National Museum of Nuclear Science & HistoryCindy Kelly: I am Cindy Kelly with the Atomic Heritage Foundation and it is June 26, 2013 and we are in Rio Verde, Arizona and my first question is please tell us your name and spell it.
Tom Scolman: I am Thomas Scolman, although officially I am Theodore T. Scolman, S-C-O-L-M-A-N, and I Was born October 27, 1926.
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 at the very beginning, and tell us when you were born and where, and then a little bit to lead up to your education and the Manhattan Project?
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 plutonium nitrate and put it through a series of chemical processes to get out all the impurities. But I want to go back because I think more interesting than the chemistry of plutonium is the whole process, the procedures that we went through.
Cindy Kelly: I am Cindy Kelly, the date is June 6, 2013, and we are here with Dr. Roy Glauber. And your first question is to tell me your name and spell it. Tough one, start with a tough one.
Roy Glauber: I probably can even spell it! I am Roy Glauber and that is spelled G-L-A-U-B-E-R, and that is a good old German name.
Gladys Evans: I’m Gladys Ellen Wimberley Evans, G-L-A-D-Y-S E-L-L-E-N W-I-M-B-E-R-L-Y E-V-A-N-S.
Kelly: Terrific. Okay, now if you could start with telling us, you know, where you were born and raised and how you got to Oak Ridge.
Cindy Kelly: Let’s start by having you tell us your name and spelling it.
Irene LaViolette: I’m Irene LaViolette.
Kelly: And how do you spell that? Can you spell your name?
LaViolette: I-R-E-N-E; V middle initial, LaViolette, L-A-V-I-O-L-E-T-T-E.
Kelly: Great. Today’s date is February 13, 2013. My name is Cindy Kelly and we’re here at the offices of the Atomic Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Can you tell me what does the “V” stand for, your middle name?
Cindy Kelly: I am Cindy Kelly, and this is May 9, 2013 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We’re interviewing Lawrence Bartell. Dr. Bartell, can you please say your name and spell it?
Lawrence Bartell: My name is Lawrence Sims Bartell, I am the son of Lawrence Sims Bartell, but I’m not “junior” or “the second” or anything like that. How can that be?
Kelly: How do you spell your name?
Bartell: L - A - W - R - E - N - C - E B - A - R - T - E - L - L.
[At top is the 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.
For the full transcript that matches the audio of the interview, please scroll down.]
Book Version:
W.K. MacCready: One of the challenging things we had, when we started up the separations plant and were running a reasonably complex chemical process, was that we were not able to inform our operators of the identity of any of the chemicals that they used, including the additives that they pumped out of the storage tanks and into the weigh tanks. They were Chemical Y, Chemical A and so on.
S. L. Sanger: So they wouldn’t even know that?
[At top is the 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.
For the full transcript of part 1 of the interview that matches the audio of the interview, please scroll down.]
Book Version:
