Working Conditions

Martin Sherwin: The work must have been sort of very frustrating for a while, before that [Stanislaus] Ulam-[Edward] Teller breakthrough [on the hydrogen bomb]. Ed Hammel: Well, sure. There was—  Sherwin: What were you doing at that time? Hammel: At that point, I continued with having this group in charge of properties of plutonium. But one […]

Nate Weisenberg: My name is Nathaniel Weisenberg. I am here in Needham, Massachusetts with [Margaret] “Chickie” Broderick, recording this oral history interview for the Atomic Heritage Foundation. It is Monday, April 25, 2016. My first question for you is where and when were you born? Margaret Broderick: I was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1921. […]

Cindy Kelly: I’m Cindy Kelly. It is Sunday, May 15, 2016, and I’m in Houston, Texas. I’m here to interview Mack Newsom. My first question for you is to say your formal name and spell it. Mack Newsom: My full name is Mack Newsom, M-A-C-K. Well, originally it was Victor McKee, but they call me […]

Martin Sherwin: Martin Sherwin, I am about to interview Dr. Hempelmann at Strong Memorial Hospital. You know, simply from all of the Los Alamos records, but who told me you were at Strong? That was, I think, Dorothy McKibbin. Louis Hempelmann:  Oh yeah. Sherwin: No, she confirmed it. She said you were coming out to […]

Richard Rhodes: Although again, I was struck in Russia with how different a world that was. Ted Taylor: Oh, yeah. Rhodes: How much more closely they were— Taylor: That is why I am so thankful because in many other places people get shot. Rhodes: Yeah. We could not even get directions on the street. Nobody […]

[Many thanks to Claude Lyneis for donating this footage to the Atomic Heritage Foundation.] Narrator: About seventy-five miles northwest of Walla Walla, Washington, in an isolated expanse of open desert, civilization entered into a new age, an age from which it would never emerge the same. Here, in the home of the Wanapum Indians, the […]

Donald Ross: My name is Donald Ross, and I am about to begin my eightieth year on this planet. I was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and I left there with my parents at an early age. We moved to the southern tip of Texas, and had a little farm not too far from Edinburg, Texas, […]

Crawford Greenewalt: Crawford Greenewalt. I’m named after my father, Crawford Hallock Greenewalt. The last name, Greenewalt, is spelled G-R-E-E-N-E-W-A-L-T. But in early years in the country, the Greenewalt’s spelled their name various ways. The present spelling may go back several generations. My father was born in 1902, in August. His mother was Mary Hallock, that […]

Harry Allen: Mr. Wilson and company set us up a purchase request for a barber chair, because they couldn’t get off work in time to get their hair done. Robert Van Gemert:  There was only one man cutting hair, I think, up there. Allen: The barber service was extremely limited, and we just happen to […]

General Kenneth Nichols: —found we did not have the authority to satisfy DuPont. Stephane Groueff: But why did DuPont challenge your authority? Nichols: Because they had trouble, in World War I, being called munitions makers and investigated after World War I, so they are more conservative than most companies. And they wanted to have in their […]