Working Conditions

Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly. I’m in Santa Fe. This is Monday, February 6, 2017, and I’m with Floy Agnes Lee, better known as “Aggie.” I’d like to start by asking Aggie to say her full name and spell it. Floy Agnes Lee: Okay. Well, my name is Floy, F-L-O-Y, Agnes A-G-N-E-S, Lee L-E-E. I’m […]

Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly, Atomic Heritage Foundation, and we are in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It’s February 2, 2017. I have with me W. Stanley Hall.  Hall: I was born in 1924 on Broadway in Manhattan. I was there until the third grade. In the fourth grade, I went to the Bronx and was […]

Cindy Kelly:  Okay. I’m Cindy Kelly, I’m in Alexandria, Virginia. It is January 9th, 2017. I have with me Milton Levenson. My first question to him is to please say his name and then spell it. Levenson: My name is Milton Levenson. No middle name. M-i-l-t-o-n, and Levenson is L-e-v-e-n-s-o-n. Kelly:  Terrific. At any rate, let’s […]

Alexandra Levy: We are here on December 27th, 2016, in Florida, with Russell Gackenbach. My first question for you is to please say your name and spell it. Russell Gackenbach: My name is Russell E. Gackenbach. G-A-C-K-E-N-B-A-C-H. Levy: Please tell us your place and date of birth. Gackenbach: I was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, March 1923, on March 23. […]

Russell E. Gackenbach was a navigator in the 393rd Bombardment Squadron and 509th composite group. He flew on both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions. His crew flew aboard the Necessary Evil, which was the camera plane for the Hiroshima mission. Gackenbach photographed the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. His crew flew again during the Nagasaki mission […]

Russell E. Gackenbach was a navigator in the 393rd Bombardment Squadron. He flew on both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions. His crew flew aboard the Necessary Evil, which was the camera plane for the Hiroshima mission. Gackenbach photographed the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima. His crew flew again during the Nagasaki mission as the weather reconnaissance […]

Louis Hempelmann:  I do not think the people who came later were ever as close as the people who were there at the beginning. Martin Sherwin: Did most of the people who came later, were they junior people? That is, younger? [Enrico] Fermi came later. Hempelmann: [George] Kistiakowsky came later. Sherwin: He did? When you […]

Martin Sherwin: What was the set-up at Los Alamos, in terms of your relationship to the director [J. Robert Oppenheimer] and how you operated? Louis Hempelmann:  I was working directly under him. I started out with my wife as a half-time secretary, and the technician I brought with me from St. Louis, and Kitty worked […]

[To see an edited version of the interview published by S. L. Sanger in Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995, click here.] Roger Fulling: Well, to identify myself, I was the Division Superintendent of Construction responsible – I reported to the Assistant Chief Engineer. I was responsible for procurement from the […]

[To see an edited version of the interview published by S. L. Sanger in Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford, Portland State University, 1995, click here.] Roger Fulling: During the very busy days of constructing the military explosive plants in 1942, General [Leslie] Groves visited the DuPont Company. Arrangements were made for him to meet […]