Working Conditions

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.

Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly, Atomic Heritage Foundation and this is Friday, April 10, 2015. We’re at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. I have Hans Courant with me, and the first question for him is please tell us your name and spell it. Hans Courant: My name is Hans Courant, and it’s spelled C-o-u-r-a-n-t. […]

[We would like to thank the Rhydymwyn Valley History Society for donating this interview. The above photograph was provided courtesy of the Rhydymwyn Valley History Society.] Myfanwy Pritchard-Roberts: My name is Myfanwy Pritchard-Roberts. Interviewer 1: Okay, okay. Roberts: And, I’m from Caernarfon [Wales]. Interviewer 1: Just leave it— Roberts: And, I worked here during the […]

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 […]

Marge Shipley: As for housing, men would come too, because they would feel that they would get sent for their wives. Shirely Tawse: What would you do then, take it up with the Tennessee Eastman? Shipley: I would take it up with Eastman and do what I could. I’d quiet them down if I could. […]

Shirley Tawse: Pat, do you live here now too? Patricia Hansard: Uh-huh. Tawse: I’d like to ask you how you first became interested. How you happened to go to Oak Ridge? You said before it was for the money. Hansard: Uh-huh. Tawse: Tell me. I would just like to visualize it as it happened to […]

Val Fitch: My name is Val Logsdon Fitch. It’s V-A-L L-O-G-S-D-O-N F-I-T-C-H. And the Logsdon is my mother’s maiden name. Where Val comes from, I have no idea. Except it was a favorite name of my mother’s. Cindy Kelly: Tell us a little bit about your background and how you happened to end up at Los Alamos […]

Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy, and I’m in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, today. It is January 21, 2015, and I have with me Martin J. Skinner, Sr. The first question I’m going to ask him, though, is to say his name and spell it. Martin Skinner: Oh, really. Martin Skinner, M-A-R-T-I-N. Last name Skinner, S-K-I-N-N-E-R. Kelly: Terrific. […]

Everett Weakley: My name is Everett Weakley. E-v-e-r-e-t-t, W-e-a-k-l-e-y. Where did you go to school and how did you get to Hanford? Weakley: I was hired by General Electric in 1950, right out of University of Idaho, which isn’t very far from here, Moscow, to come down here at the height the Cold War. Things […]

Richard Malenfant: I go by Richard Malenfant. That’s M-A-L-E-N-F, as in Frank-A-N-T, as in Tom, although I’m more comfortable going by my nickname Dick. Cindy Kelly: Great, terrific. Now I wish I could ask you about Tahiti. Just remembered that you just got back from there! But let’s stick to the topic and ask you […]