Security & Secrecy

Celia Szapka Klemski was featured in Denise Kiernan’s “The Girls of Atomic City.” She grew up in a small coal-mining town in Pennsylvania. She worked as a secretary in Washington, DC, before she was transferred to New York City to work on the Manhattan Project. There she enjoyed sightseeing and touring the skyscrapers. Eventually she […]

I was in the Army drafted, classified for counter-intelligence work for reasons I will never understand.  I got into that, investigative work as an enlisted man and after about a year I was commissioned also in counter-intelligence work.  I continued there in the 6th service command in Chicago in that kind of work.  One day […]

Thomas O. Jones volunteered to join the Army before the start of WWII. As the war began to unfold in Europe, Jones was placed in a sub-organization of the Army called the Counterintelligence Corps. Eventually, his work in the Counterintelligence Corps led him to being involved with the Manhattan Project. Jones oversaw many of the […]

Kelly: This is Cindy Kelly, and I am in Boulder, Colorado. It is June 25, 2013, and I am going to be interviewing Bert Mills Tolbert. And the first question for Bert is to say his name, and then spell it? Tolbert: My name is Bert Mills Tolbert, spelled T-O-L-B-E-R-T. Kelly: Why don’t you start […]

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?”  […]

I was in the Special Engineer Detachment and I was four-stripe sergeant when I got out of the army in 1946. I worked in a group that was doing primarily coatings for the implosion bomb. I was in the army and I was recruited to be in the Special Engineer Detachment. Of course I was […]

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 […]

Theresa Strottman: We are speaking with Ed Doty and we thank you so much for coming today. Ed Doty: You’re welcome; delighted to be here. Strottman: To start off the interview could you briefly could you tell me when and where you were born and something about your early education and training. Doty: Born in […]

Ed Doty worked as a technician with the Army’s Special Engineer Detachment (SED) in Los Alamos for the Manhattan Project. He recounts what life was like working on the secret site.