The Manhattan Project

by Cynthia C. Kelly

  Olivi, Fred J. Decision at Nagasaki: The Mission that Almost Failed. 1998.

  Overholt, James, ed. These Are Our Voices: The Story of Oak Ridge, 1942–1970. Oak Ridge, Tennessee: Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge, 1987.

  Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.

  Sanger, S. L. Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of World War II Hanford. Portland State University: Continuing Education Press, 1995.

  Serber, Robert. The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

  Smyth, Henry DeWolf. Atomic Energy for Military Purposes: The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb under the Auspices of the United States Government, 1940–1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948.

  Teller, Edward. Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics. Perseus Publishing, 2001.

  Ulam, S. M. Adventures of a Mathematician. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

  Walker, J. Samuel. Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

  Walker, Stephen. Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

  Weller, George. First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.

  Wells, H. G. The World Set Free. 1914.

  Wilson, Jane S., ed. All In Our Time: The Reminiscences of Twelve Nuclear Pioneers. Chicago: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1975.

  Wilson, Jane S. and Charlotte Serber, eds. Standing By and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos. Los Alamos, New Mexico: The Los Alamos Historical Society, 1997.

  Zachary, G. Pascal. Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century. New York: The Free Press, 1997.

  Suggested Reading

  Alperovitz, Gar. Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb: And the Architecture of an American Myth. Knopf, 1995.

  Behind Tall Fences: Stories and Experiences About Los Alamos at its Beginning. Los Alamos: Los Alamos Historical Society, 1996.

  Bernstein, Barton. The Atomic Bomb: The Critical Issues. Little, Brown and Co., 1976.

  Bethe, Hans. The Road from Los Alamos. New York: The American Institute of Physics, 1991.

  Bird, Kai, and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds. Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy. Stony Creek, Connecticut: Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998.

  Brode, Bernice. Tales of Los Alamos: Life on the Mesa, 1943–1945. Los Alamos: Los Alamos Historical Society, 1997.

  Cassidy, David C. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century. New York: Pi Press, 2005.

  Church, Peggy Pond. The House at Otowi Bridge: The Story of Edith Warner and Los Alamos. Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1960.

  Compton, Arthur. Atomic Quest. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.

  Conant, Jennet. Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

  Feynman, Richard. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1985.

  Gleick, James. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

  Gosling, F. G. The Manhattan Project: Making the Atomic Bomb. United States Department of Energy, Energy History Series, 1994.

  Grodzins, Morton, and Eugene Rabinowitch. The Atomic Age: Forty-Five Scientists and Scholars Speak on National and World Affairs. Basic Books, Inc. Publishers, 1963.

  Hales, Peter Bacon. Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

  Hewlett, Richard, and Oscar Anderson. Volume I: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission: The New World, 1939/1946. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962.

  Hoddeson, Lillian, Paul Henriksen, Roger Meade, and Catherine Westfall. Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

  Howes, Ruth, and Caroline Herzenberg. Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.

  Hull, McAllister. Rider of the Pale Horse: A Memoir of Los Alamos and Beyond. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

  Johnson, Charles W., and Charles O. Jackson. City Behind a Fence: Oak Ridge, Tennessee 1942–1946. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1981.

  Martin, Craig. Quads, Shoeboxes and Sunken Living Rooms: A History of Los Alamos Housing. Los Alamos: Los Alamos Historical Society, 2000.

  McMillan, Pricilla J. The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer: And the Birth of the Modern Arms Race. Viking, 2005.

  Olwell, Russell. At Work in the Atomic City: A Labor and Social History of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004.

  Oppenheimer, J. Robert. The Open Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955.

  Palevsky, Mary. Atomic Fragments: A Daughter’s Questions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

  Powers, Thomas. Heisenberg’s War: The Secret History of the German Bomb. New York: Da Capo Press, 1993.

  Rabi, Isidor I. Science: The Center of Culture. New York: The World Publishing Company, 1970.

  Rockwell, Theodore. Creating the New World: Stories and Images from the Dawn of the Atomic Age. Bloomington, Indiana: 1st Books Library, 2003.

  Rogers, Everett M., and Nancy R. Bartlit. Silent Voices of World War II: When the Sons of the Land of Enchantment Met Sons of the Land of the Rising Sun. Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2005.

  Rosen, Terry. The Atomic City: A Firsthand Account by a Son of Los Alamos. Austin, Texas: Sunbelt Eakin Press, 2002.

  Seidel, Robert. Los Alamos and the Development of the Atomic Bomb. Los Alamos: Otowi Crossing Press, 1993.

  Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and the Origins of the Arms Race. New York: Vintage Books (Random House), 1987.

  Szasz, Ferenc. The Day the Sun Rose Twice. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984.

  Szilard, Leo. The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961.

  Taylor, Theodore. The Bomb. New York: Avon Books, 1995.

  Credits

  We hope you will be inspired to read the complete works from which the excerpts in this book have been drawn. Here is the bibliographic information for each of the pieces included.

  Section One

  Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1986), 13, 28.

  Jim Ottaviani and Janine Johnston, Fallout (G.T. Labs, 2001), 27, 28.

  H.G. Wells, The World Set Free (1914).

  Leona Marshall Libby, The Uranium People (Crane Russak & Company, Inc., 1979), 48–53.

  Edward Teller, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (Basic Books), 139–141.

  Philip Abelson, “A Graduate Student with Ernest O. Lawrence,” from Jane Wilson, ed., All in Our Time: The Reminiscences of Twelve Nuclear Pioneers, reprinted from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, Inc., 1974), 22–23, 26–29, 31.

  William Lanouette, Genius in the Shadows: A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man Behind the Bomb (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 198–202.

  Albert Einstein to Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 2, 1939; Franklin D. Roosevelt to Albert Einstein, October 19, 1939.

  Otto R. Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, Memorandum on the Properties of a Radioactive Super-bomb, March 1940.

  J. Wechsler, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history, April 9, 2003.

  The MAUD Committee, Report on the Use of Uranium for a Bomb, Outline of Present Knowledge, March 1941.

  G. Pascal Zachary, Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century (New York: The Fr
ee Press, 1997), 189–191, 203–204.

  Andrew Brown, The Neutron and the Bomb: A Biography of Sir James Chadwick (Oxford University Press, 1997), 216–217, 224–225, 226–228.

  Section Two

  James G. Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 159–162.

  Vannevar Bush to Franklin D. Roosevelt, March 9, 1942.

  Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (Simon & Schuster, 1986), 398–401.

  Enrico Fermi, “Fermi’s Own Story,” from The First Reactor (United States Department of Energy, 1982), 21–26.

  Crawford Greenewalt, personal diary, December 2, 1942.

  General Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told (New York: Harper, 1962), 38–40.

  Robert Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns (Harcourt Inc., 1986), 111–115.

  Robert Serber, The Los Alamos Primer (University of California Press, 1992), xxiii, xxxiii.

  Richard Feynman, “Los Alamos from Below,” Engineering & Science, Caltech, Vol. 39, No. 2 (1976), 11+.

  Stephane Groueff, Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb (Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse.com, Inc., 2000), 26–30.

  Niels Bohr to Winston Churchill, May 22, 1944.

  Winston Churchill, Hyde Park Aide-Memoire with handwritten amendments, September 19, 1944.

  Section Three

  Leslie R. Groves, Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Harper, 1962), 60–62.

  James B. Conant and Leslie R. Groves, memorandum to J. Robert Oppenheimer, February 25, 1943.

  Box from Robert S. Norris, speech at the Atomic Heritage Foundation symposium “K-25: A Monumental Achievement,” Oak Ridge, Tennessee, June 16, 2006.

  Robert S. Norris, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man (South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press, 2002), 135.

  Robert DeVore, “The Man Who Made Manhattan,” Collier’s Magazine (October 13, 1945), 13, 67.

  Box from Robert S. Norris, speech at the Atomic Heritage Foundation symposium “K-25: A Monumental Achievement,” Oak Ridge, Tennessee, June 16, 2006.

  Kenneth D. Nichols, The Road to Trinity (New York: William Morrow, 1987), 108.

  John Lansdale Jr., “Military Service,” pp. 83–84.

  Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 113.

  “Prof. Takes Girl for Ride; Walks Home,” Berkeley Gazette, February 14, 1934.

  Box adapted from Maurice Shapiro, “J. Robert Oppenheimer: Consummate Physicist,” from Cynthia C. Kelly, ed., Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project: Insights into J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Father of the Atomic Bomb” (New Jersey: World Scientific, 2006), 148–149.

  Edward Gerjuoy, “Oppenheimer as a Teacher of Physics and Ph.D. Advisor,” from Cynthia C. Kelly, ed., Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project (New Jersey: World Scientific, 2006), 120–122.

  Jeremy Bernstein, Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004), 62.

  Jennet Conant, 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 1–2, 22–28.

  Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 224–225.

  Robert S. Norris, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man (South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press, 2002), 242–243.

  Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 277–279.

  Joseph Kanon, speech at the Atomic Heritage Foundation symposium “Legacy of the Manhattan Project: Creativity in Science and the Arts,” Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 7, 2006.

  John Adams, speech at the Atomic Heritage Foundation symposium “Legacy of the Manhattan Project: Creativity in Science and the Arts,” Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 7, 2006.

  Jon Else, speech at the Atomic Heritage Foundation symposium “Legacy of the Manhattan Project: Creativity in Science and the Arts,” Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 7, 2006.

  Section Four

  Stephane Groueff, Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb (Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse.com, Inc., 2000), 197–199.

  Stirling Colgate, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history (adapted), November 16, 2005.

  United States Atomic Energy Commission (1954), In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (MIT Press, 1971), 12ff.

  Stanislaw Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 144.

  Rebecca Diven, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history, April 8, 2003.

  Box from Fred Ausbach, speech at Manhattan Project reunion in Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 6, 2006.

  Ruth Marshak, “Secret City,” in Jane Wilson and Charlotte Serber, eds., Standing By and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos (Los Alamos, New Mexico: The Los Alamos Historical Society, 1997), 1–5.

  Box from Jane Wilson and Charlotte Serber, eds., Standing By and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos (Los Alamos, New Mexico: The Los Alamos Historical Society, 1997), 16.

  Box from Jane Wilson and Charlotte Serber, eds., Standing By and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos (Los Alamos, New Mexico: The Los Alamos Historical Society, 1997), 46.

  Dana Mitchell, speech at Manhattan Project reunion in Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 6, 2006.

  Katrina Mason, Children of Los Alamos: An Oral History of the Town Where the Atomic Age Began (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995), pp. 30–31.

  Katrina Mason, Children of Los Alamos: An Oral History of the Town Where the Atomic Age Began (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995), pp. 40–41.

  Benjamin Bederson, “An SED at Los Alamos,” Physics in Perspective, Birkhauser Verlag, Basil, Vol. 3: 52 (2001), 52, 55, 56.

  Joseph Kanon, Los Alamos (Broadway, 1997), 117–122.

  Steve Buckingham, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history (adapted), September 2003.

  Roger Rohrbacher, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history (adapted), September 2003.

  Michele Gerber, On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 52–53.

  Stephen L. Sanger, Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford (Portland, Oregon: Portland State University Continuing Education Press, 1995), 89–91.

  Stephen L. Sanger, Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford (Portland, Oregon: Portland State University Continuing Education Press, 1995), 152–154.

  Stephen L. Sanger, Working on the Bomb: An Oral History of WWII Hanford (Portland, Oregon: Portland State University Continuing Education Press, 1995), 79–80.

  William Wilcox, adapted from “A Brief History of K-25: The Biggest Secret City Secret,” (2006).

  Box from Philip M. Smith, “Lard Almighty!,” review of Funding Science in America: Congress, Universities, and the Politics of the Academic Pork Barrel by James D. Savage, The Sciences (January/February 2000), 37.

  Colleen Black, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history, September 21, 2005.

  Colleen and Clifford Black poem from Colleen Black, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history, September 21, 2005.

  Box from Theodore Rockwell, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history, August 9, 2005.

  Theodore Rockwell, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history, August 9, 2005.

  Box from Theodore Rockwell, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history, August 9, 2005.

  Norman Brown, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history (adapted), August 9, 2005.

  Box from Donald Ross, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history, August 9, 2002.

  Valeria Steele, “A New Hope” in James Overholt, ed., These Are Our Voices: The Story of Oak Ridge, 1942–1970 (Oak Ridge, Tennessee: Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge, 198
7), 198–203.

  Robert Bauman, “Jim Crow in the Tri-Cities, 1943–1950,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly (Summer 2005), 124–126.

  Robert S. Norris, “Manhattan Project Sites in Manhattan” (2007).

  Robert S. Norris, “Manhattan Project Sites in Washington, D.C.” (2007).

  Stephane Groueff, Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb (Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse.com, Inc., 2000), 326–327.

  Isabella Karle, “My First Professional Assignment,” in Cynthia C. Kelly, ed., Remembering the Manhattan Project: Perspectives on the Making of the Atomic Bomb and Its Legacy, 93–96.

  Captain R. R. O’Meara, “A Message from Town Management,” The Oak Ridge Journal (1943).

  Section Five

  Robert S. Norris, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man (South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press, 2002), 253–254.

  Box from Robert S. Norris, Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man (South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press, 2002), 255.

  Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), pp. 228–231.

  Box from Hans Bethe, Los Alamos National Laboratory interview, December 1, 1999.

  Laura Fermi, Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), 202–203.

  John Lansdale Jr., memorandum to Richard C. Tolman, February 5, 1944.

  Charlotte Serber, “Labor Pains,” in Jane Wilson and Charlotte Serber, eds., Standing By and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos (Los Alamos, New Mexico: The Los Alamos Historical Society, 1997), 62–64.

  Box from Richard Heckert, Atomic Heritage Foundation oral history, July 5, 2006.

  Box from McAllister Hull, speech at Manhattan Project reunion in Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 6, 2006.

  Laura Fermi, Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 208–211.

  Lilli Hornig, interview on “The Story with Dick Gordon,” WUNC North Carolina Public Radio, October 30, 2006.

  Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel, Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy (New York: Times Books, 1997), 62, 89, 110–111, 114.