-A-R-I-L-Y-N. H-A-N-N-A. Efland: And could you tell me about when you were born? Where you […]

Gladys Evans: I’m Gladys Ellen Wimberley Evans, G-L-A-D-Y-S E-L-L-E-N W-I-M-B-E-R-L-Y E-V-A-N-S.  Kelly: Terrific. Okay, now if you could start with telling us, you know, where you were born and raised and how you got to Oak Ridge. Evans: All right, well, I was raised in Sweetwater, Tennessee, which is about fifty miles from here, and […]

Robert Furman: Robert Furman. F-U-R-M-A-N. I was an assistant to General Groves in the Manhattan District, in his Twenty-First Street offices here in Northwest. And I joined him in late autumn of ‘43 and left him right after the war—right after the end of the war. Cindy Kelly: Can we—just to—no one’s going to hear […]