Roger Fulling's Interview (1985)
[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.]
[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.]
[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.]
Clare Whitehead: I got raised to Tech Sergeant, so he immediately got raised to Tech Sergeant. He said, “Well, we figured it was too bad we did not get married earlier. We would have been generals by the time we retired.” [Laughter]
[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 terrain is mostly scrubland, laced here and there by cheatgrass, greasewood, and Russian thistle.
Walt Grisham: Okay, what you’re looking at is our old family well. It’s a little different than it used to be, because it’s sitting kind of up on the top of a bank here. After the project was built, they did a little roadwork out here and cut it way down. But where I am at the present time is the meadow of our front yard. The old dead trees off to this side were cherry trees. We used them not only to produce the cherries, but also as shade trees in the front lawn. The house sat back in this direction.
[Interviewed by Cynthia Kelly, Tom Zannes, and Thomas E. Marceau.]
Gabriel Bohnee: My name is Gabriel Bohnee. I'm Nez Perce tribal member, work for the Nez Perce’s tribe Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Office as an environmental specialist.
How'd you first learn about the Hanford site?
Russ Fabre: Tell us a little bit about your family history, from where and when did you come to Washington State, and why settle here in White Bluffs?
Richard Rhodes: Would you say your name and then spell it to start with?
Jane Yantis: It’s Jane Yantis, J-A-N-E, Y-A-N-T-I-S.
Rhodes: Good, thank you. Where were you born and when, if you want to tell me?
Yantis: I was born in Center, Texas.
Rhodes: When?
Yantis: In 1920.
Rhodes: Good.
Yantis: March the 23rd, 1920.
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?
Stephane Groueff: One thing I don’t understand, and it’s a very ignorant question, but what was actually the difference between [Enrico] Fermi’s experiment in ’34 and [Otto] Hahn’s? Because, why do we say that Hahn was the first one, while Fermi also bombarded uranium?
Lew Kowarski: I don’t it’s true to say that Hahn was the first one.
Groueff: It’s not true.
Kowarski: I think it’s one of those simplifications—there are people who find them all right. I don’t.
Cindy Kelly: This is Cindy Kelly. It is July 31, 2013, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and with me is Nancy Bartlit. I want her to say her full name and spell it.
Nancy Bartlit: My full name is Nancy Reynolds Bartlit, N-A-N-C-Y R-E-Y-N-O-L-D-S. Bartlit is B-A-R-T-L-I-T.
Kelly: Excellent.