Security & Secrecy

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 […]

[We would like to thank Robert S. Norris, author of the definitive biography of General Leslie R. Groves, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man, for taking the time to read over these transcripts for misspellings and other errors.] General Leslie R. Groves: All right now what else is there? […]

[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 […]

Groueff: General Nichols, Part 2. Nichols: But Dobie [Percival Keith] came back immediately, or shortly thereafter, with the suggestion we build more gaseous diffusion base plants, and that was why we built the K-27 plant. Groueff: A base? Nichols: Yeah, a base. See, more base, to where he then optimized. How do you optimize the K-25 system with the […]

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 […]

Narrator: Apparently aloof from the rest of World War II, the solitary 509th, still unaware of its own purpose, carries on its puzzling training schedule. Their orders: practice runs to nearby islands. Then their own private missions to Japan, always above thirty thousand feet, always alone or in threes, always to drop just one bomb. Each […]

Jacob Beser:  The story which we could tell. And one point that Dr. Wittman, though, which I wish you would please keep in mind—and this is true not only in this situation, but any historical event  should be evaluated in the context in which it took place, the context and the times in which it […]

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 […]